The beginning of the end?

By the same token, I think there'll be garage producers who'll try to develop a more 'musical' (ie commercial) formula, and probably get rich from it. As a result, the most endearing qualities of the music will be lost - but there'll still be pantloads of original stuff being created by those who haven't made it big. Or something.

That, and I still firmly beleive no electronic drum sounds as good as any real one.

I'd like to see a rock band say 'We need to go forward to grass tips inautheticity - synthetic guitars, and drums.' It's always electronic artists who sell out their lack of inbstrumental technique by handing everything over to cheesy live bands and - barf - real strings. People, people, remember why we replaced them in the first place? More power to the composer, less to workaday instrumentalists!

Oh, and if a melody isn't played on one finger it isn't going to be whistled by anyone.

I just said they sound better. But I also see if you're going for a cold, industrial thing, electronic do actually fit better.

As Keith has pointed out though, the new aspirationalism in garage is modelled on hip hop, and I question the viability of Musical Mob remodelling themselves as the MJ Cole of grime, unless they want to escape the confines of the genre altogether. In which case, like MJ Cole they might shift some albums and make a "Back To Mine" set, but they'll have little bearing on the actual direction of the scene. (and as Jess pointed out, garage survived this process before!)

Also it's hardly irrelevant to note that Musical Mob are primarily instrumentalists, desperate to discover a plan for long-term viability in a scene increasingly dominated by MC crews.

"Personally, I don't believe Jungle has died. It's simply splintered into factions, each with different directions. "

Ha ha yes - different directions of musicality, same ol' crappy beat.

btw tim did you see that zed bias is now recording straight up dnb for hospital?...sigh...

Funnily enough what I presume to be his more feminine jazzy Maddslinky/Phuturistix stuff sounded amazing when he DJd it in Melbourne but what I've heard from Make Your Peace quite bored me. If only it actually did sound like Mis-Teeq's "Eye Candy"!

Hey I have that MJ Cole Back To Mine! It's good!

and 'make your peace' isn't all that bad. it's only got a couple of genuine dancefloor killers on it ('reasons', 'mare d'inverno') but the other tunes like the 'doin my thang' and 'feel the harmonies' (which is like three years old) are nice listening tunes that i thought would have been more welcome on the phuturistix album, which i think is better on the whole than 'peace'...

dave still has a lot of life left in him, no need to slag him off for a)making an attempt at d&b and b)being successful enough to get the tunes signed. it's not like he's "gone d&b" or something...

some 'real' coffee? or some synthetic shit? which is it, colin ;-)

kosheen were always terrible

musical mobb are just frustrated that a sound they pioneered has quickly become emulated without as much zest and innovation as they initially injected into the scene ("pulse x is a happy song"). when "pulse x" came out it caught lots of criticism for being too minimal and lacking tunes, substance and since it blew up even certain 2-step producers are attempting 8-bar grime. So you can understand wanting to switch up their sound. How "making stuff that mj cole would dig" is a criticism is beyond me.

If you look at the way drum n bass supposedly became more cerebral, sophisticated, organic in the mid-90's it's difficult to see whether grime will go a similar way. For a start, i think its roots are equally as strong in dubstep, horsepower productions, darqwan et al which i think was an attempt to make garage more cerebral and sophisticated. So it's almost as if grime is evolving backwards.

The guy has made a fuckload of dead-cert classics though - "Neighbourhood", "Ring The Alarm (Jigga Up)", "Down" with Ruff Cut, his remixes of "Bodygroove", "Hook & A Line", "138 Trek", El-B's "Serious", etc. etc.

Grime getting 'musical' doesn't make as much sense as it did with jungle and 2step: jungle had jazz-funk samples and 2step had house/r&b songfulness. With Musical Mob it seems particularly preposterous. A neurofunk-style dead end seems much more conceivable for 8 bar, but the MCs' desire to be platinum rappers won't let it happen.