Alternative 2 Hardcore Continuum

Actually I'd probably be interested in well written (eg no mentions of soul or feeling) version of that.

i don't really know what's to argue there, as long as we keep in mind that 4 hero really do care about pharoah sanders and juan atkins as much as they do their ragga influences, and as long as we have the balls to admit that their music didn't necessarily get worse when they started foregrounding those elements (and if and when it did star getting worse, not necessarily because they foregrounded the elements that fall outside "the continuum" ... urgh)

what's probably more worthwhile to argue is that the best way to receive 2step or grime or dubstep or nu-d'n'b or breakage or whatever as a critic and/or a listener is to NOT try to slot it into any lineage or heritage. because then you end up doing weird intellectual backflips like asserting that baile funk is a close relative of kwaito or dancehall or something when really it's just one poor country's attempt to do rap music, or asserting that detroit techno is the next evolution of 70s electric jazz and funk or or or ... etc

that's gotta be the ultimate red herring to be used against people who read straight no chaser. but i'm not sure there's a group of dance fans (hell, music fans, hyper-rigorous nylpm mentalists excepted) out there who don't eventually at some point end up in the soul/feeling cul-de-sac. didn't the recent thread about "grime 2" eventually boil down to people saying "it's all about the feeling of inner city london, maaan"? i mean, some things you're just not going to get away from!

anyway that statement sort of underlines on of the other big flaws with bright ideas about continuums and lineages: invariably they all turn out to be too narrow.

it's funny because to take this as a particular example it seems (to me anyway) increasingly clear that rehabilitating these influences is the only way to go forward if anybody wants to say anything new and/or interesting about d'n'b. although it sounds (because this is 2x xposted) like eshun is already on the case...

case in point: in a weird turn of events for me my listening for the last few days has been dj clever's troubled waters mix, platinum breakz, equinox's inperspective mix for knowledge, j majik's fabriclive 13, vikter duplaix's dj kicks, logical progression and bugz in the attic's fabriclive 12.

what i was struck by: oddly neither equinox or dj clever sound very much like metalheadz or ltj bukem. texturally, equinox sounds a great deal like the j majik mix, and the constant hum of subbass booming out from under the inperspective tracks gives it the crazy rush that nu-d'n'b has but somehow without the claustrophobia. anyway for better or worse it'd be easier to dance to j majik, i can imagine being reduced to just standing and gawking if a dj were spinning inperspective tracks.

dj clever on the other hand spins tracks that sound (on first listen) a great deal like old bukem tracks, but if you listen to troubled waters in the same sitting as the bugz mix and some classic-era d'n'b you'll hear that weirdly the rhythms seem to be taking a great deal of inspiration from broken beat.

anyway weird stuff going here that totally defies the taxonomical games that thinking about continuums encourages.

i guess the only other thing i can say is that urban takeover et al. never took the ragga - or hiphop especially! - out of their tracks.

i just mean that as far as popularizing uniform beats goes i think the urban takeover crew = underrated in their importance. they were really fucking popular in three scenes (big beat, d'n'b and crossover) and they made some huge tunes, too!! but it was all pretty metronomic and monotonic.

xpost, sorry i couldn't resist

xpost. i just got completely burnt out on dnb probably around 2001.

doesn't it make perfect sense for paradinas to be releasing remarc though?

i was at this warp party last year and luke vibert played a set that i could only describe as gabba jump-up.

1 fracture/neptune-colemanism (outsider)
2 equinox-acid rain (breakage 47th century remix) (inperspective)
3 breakage-so vain (bassbin)
4 southstar/miracle-omega amen (intasounds)
5 bizzy b-afraid of the dark (planet µ)
6 breakage-bring back (bassbin)
7 bizzy b-darkside (planet µ)
8 capone-neck back (test)
9 manix-hardcore junglism (total science rmx) (reinforced)
10 potential bad boy-girls town (three lions)
11 shy fx-power of ra (ebony)
12 fresh bc-sausage dog (charge)
13 rudeboylicious-murdera (rudeboylicious)
14 mason-ruff, rugged & raw (freak)
15 fresh-dead man walking (valve)
16 fresh-da licks (breakbeat kaos)
17 pendulum-another planet (breakbeat kaos)
18 rob the builder-can you fix it? (up yours)
19 sileni-twitchy droid leg (offshore)
20 bad company-grunge3 (dieselboy,kaos & karl K remix) (human)
21 fresh-tomb raider (dogs on acid)
22 midiman-drop the bass (signal)
23 dillinja-twist em out (fresh remix) (trouble on vinyl)

gives you an idea of his tastes

nperspective have great chopped rhythms but it's not so different from what technical itch and dom&roland were doing before they abandoned amen breaks. people talk about their "use of space" but i think it's not rhythmic space, it's got to do with how the dynamics of the track revolve around very dramatic breakdowns and bass drops where the beat echoes out, etc.

this is nothing new really but maybe the group of producers i'm thinking of (i guess maybe this includes the disco-d&b crew, too?) are branching out in this direction because they're not so inspired to work on new beats or basslines or synth noises.

i'm much less sure of what i'm writing here than the things i posted upthread. i'm kind of out on a limb here because i haven't heard as much new mainstream d&b as i'd like to - sort of surprised i'm enjoying it as much as i am, even more than ragga revival stuff! but i haven't really gotten deeper than the fabric mixes.

that paradinas mix looks great.

See, you could even argue that jump-up is the true "centre" of jungle, not the clattery remarc stuff, or the technoid no U-Turn, but rather the big bouncy anthemic Hype and Zinc tunes. After all this was as populist as it got - like all the Jay-Z singles in the UK used to come with True Playaz remixes and stuff like that. And it was great! It felt to me like it was the closest UK dance music ever got to being in sync with US hip hop. They both turned urban dystopia into FUN.

Common reading is that techstep was a "reaction" to populist jungle but seems to me it was more a "refinement" of the beats-break-bass drop formula of jump-up - trying to make that bass drop harsher and harder and more intense, rather than deliberately making the sound less accessible. Kinda like late-80s hip hop.

And the second thing being that when garage rehabilitated the "hardcore continuum" (and I really wonder about how much you can place garage in that continuum) it was the jump-up bassline that was resuscitated. Everything else in garage came from US garage sped-up or from dancehall - the only thing traceable to jungle was the wobbly bassline, and that only appeared on about a quarter of the releases anyhow!

Finally most of the crossover jungle in recent years still sounds like Hype and Zinc from back in the day - whether it's Puretone or Hi Contrast or that other one.

where did it come from/is it widely used?
if i met someone who played the stuff at a party would he be all "yeah i mix drum'n'bass,mainly clownstep"

so does this sound like jump up (i could be totally wrong)
and are there any particularly good mixes of this stuff i could download?
i love the horn track by egyptian empire,thats the kind of stuff i'm talking about...

Totally OTM - I think this is part of why the first Dom & Roland album is so pivotal to me.

I think jump-up died precisely because it was chomped up and reconstituted in the harder post-techstep arena. Really drum & bass hasn't been dirgey and noirish since late '98/early '99 - tracks like Ram Trilogy's "No Future" (i think it was called) or the Origin Unknown remix of E-Z Rollers' "Tough At The Top" or the pre-Bad Company group Fresh & Vegus's "Otto's Way" were basically jump-up with much tougher beats and basslines - and they were the three monster tunes of 1999 if I remember correctly. It was the same with Bad Company and the resurgence of Total Science in 2000 - darkcore riffs used for almost comic effect on the dancefloor.

And re: hardcore continuum - to me it makes sense to give this a narrow reading as being purely the rave-jungle-garage-grime continuum, and the fact that as far as I'm aware it's the same social/economic/cultural group(s) in London listening to and making the music. To bring in hip hop and dancehall and baile funk etc. etc. really muddies the waters, and Matt Woebot's "shanty house" term is a better one for describing that phenomena.

p.s. that 'jump up throwdown' is indeed, excellent.

It was different punters, different producers, different djs and different clubs.

And only a tiny fraction of the first wave of "sunday scene" speed garage (i.e. the "bassline" tracks - the Ice Cream records stuff) had any jungle influence. The vast majority of it was in the "choppy" mold (i.e. the stuff on 4liberty, Azuli and Slip 'n Slide) which was a straight rip of the clattery beats from New Jersey garage with the chopped up Todd Edwards aesthetic...

Anyway, does dnb going global mean it is no longer a part of any continuum but an entity in its own right, like techno or hip hop?

1. A continuous extent, succession, or whole, no part of which can be distinguished from neighboring parts except by arbitrary division.

"they look like a bunch of clowns jumping up and down like that!"