tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-383105482024-03-07T20:05:24.671-08:00Bring the NoiseDELETED SCENES, OUT-TAKES, NEWS, AND OTHER STUFF RELATING TO SIMON REYNOLDS' ANTHOLOGY BRING THE NOISE: 20 YEARS OF WRITING ABOUT HIP ROCK AND HIP HOPSIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-62208645717127819622013-11-16T20:59:00.002-08:002013-11-16T20:59:40.552-08:00<b>an interview with Maxence Grugier for <i>New Noise</i> magazine, done early in 2013, on the occasion of the publication of the French translation of <i>Bring The Noise</i></b><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">1/ You are one
of the few who dared to confront the coexistence of black and white music in
the vast ecosystem of musical time. It was not supposed to be easy? The subject
can lead a lot of false interpretations isn’t it ?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Oh, I wouldn’t
say I’m one of the few – not in the least. It’s one of the fundamental aspects
of the history of rock and pop. As important as the concept of youth culture
and teenage rebellion, or the influence of technology on music, from the
electric guitar to sampling, or the effect of drugs on music, or the role of
class. Lots of people have written about the relationship between black music
and white music. Going back to before rock, with writing on jazz and blues. But
yes it is a very complex subject, full of mistaken ideas and misunderstandings.
I have made a fair number of mistakes myself, which are collected in the book!</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My argument I
suppose, or one of my arguments, is that is the white misunderstandings of
black music – the getting it wrong – that have led to mutations and creative
evolution. If white musicians had only replicated black music, it would have
led to a lot of “sonically correct” but redundant music that didn’t take its
inspirations or sources anywhere new. And just as bands like the Rolling Stones
or Talking Heads or The Police warped black musics like rhythm-and-blues and
discofunk and reggae, so too I think the misunderstandings by white critics of
black culture have also been “creative” in a sense. You try to get it right,
but you always end up with a distortion of one kind or another. But that is
more interesting and productive than successfully understanding something “on
its own terms”. That job is for academics to do. Rock writing in a sense is
about the creation of fictions and myths about music.</span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">2/ In this
connection, I thought when I was reading Bring The Noise, that it would be even
more difficult now, with the expansion of "politically correct” in all
spheres of creation and society. What do you think?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Yes, well the
truth is that my original intention was to write a book called White On Black,
not a collection but a new book that drew on my older writings in various
ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the problem I confronted was
precisely the politically correct issue. There is so much critical literature
and academic work on questions of music and race, I felt I would be obliged to
read it all and as a result I would find myself, however much I resisted,
becoming more cautious and wary in my statements. A terrible inhibition would
creep in, for fear of accidentally saying something wrong or offensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew that doing such a book would become a
chore, all the fun and life in the writing would be leeched out of it. Also I
would be committed to come up with some kind of definitive statement on music
and race, and I don’t know if such a position could be reached. So many of
these issues are ever-shifting and resist resolution. When it’s in a book you
have to go out there and defend your conclusions, and by the time the book
appears in print you might have already evolved your views! So I became
attracted to the idea of actually presenting my 25 years of journalism on the
subject, all the shifts in outlook I’ve gone through. Because the pieces were
written for immediate purposes, they had a vitality and energy about them. I
was not looking to make a definitive and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>conclusive statement on the subject with these pieces, they were written
quickly and they were addressing the contingency of that particular moment – an
artist, an album, a live show, maybe a genre – and it was through that the issue
of music and race was refracted. But there is also a sense, with all the pieces
gathered together as one book, of some kind of evolution of thinking. </span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">3/ The very good
idea in Bring The Noise, are the small "footnotes page" that you add
to the original articles. You make your own self-criticism in this book, you
return to your ideas in hindsight. Without them, Bring The Noise might be
(maybe) a self-sufficient book (or just "pretentious") in the bad
sense of the word ... don’t you think? </span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">4/ When do you
have that idea? To add some footnotes to your older texts?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Yes I just
thought it would be both fun and essential to add these afterthoughts, where my
ideas have changed or become more sophisticated, and also add some contextualization,
because some of these pieces were very much interventions in arguments that
raged at that particular time, but have since completely faded from memory. I
don’t know if it makes the book less pretentious to have these commentaries,
some people might say that it was more pretentious or pompous to have them! But
they were great fun to write, I had to be quite compressed because you don’t
want to have a commentary that is almost as long as the original review. Some
of them get quite close to that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The idea must
have occurred to me pretty early in the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking at stuff that I liked a piece of
prose or because of the subject, but aware that it needed to be situated historically
in some way.</span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">5/ It must have
been a crazy job to read it all. Not too boring?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’m ashamed to
admit I was never once bored during the process. I was mostly just surprised at
how much I had actually written. <i>Bring the Noise</i> is a fraction of my total
output since November 1985, when I started writing professionally. Partly out
of enthusiasm and partly because it’s the only way I make my living yet musical
journalism is generally poorly paid, I have churned out millions of words. Selecting
for the book, I narrowed it down to the stuff that had some relationship to
music and race and the white/black theme, but even out of that stuff, there’s
way more writing I didn’t include in Bring the Noise than stuff I included. </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The only boring
bit was the early pieces that were only on print, not in my computer or old
computer discs. Those I had to transcribe into the machine and that was a bit
tedious. </span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6/ You must have a goddam prescience to write
analyzes such as you wrote in 1985, for exemple for “Younger than yesterday” on
Talulah Gosh’s pop, The Pastels, K Records, etc.. How is this possible? Should
we not let pass a decade (minimum) to have enough perspective to analyze a
situation? You seems to be able to see it all, when you were in the middle of
it ... !</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well, it was
right there in front of me and certainly while there are benefits to looking at
things from hindsight, certain things become clearer, you also have the
advantage of being there, witnessing things unfold, and trying to work out what
it meant but doing in pretty energetic format of a piece for a weekly music
paper. Some of the ideas and even sentences in that piece came out of a couple
of years thinking about music prior to that– pieces that I’d done for the
fanzine Monitor – but yeah, it was sociological analysis done on the fly,
almost in real-time. I think the signs are there for people to read in any
genre or movement that’s happening right now, but obviously the long-term
significance or consequences, you don’t know what they’ll be. So these kind of
overviews or thinkpieces were also manifestos in a way, or acts of prophecy. My
stuff in those days fell somewhere between journalism, sociology/anthropology
(without any academic qualifications, I should add!), and the messianic mode of
rock writing, the “I have seen the future” mode. Of course most times the
future turns out completely different.</span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7/ In Bring The Noise you talk about the
condition of hip hop in 2009. What do you think of this condition today, with
the advent of ultra-smooth productions of RnB and those, tasteless and
repetitive, of the today rap?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Overall I still
kind of wish hip hop would just fade away and something totally new take its
place. But there have been some more interesting developments and artists
recently. 2007-2009 was kind of the nadir, I think. But recently there have
been interesting artists like Kendrick Lamarr, Odd Future/Tyler the Creator,
Lil B, Future.... I don’t like Drake really but I concede that he is a new
phenomenon in rap. And in 2009 I didn’t see Nicki Minaj coming either. There
has been the rise of styles like trap and ratchet which are the same old
gangsta modes of materialism and threats and boasts and sexism, but the sound
is quite excitingly cold and minimal and hard, as with songs like Tyga’s “Rack
City”, produced by DJ Mustard here in Los Angeles. </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As for R&B,
the club-ification of R&B and pop rap – the Eurohouse sound that Rihanna
and Pitbull and Flo Rida have all adopted – that is a new development, but also
for Europeans it feels like a retread of the Nineties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rihanna I find a rather depressing
phenomenon. I am pleased that in the Destiny’s Child piece in Bring the Noise, written in 2001, I already see the
signs of megalomania in Beyonce that have blossomed this year with the
Superbowl extravaganza and the biodoc Life Is But A Dream and the video for
“Bow Down”. </span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">8/ Bring the
Noise also contains the famous (or infamous) article entitled “Post-rock”. In
France, the term was sometime taken as an insult by some conservative
journalists. I guess it was the same in your country? How do see this name now?
</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It was never
meant as an insult or necessarily a praise word, but a neutral description of a
space that had opened in rock in the early Nineties where bands that came out
of indie label culture and experimental postpunk music had started to wake up
to developments in hip hop and techno. They were listening to the loop-based,
sample-based music of Public Enemy and the electronic mindscapes of Aphex Twin
and assimilating those ideas into their music, as well as reactivating ideas
from dub reggae and from Krautrock. So it was a neutral description of this new
musical space, although at the same time I thought it was the right direction
for rock to go if it was <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to escape the
retro pitfall of replicating its own past (which it has largely done, ever
since!). And obviously I loved many of those early UK post-rockers, especially
Seefeel and Disco Inferno and Insides. But what post-rock evolved into, largely
through the influence of Tortoise and Slint, has not been so interesting to me.
It’s not really “post” anything, it’s too often today just a form of
instrumental rock music that tends to use rather hackneyed loud-quiet dynamics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I guess
“post-rock” could be taken as an insult if you were very attached to the rock
that it was trying to be “post” in relation to! If you were happy with the concept of rock
staying static and becoming a tradition-bound form of music, then the
proposition of a new frontier for the music might very well be taken as a
reproach. Oasis responded that way when Radiohead did Kid A, which was very
much a post-rock move as far as I can see. </span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">9/ Which brings
us (obligatory step) to Retromania: Wouldn’t you do your own Retromania? Is Simon
Reynolds "best before"? ;)</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">That’s for
others to say. Writers always think they get better (so do musicians and
artists, generally).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know people who
say their favorite book of mine is Blissed Out, which is the collection of late
Eighties writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Personally while I can
feel the passion and urgency in the early stuff, as actual writing I think it
gets better with each passing year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
early stuff can be a bit clunky and strains a bit in terms of bringing in the
theory and the high culture references. </span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">10/ How old are
you now Simon (if it’s not a secret) ? How age influe on the music perception
at your advice ?</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It’s no secret,
it’s on Wikipedia! Most of my bios on my books reference me being born in 1963.
And since the first piece in Bring the Noise is from 1984, or perhaps 1985...
Well you can work it yourself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Age changes your
perspective on everything, not just music. It would take a small book, or long
essay at least, to discuss all that, but let’s say that some of the urgency and
obsessive fixation inevitably fades away. You tend to have a better sense of
proportion about things. When I wrote my early stuff, my life was empty in lots
of ways. I was involved in relationships at various points, but the writing and
the music took precedence. Nowadays my life is full – I’m a couple of decades
into a very happy marriage, I have two children, a 7 year old daughter and a 13
year old son who is becoming a teenager. I don’t have the huge space of spare time
or of unattached emotional energy that I used to fill up with music-obsession.
When you are young, music plays a major role in identity formation but as you
got older, your identity is (hopefully) formed. You’re not looking to music to
explain yourself to yourself, or be a savior, or even <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the primary source of excitement and solace in
your existence. Music remains my major passion and interest but it competes
with other passions and interests much more than it did when I was 22 and
starting out as a music critic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I also know a
lot more about the history of music and have heard so much more, so things
become more contextualized and perhaps I have sense of how cycles repeat in
rock culture. By the age of 49 you’ve seen so many hype cycles kick off and
then exhaust themselves. You are also less easily impressed. But that’s good I
think.</span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">11/ Are you
aware that some journalists (including me) are not fully agree with your
opinion about how pop culture sometime still to the old to create the new? I
mean, like you say in Retromania, it's always been like that. All decades
borrows to the oldest one…</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Oh yes I’m very
aware about that. People have not hesitated to express that opinion, both in
print and to my face! But I think you perhaps misunderstand the argument of
Retromania<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- it’s not that this kind of
revivalism and pastiche is a completely new, unique to the 21<sup>st</sup> Century
phenomenon, nor is it asserting that it is a completely barren field. </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There are
examples of revivliasm in pop going back to the very end of the Sixties. What
is different is the degree and intensity of the recycling in the 2000s, and the
absence of a strong force of musical innovation to counter it. The only
contenders I can see are dubstep, which I underestimated in the book, and
perhaps the AutoTune phenomenon in pop, which has been used as a creative or at
least an extreme tool in terms of vocal manipulation. But overall it’s
undeniable that the last 13 years or so have been inundated with
retro-pastiche, revivalism, nostalgia marketing, reissues, archival culture,
vintage aesthetics – all to a degree never before seen, and converging in such
a way as to make for a depressingly muddled and undynamic spectrum of music
whether in the pop mainstream or in the various undergrounds. That there have
been some original interventions within this field of “recreativity’ is
undeniable, and something I acknowledge in the book, but it doesn’t compare to
the modernistic self-renewing drive of the Beatles/Kate Bush/Talking Heads
model of the rock artist, or the emergence of new genres (prog rock, postpunk,
techno, etc).</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Talking of
inundation, to me the analogy is with climate change and global warming. The
phenomenon has been building for decades, it didn’t just come about overnight.
There have been voices warning about it for a long time. But there’s no doubt
that the situation with global warming is reaching a crisis point, you can see
it in the changes in the weather systems. Same with retro. People (including
myself!) have been complaining about it for years and years. But the situation
gets worse and there had never been a book-length exploration of the phenomenon
and the issues it raises.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">12/ On Bring The
Noise we count a lot of reviews, articles, essays (we can’t count in fact,
ahaha), about this mass of information, I guess it must have been difficult
narrowing to made a choice. How do you made the final cut?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I got rid of the
pieces that I felt were overlapping with each other or repeating the same
points. Difficult, because you get attached to various pieces of writing. But
for example there was a super in-depth piece on Grime I did for the Wire on the
best grime tracks ever that we left out of Bring the NOise, because there had
already been several other pieces on Grime, Dizzee etc. The vivid description
of these tracks I love was painful to leave out of the book but the larger
points had already been made in the earlier pieces.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">13/ What also captures
the reader's attention in Bring The Noise, it’s the incredible quality of the texts.
Work on words, the links (sometimes awkward, but at least they exist) between
sociology and music, poetry also ... Were you aware when you wrote all these
articles, to be a real writer?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well, thank you.
I’m trying to do something that works as prose that might be enjoyable or
potent as a reading experience even if you’ve no interest in the music in
question. And sometimes people have said to me, I really like your writing but
I don’t follow music at all these days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I remember one guy who was a big fan of all the late Eighties writing
that I and my comrades were doing in the Melody Maker, enjoying it as
discourse. But he said the last record he’d really loved was Grace Jones’s
Nightclubbing album of 1981. He had no attraction to Husker Du or Pixies or My
Bloody Valentine or Public Enemy as something to listen to, but he really
enjoyed our arguments and claims for those groups. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I think what I
do is a continuation of the messy hybrid nature of rock writing, which at its
best has always combined different registers – journalistic reporting,
manifesto, the prose-poem, the personal /memoristic/ confessional register....
you would get <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the clash of aspects of
gossip or frivolity with great seriousness. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A lot of rock
writing in the music press in the UK back in the old days involved shoehorning
philosophical or political concerns into various standard formats – the album
review, the live gig review, the page-length column of singles reviews, the
interview, even into the letters page where you would take your turn to be the
official responder to letters of complaint or comment or (rarely) praise from
the readers. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">If there is a
poetic dimension it comes from trying to convey something of the intensity and
power – even the violence – of music as it impacts your body and your senses.
It is difficult to do and often it can result in embarrassing writing. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">14/ Your
interview with Chuck D of Public Enemy is a great time Bring The Noise. What do
you think of it now? Once again you ask challenging questions about confrontation
between black and white music, you speculate on the reasons why Public Enemy
say what they say about the way they say ... You speak of "strike"
after the publication of this paper, but it is also a great time for you right?
A revealing moment ...</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’m not sure
about the word “strike”, how it’s used or what I meant, or what you think I’m
mean by it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably it refers to just
being surprised, retrospectively, at how I anticipated in 1987 some of the
difficulties with the Public Enemy worldview that would get them into trouble
the next year – Griff’s anti-Semitic comments that led him to being kicked out
the group, and also some of the really odd racial theories that Public Enemy
seemed to at least entertain if not outright believe. Yes, I’m pretty pleased
with this piece. It was more of a dialogue than a confrontation. I respected
them as a musical force immensely, and as a political one, I respected to some
degree while having obvious concerns and doubts. At that point I wasn’t hugely
aware of Farrakhan’s ideology or the exact nature of the Nation of Islam
movement. I only had a vague sense about what it stood for. You have to
remember that in those days there was no way of finding out this information
easily. No internet. I had picked up bits and pieces of information here and
there, but at that point, there wasn’t much info out there if you lived outside
America. And this was also one of the very first Public Enemy features. So what
I learned from Chuck D about their philosophy was as big a surprise to me as it
was to the readers. I also lacked a context for understanding where they were
coming from: I wasn’t aware at that point that Nation of Islam ideas were part
of a larger tradition of black capitalism in America, that included more
conventional figures like Booker T. Washington. At any rate, Chuck D’s comments
were fantastic material to present in the way I did, a double-edged celebration
of Public Enemy as a musical force but a critique of them politically. Nowadays
I would probably write something more circumspect and less judgemental, because
living in America for two decades, I have a much better sense of racial politics
in this country. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I met Chuck D in
1987 I think it was only my third visit to the USA. I interviewed him again a
couple of years later and we had a possibly more fruitful dialogue in which his
ideas seemed a lot more reasonable to me, although it’s possible he had become
more cautious with talking to the rock press after all the controversy!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">15/ About your
new book, Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews, the companion book
to Rip it & Start Again, do you think it will be publish in France soon ?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well it’s not
new because it came out in 2008, but yes I would love it to come out in
France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is more likelihood, though
that Energy Flash, the techno/rave book, would come out in <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a French edition. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">16/ Rip it Up
and Start Again is focused on post-punk, the (real) rich era of the 1978-1984
years, how was born the idea of a companion book combining the raw interviews
that were used to achieve the first one?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We saw the
possibility of demand being there for a supplementary book because Rip It Up
was so successful in the UK. For that kind of serious music book, it was
something of a phenomenon, so it seemed likely that some people would want
more. I had also heard that Jon Savage was doing an England’s Dreaming book for
Faber based on his copious interview transcripts. So I suggested to my editor
at Faber that we could do the same thing for Rip it Up. I assumed Jon’s book
was just about to come out and mine would follow two years later, but as it
happened, he took longer to pull his one together and in the event they put
mine out a few months earlier than the England’s Dreaming Tapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">17/ Since 1984,
you have contributed to a lot of magazine, What is the period that you
preferred ?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My happiest
period as a writer was probably the late Eighties at Melody Maker because I was
part of a team of people who were all operating at full energy and at their
height of their abilities, and were crusading for all this great music, trying
to present our time as a golden age. And it was a great lifestyle, working for
the weekly music press – going to gigs constantly, hanging out with other
writers, getting drunk, drinking coffee in the centre of London and discoursing
endlessly. Going on my first trips to the USA and to parts of Europe I’d not
been to before. But mostly it was about the collective energy that we had
there, a real corps d’esprit (is that the correct term?). Also, anything that
feels like it’s happening for the first time, whether it’s an obsession or a
love affair, is always going to be more electric. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But, probably as
exciting in terms of the writing, even though I was operating more solo than as
part of a team, was all the 1991-1998 phase of writing about rave, hardcore,
jungle, gabba, techno, Aphex, etc etc – the pieces that went into Energy Flash.
Apart from hip hop, most of the stuff we were writing about at Melody Maker in
the late Eighties was rock that did have some kind of relationship to the past,
mostly to the Sixties and early Seventies. But in the Nineties with rave and
electronic music, it felt like the future was coming into shape before your
ears. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rave felt like a real movement, a
cultural emergence. A new thing. So it was very exciting to pay witness to that
in print and attempt to explain its unfolding significance in real-time.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">18/ And which
mag ?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well, Melody
Maker obviously, was the most fun. But I’ve also always enjoyed contributing to
The Wire – that’s probably the longest continuous contributorship I’ve had now,
over 20 years. I’ve done some really enjoyable work for Artforum and Frieze. In
recent years I did some fun columns for the Guardian online. But really almost
all the places I write for, I enjoy doing because whether it’s a unconstrained
environment like the Wire or whether it’s more formatted, as with a mainstream
newspaper, the challenge is getting your ideas across to that particular
readership. Finding the mode of address. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I do also love
the completely freeform nature of blogging. The early days of doing Blissblog
when I was conversing and arguing with a whole bunch of kindred blogs, that was
as close as I’ve got to the vibe of being on Melody Maker, when I was arguing
with the other writers and also with writers on other music papers like NME</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">19/ In Chronic
City, writer Jonathan Lethem wrote that there is nothing worse than being a
"rock critic". What do you think about it ? With all these works for
years, you can prove that this is not necessarily true. That writing, serious
and solid writing, can be married with the exercise of criticism. </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">No?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He says that ? I know
Jonathan, I always thought he believed rock criticism to be quite a high
calling, something he would quite like to have done, and has done, in fact,
extremely well (with that Talking Heads ‘Fear of Music’ book, for
instance).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But maybe he meant the
lifestyle is not a good one, that it leads to psychological distortions,
through the obsessiveness. He may have a point. It’s quite an isolated life,
these days, because no one brings their copy into magazines anymore, so there’s
no hanging out with the other writers. And that’s caused magazines not to have
any kind of « vibe ».<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no,
I would have to say that overall I consider myself very lucky to have been able
to make a living this way. The books, the journalism, some talks and lectures
--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>basically thinking publicly about
music is how I’ve made my livelihood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are downsides to being your own boss – to an extent being freelance means
having many, many bosses – but being able to manage your own time and work from
home is a wonderful thing. I just wish I was more disciplined and didn’t spend
so much time procrastinating and wasting time. I have about six more books in
me I think, but I need to get on with it. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">20/ What is the
greater pleasure in the activity of writing on popular culture and music ?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There’s many
pleasures. The struggle to produce something that’s good and then finally, as
time is running out, it all comes together – that is pretty satisfying. Right
up to the last minute, you think it’s a disaster, and then it all comes together
right at the end.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But mainly it’s being confronted by some new
musical experience that you can’t quite account for or fully figure out why it
excites you or moves, how it works on you --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and then managing to come up with some answers that make a least
provisional sense for you and hopefully for others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Encountering an overpowering force of newness
or originality in music and being forced to come up with new thoughts – that to
me is a kind of bliss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-84448710296327338702013-03-17T20:24:00.000-07:002013-03-17T20:24:05.280-07:00FRENCH TRIP FOR THE PUBLICATION OF BRING THE NOISE IN FRANCE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGPl0nyO_njuUOEHoDZzoQPSchLr3NyIc7Qs6q8PXqAIv12V5CFwdanFunQlNZpSUNxAwG8dzc2YbvZdsoFG8Ak3J5Re9zCutJTX1EjPdRCH_qNyd5Y4OUcyyg3uaO2rEJiMFD/s1600/Bring+the+noiseFRENCH+.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGPl0nyO_njuUOEHoDZzoQPSchLr3NyIc7Qs6q8PXqAIv12V5CFwdanFunQlNZpSUNxAwG8dzc2YbvZdsoFG8Ak3J5Re9zCutJTX1EjPdRCH_qNyd5Y4OUcyyg3uaO2rEJiMFD/s320/Bring+the+noiseFRENCH+.jpg" width="209" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In the last week of March I’ll be
in Paris for the publication of <i>Bring the Noise</i> by <a href="http://www.audiable.com/livre/?GCOI=84626100483410" target="_blank">Au Diable Vauvert,</a> and will be appearing at
the Paris Book Fair and doing events at two bookstores.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Then
the week after that I'll be
appearing at the Faber Social in London (April 2), participating in a
night of talk and entertainment themed around Vinyl. I’ll be reading
from the new updated/expanded edition of <i>Energy Flash</i>
that Faber is publishing in June. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">PARIS / <i>BRING THE NOISE<span style="font-size: x-small;">:<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> 25 ANS DE ROCK ET DE HIP HOP VERSION AUGMENTEE</span></span></i></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Saturday March</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> 23</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
16h-18h<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Paris Book Fair (Salon du
Livre) - <span class="fn">Paris Expo. Porte de Versailles</span><span class="adr"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Au Diable Vauvert stand (S65)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Booksigning</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sunday March</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> 24</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">14h-16h - Paris book
fair - Au Diable Vauvert stand </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">(S65)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Booksigning</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Wednesday March </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">27</span></b></div>
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<span lang="FR">19h-21h - Le Thé des écrivains store</span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">16 rue des minimes
75003 Paris</span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Live discussion between me, the bookseller and a journalist (details TK)</span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">+ book signing </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Thursday March </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">28 </span></b></div>
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<span lang="FR">13h-14h</span></div>
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<span lang="FR">PublicisDrugstore - Les Champs-Elysées - 75008 Paris</span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Booksigning</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGPl0nyO_njuUOEHoDZzoQPSchLr3NyIc7Qs6q8PXqAIv12V5CFwdanFunQlNZpSUNxAwG8dzc2YbvZdsoFG8Ak3J5Re9zCutJTX1EjPdRCH_qNyd5Y4OUcyyg3uaO2rEJiMFD/s1600/Bring+the+noiseFRENCH+.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div>
SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-79088877169077118182011-03-13T21:22:00.001-07:002011-03-13T21:22:13.779-07:00a feature package at literary webzine <a href="http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Nervous Breakdown</span></a> on me and <span style="font-style:italic;">Bring the Noise</span>, which is out imminently in the US on Soft Skull... elements include <a href="http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/sreynolds/2011/03/bring-the-noise-two-excerpts/">excerpts from <span style="font-style:italic;">BtN</span> on the voice in pop music and on crunk</a>, plus an <a href="http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/sreynolds/2011/03/simon-reynolds-the-tnb-self-interview/">auto-interview about changes in pop criticism</a> during the 25 years since I started doing it and getting paid<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVhoX97RaqHbrYqsFWqOhOTC_yaMSyCcHmrksvYSMxQKi2F1XKzwk1aK1Za06qBaNYM_59ke-OZbiSMFzhtdgdObzKrC0aicHPEaXlSb8NEUnibpO3kJ92ahIhgQG9_Gex87K/s1600/bringthenoisesoftskull.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVhoX97RaqHbrYqsFWqOhOTC_yaMSyCcHmrksvYSMxQKi2F1XKzwk1aK1Za06qBaNYM_59ke-OZbiSMFzhtdgdObzKrC0aicHPEaXlSb8NEUnibpO3kJ92ahIhgQG9_Gex87K/s200/bringthenoisesoftskull.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583785543946664050" /></a>SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-4836592080544750922011-03-01T11:33:00.000-08:002011-03-01T11:34:42.032-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn1rLMkhtHa3xfRajV1wW6lzBByIJ0Hcv_qJKjienSk8mgSp_BQ-FhHCvYAoz1H1vTWvVmNlwrEF3aMPIto2CNpRx1i9GrDPnFS7l6aBzeHdQHixQof8FPwLKoKTSyis_6Po/s1600/Bring+the+Noise_CAT.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn1rLMkhtHa3xfRajV1wW6lzBByIJ0Hcv_qJKjienSk8mgSp_BQ-FhHCvYAoz1H1vTWvVmNlwrEF3aMPIto2CNpRx1i9GrDPnFS7l6aBzeHdQHixQof8FPwLKoKTSyis_6Po/s400/Bring+the+Noise_CAT.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579197084417707522" /></a><br /><br />The US edition, with some bonus material added, out next month on Soft Skull.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-71739716248425769052009-03-10T12:25:00.000-07:002009-03-10T12:30:25.345-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin8ej9o8JPTNKDNBwvBFWQmdsGH2efNfd8v9cawgxQlHHxcYVXEUUnK1BJ6up0FCzFzE-YnjiynukArrL3cbuLS5EAGh1IktUSnGGnRl1UbG7w5QXo-Rtq3yfkSaBianOXfYA/s1600-h/bringthenoiseITALIANEDITION.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 264px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin8ej9o8JPTNKDNBwvBFWQmdsGH2efNfd8v9cawgxQlHHxcYVXEUUnK1BJ6up0FCzFzE-YnjiynukArrL3cbuLS5EAGh1IktUSnGGnRl1UbG7w5QXo-Rtq3yfkSaBianOXfYA/s400/bringthenoiseITALIANEDITION.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311642743124083762" /></a><br /><br /><strong>The Italian translation of <em>Bring the Noise</em></strong><strong> published by Isbn Edizioni.</strong>SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-4876326941818346102008-12-31T08:18:00.000-08:002008-12-31T08:20:33.126-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0Wr-T-YpiXIumGFKhSOAT42u-qoI2I1cu7h5CWZk0xaaqF49c72mDbx_p-EYA5RtEzi23k2Eo6UqNXDKACzI4BCdR2YuyIgTm_iNFcSweCenZ-yDx2UiIckE-NiK37BEvm8/s1600-h/BringtheNoisebySimonReynolds.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0Wr-T-YpiXIumGFKhSOAT42u-qoI2I1cu7h5CWZk0xaaqF49c72mDbx_p-EYA5RtEzi23k2Eo6UqNXDKACzI4BCdR2YuyIgTm_iNFcSweCenZ-yDx2UiIckE-NiK37BEvm8/s400/BringtheNoisebySimonReynolds.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285989621734047282" /></a>SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-80721339596293544022008-10-05T13:17:00.000-07:002008-10-05T13:38:48.819-07:00The Italian edition of <em>Bring the Noise</em> is published on October 9th under the title <strong>HIP-HOP-ROCK: 1985-2008</strong> and translated by Michele Piumini. More information at the publisher ISBN Edizioni's <a href="http://www.isbnedizioni.it/index.php?p=edizioni_libro&book=90&type=0">website</a>. Check out (click-to-enlarge) the striking cover, which is styled -- as with ISBN's <em>Rip It Up</em> <a href="http://www.isbnedizioni.it/index.php?p=edizioni_libro&book=36&type=0">translation</a> -- around the book's index. Like the forthcoming German and French editions, the Italian version contains extra material from the last couple of years to bring <em>BtN</em> (whose inclusions end in early 2006) up to date. <br /><br />Italian readers can also check out any day now a profile of me in the first edition of newspaper<em><a href="http://www.ilsole24ore.com/">IL SOLE 24 ORE</a></em>'s new monthly magazine, and a two-part series of excerpts from <em>Hip-Hop-Rock</em> in another Italian newspaper, <em><a href="http://www.ilmanifesto.it/">IL MANIFESTO</a></em>.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-18853892134412101642008-04-26T19:28:00.000-07:002008-04-26T19:31:34.076-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #74]<br /><br />KANYE WEST <br /><em>Late Registration</em> (Roc-A-Fella)<br /><em>Uncut</em>, autumn 2005<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.theradreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/kanye_west_shades.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.theradreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/kanye_west_shades.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Last year, Kanye West cut through rap’s standard-issue one-dimensional personae with some refreshing complexity. Neither “conscious” nor a bad-boy chasing bling and bitches, he was a little of both: a hungry soul (“Jesus Walks”) trapped in a body prey to venality (“All Falls Down”). Kanye can pull off the occasional highminded lyric without risking sanctimony, because he’s clearly the sort of preacher who gets caught with call-girls. <br /><br /><em>Late Registration</em>’s core of mixed emotion clusters around four songs that deal with themes of worldly wealth versus gold-of-the-spirit. “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” starts where <em>College Dropout</em> finished (“Last Call”). It’s another paean to Roc-A-Fella, the label that signed West where other A&Rs scoffed at his deceptively sloppy flow. The giddy ascending chorus “forever ever ever EVER ever” pledges fealty to Jay-Z’s dynasty, which rescued him from the parlous times when “I couldn’t afford/A Ford Escort.” But when West chants “throw your diamonds in the air,” he’s not really showing off his new status symbols so much as his aesthetic riches, the genius-visionary’s “power to make a diamond with his bare hands.” The song lives up to this boast and then some. Nobody deploys vocal samples better than West, and here it’s Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever” that gets shook down for hidden hooks and latent meanings. The glittering production, laced with harpsichords and strings, matches the lines about “Vegas on acid/Seen through Yves St Laurent glasses”. But what about the title’s reference to “Sierra Leone”? That just got tacked on after the fact, to fit the video, an expose of child-slavery in African diamond mines, and has absolutely nowt to do with the lyrics!<br /><br />It would have been cool if “Gold Digger” sampled “Goldfinger”. Instead, a Ray Charles loop powers this gritty groove, while (cute touch) Jamie Foxx kicks it off with a faux-blues whinge about a “triflin’ bitch” who sucks up his money and weed. West wryly observes “I ain’t saying she’s a gold digger/But she aint’ messin’ with no broke niggas!” “Addicted” offers a far fresher angle on exploitative heterosex. “Why everything that’s supposed to be bad/Make me feel so good?” ponders West, before launching into a rueful account of a mutually degrading affair that interwines sex and drugs. The admission “and I keep coming over” is shivered with a hiccup of pained ecstasy, hinting at the double meaning of “come”. The song’s exquisite arrangement lends poignancy to this tale of male weakness and shame: a glisten of <em>Amnesiac</em> guitar, filtered hi-hats, a sampled chanteuse crooning “you make me smile with my heart” (a line from “My Funny Valentine”). “Crack Music” disconcertingly equates the analgesic powers of drugs and music, with Kanye and The Game chanting the chorus--“That’s that crack music, nigga/That real <em>black</em> music, nigga”--over an impossibly crisp military beat. If Black Americans traffic in the best pain-killers around, the song implies, it’s because Black America has the most pain to kill.<br /><br />It could be that Kanye West’s “honest confusion” anti-stance will become its own kind of shtick eventually. But judging by the mostly-brilliant <em>Late Registration</em> that won’t be happening for a while yet. He might even make it unscathed to the end of the quintology of conceptually-linked albums of which this album is merely instalment #2.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-89864428783799203732008-04-26T19:15:00.000-07:002008-04-26T19:18:26.803-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #72]<br /><br />KANO <br /><em>Home Sweet Home</em><br /><em>Uncut</em>, late summer 2005<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Grime has reached a crossroads. Everyone agrees that this is the year it’s going to blow, but nobody knows for sure how to make that happen. One strategy is for grime to simply be its in-yer-face self. Another involves toning it down just a tad. This is what Kano, one of the scene’s top MCs, does on his long-awaited debut: downplay’s grime’s adrenalin-jolting, abrasively avant-garde aspects in favour of midtempo grooves and listener-friendly gloss. In Kano’s case, though, this shift suits the exquisite poise and panache of his delivery. Unlike the aggy bluster of most grime MCs, it’s easy to imagine him winning over Jay-Z fans with the slick sinuousness of lines like “I’m trying to perfect my flow/So my dough grows loads/Like Pinocchio’s nose.” <br /><br />Kano understands that uncut grime can get wearing over the length of an album. So he and his handlers’ solution is to pull together a well-sequenced smorgasbord of faintly calculated versatility, ranging from turgid metal (“Typical Me”) to the deliciously frivolous “Remember Me”, a samba novelty similar to Roll Deep’s hilarious “Shake A Leg”. Ripping the monster riff and drum rolls from Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and adding scratching and cowbell, “I Don’t Know Why” comes off as an awesome Def Jam tribute, right down to the nasal, Beasties-like tang to Kano’s vocal. “Signs in Life,” meanwhile, offers stirring orchestration and semi-conscious lyrics about maintaining a steady course despite the slings and arrows. <br /><br />Unsurprisingly, the most exciting cuts on the record are the grimiest. The fogeyish (for a 19 year old!) whinge “Nobody Don’t Dance No More” cuts from sexy, swingin’ <br />2step to bombastic, ungroovy grime to illustrate how kids today nod their heads to the MC’s words rather than shake booty to the DJ’s beats. Equally scene-reflexive, “Reload It” in contrast celebrates the MC’s ascent to supremacy, noting how crowds today demand that DJs rewind a track to hear favorite rhymes, as opposed to the tune's breakdown or intro. Pivoting around a phased riff and live-sounding drums that recall the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell as much as peak-era jungle, “Reload It” is a pure rush of energy and euphoria. <br /><br />Yet the best track on <em>Home </em>turns out to be the most subdued one. “Sometimes” compellingly captures a moment of precariousness and self-doubt in the young MC’s upward arc. “I know I’ve got far/Is it too far to turn back?” he muses over a sad-eyed glide of synth-and-violin. Poised in limbo between the fickle streets and a potentially unswayed mainstream, Kano’s reverie serves as a poignant allegory for grime’s own crossover dilemma. <br /> <br /><strong>INTERVIEW WITH KANO</strong><br /><br /><em>The grime cliché is the ravenously hungry MC for whom music is the only escape route from ghetto life. But it seems like you were spoiled for choice, with career opportunities ranging from university to professional football. In “9 to 5” you rap about not letting “my laziness ruin” your MC prospects like it did with soccer.</em> <br /><br />“I used to play for Norwich, the schoolboys team. But it was far away and I was quite young, to be doing all that travel. I wasn’t feeling it. So that faded out. It wasn’t a conscious choice between football and music, though, it was like different stages of my life.”<br /><br /><strong>Exemplifed by the classic early single “Boys Love Girls,” a bonus track on the album, your songs have a rather cold-hearted attitude to romance. Even on the rhythm-and-grime track “Brown Eyes,” you’re besotted, but the chorus still insists “I don’t want to fall in love”. </strong><br /><br />“I ain’t really a romantic person. I’ve had experience with girls, but not that much experience with relationships. My view on them is that I don’t really want to get involved. ”SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-80012515358120670262008-04-26T19:12:00.000-07:002008-04-26T19:15:03.772-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #71]<br /><br />LETHAL BIZZLE<br /><em>Against All Oddz</em><br /><em>Observer Music Monthly</em>, July 17, 2005<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Lethal Bizzle has the distinction of scoring grime’s two biggest hits. Last Christmas, his solo debut “Pow” peaked just outside the Top 10, but two years earlier Bizzle and his group More Fire did even better with the number eight smash “Oi!”. In between these highs, though, came an ego-crushing career crash: More Fire’s album totally flopped. Bizzle’s response was impressive: he gradually clawed his way back, rebuilding his street rep with implacable determination and hard graft. <br /><br />Hardly surprising, then, that keynotes of defiance and vindication are sounded repeatedly on this album, over adrenalin-pumping carousel-like grooves modeled on “Pow”, such as the mad-catchy “Uh Oh (I’m Back)!”. You can forgive Bizzle for gloating just a bit, as he does on “Hitman” and “The Truth,” the latter jousting with rival crew Roll Deep, pointing to the poor sales of Wiley’s own solo album and advising Riko that “there’s plenty of nine-to-fives out there”. But by far the best thing here stems from the Bizzle’s long dark night of the soul after More Fire were dropped by their label. Closer to spoken word than rap, the title track has the MC describing feeling like he was “finished, no one” over a haunting mid-tempo synth-strumental (originally titled “Funeral Vibez” and built by guest producer Plasticman). <br /><br />What’s unsettling about “Against All Oddz” is how Bizzle seems just as <br />headfucked by his career resurrection, by the phone that won’t stop ringing and the “Beyonce look-alikes” looking to bed him. “When you’re hype everyone cares,” he intones mournfully. “But leave me alone… This world is so strange.” <br /><br />Ice T once declared “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” On “Against All Oddz” Bizzle almost sees <em>right through the game</em>, apprehending the hollowness of triumph within a system (hip hop, a/k/a capitalism) where winners take all, but most will be losers.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-52817092303141782262008-04-26T17:45:00.000-07:002008-04-26T17:58:48.060-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #69]</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.matadorrecords.com/images/dizzee_rascal/dizzee1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.matadorrecords.com/images/dizzee_rascal/dizzee1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><strong>VARIOUS ARTISTS<br /><em>Risky Roadz: Volume 1--Tha Roadz Are Real</em><br />VARIOUS ARTISTS<br /><em>Run the Road</em><br />director's cut <em>Village Voice</em>, April 12th, 2005 <br /><br />By Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />I’ll cut to the chase: if you can’t find <em>anything</em> to like on <em>Run the Road</em>, you might as well give up on grime. Listen to the five best tracks--Terror Danjah’s “Cock Back,” Riko & Target’s “Chosen One,” Jammer’s “Destruction,” Lady Sovereign’s “Cha Ching,” Shystie’s “One Wish”--and if you still feel a bit shruggy, well, strike the genre off your list, ‘cos that’s as good as grime gets. <br /><br />I’d be perplexed and disappointed if you did, admittedly. Surely there’s something for everybody here? You want to feel the same dark rush that “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols gave you? Just listen to the six opening bars of D Double E’s “performance” on “Destruction”--vomitous, a self-exorcism, he sounds barely human. Conversely, if you’re jonesing for nursery rhyme tunefulness, there’s pasty-faced Lady Sovereign’s delicious faux-patois. Grime can do quasi-orchestral grandeur (swoon to Target’s “Chosen One” and Terror Danjah’s “One Wish” remix) as superbly as Anglo-gangsta (check Bruza’s astonishing 27 seconds on “Cock Back,” equal parts Jadakiss and Bob Hoskyns in <em>The Long Good Friday</em>). But what pushes <em>Run</em> into the first-class compilation zone is the second-tier tracks: Durrty Goodz’s double-time and ravenous “Gimmie Dat,” EARS’ plaintive elegy for lost innocence “Happy Days”… Indeed there’s only a couple of outright duds. <br /><br />Grime sometimes gets treated as merely “the latest fad” from the trendhoppy U.K. But the grander movement of which it’s an extension/mutation--London pirate radio culture--has been going on since circa 1991, if not earlier. From hardcore rave to jungle to garage to grime, underlying every phase-shift there’s an abiding infrastructure based around pirate radio stations, dubplates, and white labels sold direct to specialist stores. The core sonic principles are also enduring: beat-science seeking the intersection between “fucked up” and “groovy,” dark bass-pressure, MCs chatting fast, samples and arrangement ideas inspired by pulp soundtracks. The b.p.m. have oscillated wildly, the emphasis on particular elements goes through changes, but in a deep, real sense <em>this is the same music</em>. You could even see it as a conservative culture, except that the underlying article of faith is “keep moving forward.”<br /><br /><a href="http://shop.avalanchemusichut.com/WebRoot/Store/Shops/es105224_shop/46EA/E45D/236F/5DF9/C0F9/50ED/8970/8323/risky_0020_roadz_h.bmp"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://shop.avalanchemusichut.com/WebRoot/Store/Shops/es105224_shop/46EA/E45D/236F/5DF9/C0F9/50ED/8970/8323/risky_0020_roadz_h.bmp" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />One of the few recent innovatons in the scene’s means of production & distribution has been the vogue for DVDS (which Americans can mail order from companies like Independance. This syndrome seems symptomatic of grime’s impatience for fame. Tired of waiting for the TV crews to arrive, they decided to do-it-themselves. Typically consisting of promos, live footage, interviews and quasi-documentary material, the production values lean toward cruddy. Nonetheless, these DVDs are fascinating capsules of subculture-in-the-raw. For American grime fans just <em>seeing </em>where their heroes actually live--projects a/k/a council estates in low-rent areas like Peckham and Wood Green--ought to be revelatory. Some of the videos in <em>Risky Roadz</em> are shot on the concrete pedestrian bridges connecting different blocks of flats. Compared to American rap promos, the grime efforts, with their ultra-amateurish camerawork and "choreography", look positively third-world. <br /><br /><a href="http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7096/rikoeditedsmall7er.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7096/rikoeditedsmall7er.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />In <em>Risky Roadz</em>, Dizzee Rascal is interviewed on an actual road--Roman Road, to be precise, a crucial thoroughfare in grime’s topography, home to legendary record store Rhythm Division. Dizzee offers sage advice to aspiring MCs: “Do <em>you</em>. Do you <em>well</em>.” Another interview is with Riko--a future star, everyone agrees, so long as he can stay out of jail. “I want to get my zeros,” says Riko hungrily, talking of his immediate plans (to get signed). When the subject of mic’ battles and MC feuds comes up, he fires off the usual threats to anyone stepping forward to test, then checks himself: “I don’t mean ‘shot’, I mean <em>lyrically</em> shot.” Looking at Riko standing there, you might well think: “here’s someone with the charisma-glow, the sheer physical beauty, and--‘cos these things count, for better or worse--the bad boy back-story, to be, ooh, as big as DMX.” It’s quite likely that’ll he’ll remain just a local legend. The excitement of this moment in grime’s rise is that the latter, lesser outcome doesn’t feel inevitable.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-46600310289346118162008-04-26T17:35:00.000-07:002008-04-26T18:03:50.018-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #68]</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/events/urbanclassic/images/bruza_205x125.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/events/urbanclassic/images/bruza_205x125.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><strong>VARIOUS ARTISTS<br /><em>Run the Road</em><br />director's cut, <em>Observer Music Monthly</em>, November 14, 2004<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Grime is our hip hop, the final coming of a Britrap that’s not merely a pale reflection of the original. Instead it’s a wonky, hall-of-mirrors reflection. To American ears reared on “the real thing”, grime sounds disconcertingly not-right--the halting, blurting MC cadences don’t flow, the gap-toothed, asymmetric grooves seem half-finished and defective. <br /><br />Something of grime’s skewiff quality is captured in the title of this compilation. “Road” is grime-speak for “street”. On “Destruction VIP,” one of the killer tracks here, Kano proclaims “from lamp post to lamp post/We run the road”.The intent is gangsta menace, an assertion of territorial might, but perhaps even to English ears, the quaint phrasing makes the boast fall a little short. American rap fans would most likely crack up on hearing the line. No wonder Grime’s modest fanbase in the United States consists almost entirely of white Anglophile hipsters. <br /><br />If Grime doesn’t have a hope in hell with American’s hip hop heartland, it can console itself with the knowledge that right now it’s got the edge over “the real thing”. The records sound cheap’n’nasty next to US rap’s glossy production values, but Grime’s way with rhythm and sound is far more jaggedly futuristic. More crucially, Grime has a feeling of desperation that American hip hop has largely lost. Individual rappers may still follow rags-to-riches trajectories, but as a collective enterprise, hip hop has won. It dominates pop culture globally. The music oozes a sense of entitlement, something you can also see in that lordly look of blasé disdain that’s de rigeur in rap videos nowadays. In America, rising MCs rhyme about the luxury goods and opulent lifestyle they don’t yet have because it’s also so much more plausible, within reach. The path is well-trodden--not just selling millions of records, but diversifying into movies, starting their own clothing lines, bringing their neighbourhood crew up with them once they’ve made it. <br /><br />As a sound, Grime is still very much an underdog, and so its fantasies of triumph and living large are much more precarious, and affecting. There’s a definite ceiling to how much money can be made on the underground scene. Selling 500 singles is a good result, shifting a thousand is a wild success, and even hawking your white labels direct to London’s specialist stores with a huge mark-up won’t generate that much cash. At the same time, nobody in Grime, not even Dizzee, has really mapped out a crossover career path yet. Indeed, making that transition from pirate radio to <em>Top of the Pops </em>is risky. Take So Solid Crew, who got to #1 with “21 Seconds” a few years back. Their second album flopped and their rep on the street (or should I say "road"?) is now non-existent. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/thumbnail.php?max=408&id=593"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.ica.org.uk/thumbnail.php?max=408&id=593" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />You can hear all this in the music, in those pinched, scrawny voices--the sound of energy squeezing itself through the tiniest aperture of opportunity and grabbing for a chance that most likely will prove to be a mirage. All of the guys (plus occasional gal) on <em>Run The Road </em>already feel like legends in their own minds. Standout track “Chosen One” by Riko & Target distils that sense of destiny and destination. Over sampled movie-soundtrack strings that evoke a kind of stunted majesty, Riko imagines himself as a star on satellite TV, then offers counsel that applies equally to other aspiring MCs and to everyday street soldiers dealing with adversity: “Stay calm/Don’t switch/Use composure, blood/Use your head to battle through, ca’ you are the chosen one.” <br /><br />American rappers, once they’ve made it, can sound like bullies and tyrants when they reel out the same old lyrical scenarios: humiliating haters, discarding women like used condoms. From Grime MCs, the endless threats and boasts, the big-pimpin' postures, somehow seem more forgivable. When Grime MCs batter rivals real and imaginary, they’re really battening down their own self-doubt, chasing away the spectre of failure and anonymity with each verbal blow. Sure, the misogyny and gun talk can be hard to stomach. “Cock Back,” one of 2004’s biggest grime anthems, is a Terror Danjah riddim constructed from the click and crunch of small arms being cocked. Over this bloodcurdling beat, D Double E spits couplets like “Think you’re a big boy ‘cos you go gym?/Bullets will cave your whole face in.” Outnumbered twenty to one, the female MCs give as good as their gender usually gets. No Lay, on “Unorthodox Daughter”, promises to “put you in BUPA” and warns “soundboy I can have your guts for garters/turn this place into a lyrical slaughter”. <br /><br />Probably the best grime collection yet, <em>Run The Road</em> is also touted as the genre’s first major label compilation. Actually, a Warners sub-label released one in 2002, <em>Crews Control</em>. But its contents were more like proto-grime, the beats mostly 2step and UK garage, and the vibe far more playful and genial, courtesy of now almost forgotten crews like Heartless and Genius. Their brand of boisterous bonhomie and quirky humour is in short supply on <em>Run The Road</em>. One exception: Lady Sovereign’s “Cha Ching”, on which the squeaky-voiced “white midget” announces “It’s Ms Sovereign, the titchy t’ing/Me nah have fifty rings/but I’ve got fifty things/To say/In a cheeky kind of way/Okay?” <br /><br /><a href="http://www.supmag.com/checkit/archives/lady%20sov.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.supmag.com/checkit/archives/lady%20sov.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />Bruza <em>sounds</em> comic, injecting the Cockney into “Cock Back” with his lurching, Arthur Mullard-like delivery and lines like “you’ll be left in ruins for your wrong-doings”. But content-wise, he’s “brutal and British”, reeling off the usual list of inventively gory acts of revenge. <em>Run The Road </em>'s brand of laughter is strictly the gloating, vindictive kind. Hence the eerie digital cackle, like an evil, leering cyber-goblin, used by Terror Danjah as a motif on all his productions (on this comp, “Cock Back” and Shystie’s “One Wish”). Compared to even a few years ago, Grime seems like it has less scope for goofing about now. There’s a deadly seriousness in the air, possibly influenced by the sense that there’s more at stake--a real chance of making it, now the majors are cautiously sniffing around and signing up MCs like Kano.<br /><br />If Grime ever does makes it, collectively--achieving the sort of dominance that American rap enjoys--these last three years of the genre’s emergence will be looked back on as the golden age, the old skool. Make no mistake, the MCs on this compilation-- Kano, D Double E, Riko, Sovereign, Dizzee, Wiley--are our equivalents to Rakim, Chuck D, Ice Cube, Nas, Jay-Z. To twist slightly the words of another rapper from that American pantheon, Notorious BIG: if you (still) don’t know, get to know.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-52134545043678147562008-04-26T17:26:00.000-07:002008-04-26T17:35:15.373-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #67]<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sisterray.co.uk/images/inflivez.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.sisterray.co.uk/images/inflivez.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />INFINITE LIVEZ<br /><em>Bush Meat</em><br /><em>Village Voice</em>, July 6th, 2004 <br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /> <br />For years the pathos of Brit-rap as a pale and slightly <em>off</em> reflection of the Real Thing was summed up in the name Derek B. He was pretty good, actually. But in the gladiatorial realpolitik of rap more than anywhere, "pretty good" don't cut it. All through the '90s, at regular intervals, you'd hear the cry go up: "British hip-hop finally comes good with ____." But to be honest, none of the names that've filled the blank ever got further than Derek-level decency. Which is why you never hear your Mike Skinners and Dizzee Rascals name-dropping Gunshot or Ruthless Rap Assassins or the Brotherhood; no, it's always Nas or Raekwon or Ludacris they cite. And that's not inverted patriotism, not really—-that's just genius responding to genius. <br /><br />In recent years, the most convincing case for British hip-hop (not counting grime, which is really a totally different animal: nowt to do with UKrap, it evolved out of dancehall via rave's shouty MC'ing) has been mounted by London's Big Dada, the sister label to rap-less trip-hop imprint Ninja Tune. The British backpacker scene is even more insufferable and self-stifled-by-cool than its American undie-hop counterpart. But as heard on their excellent 2002 comp <em>Extra Yard</em>, Big Dada's acts (Ty, Gamma, Roots Manuva) injected some real and long-overdue rudeness into the U.K. sound—albeit mostly production-wise, as U.K. MCs on the whole tend to remain low-key. All that changes with Infinite Livez, who dominates his own records in a way few non-grime Brit MCs do. <br /><br />The first thing that distinguishes Livez is his in-yer-face voice (or voices—he has several comic alter egos, some of them quite Monty Python–esque). He saunters through the tracks of his debut album, <em>Bush Meat</em>, with a sort of loutish elegance. One of his trademarks is extending the last syllable of a line into a great bleary smear midway between yawn and yowl, insolently slackjawed and somehow saucy. This man is larger than life; his imagination's equally outsize. Standout track "The Adventures of the Lactating Man" puts a whole new twist on "flow." After squirting his girlfriend in the eye when she's fondling his nipples, Livez visits his doctor. But when the nurse tries to take a specimen (expertly—"she was twiddling my nipple like my radio dial") the man-milk just won't stop gushing. The population has to stay "afloat in boats" as the entire U.K. gets inundated "with fresh milk well pasteurized" (past your eyes, geddit?). Livez's languid lasciviousness as he raps about girls "making me feel all frisky" by "chewing on my tit like it's made of Wrigley," and his delirious moans of "bit more . . . oooooooh . . . little bit more" as the "white gravy" gloops out introduce a Princely polymorphous perversity I've never heard in hip-hop before, apart from maybe OutKast. (Who might be a reference point, or even influence, although former art student Livez's favorite André is actually Breton). <br /><br /><a href="http://www.sonar.es/fotos/relacionadas/Infinite_5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.sonar.es/fotos/relacionadas/Infinite_5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Like a rapping Rabelais, or Bataille with a beat, Livez's mind's eye is magnetized by that ripe zone where the appetites (erotic, gastronomic) intersect with animalism and scatology. "White Wee Wee" is a moist miasma of sex-as-food and lovers-as-beasts metaphors ("ejaculate honey for you," "my snout in your wet wound") while the skit-ish interlude "Brown Nosh" features Bouncement Queen demanding a rim job as her fee for appearing on the album. "Worcestershire Sauce" redefines flava in terms of U.K. potato chips (or, to put it proper, crisps, which come in exotic flavors like "ready salted," "cheese & onion," et al.). And "Drilla Ape" tells the story of a man cheating on his partner with a primate. <br /><br />The music, mostly produced by people from Livez's crew, Shadowless, totally fits the lyrics. It's a bit like "Atomic Dog" if produced by <em>Rembrandt Pussy Horse</em>–era Butthole Surfers: bulging and Bootsy-elasticated, hyper-gloss cartoony (Livez did a comic book called <em>Globulicious</em> and used to design Game Boy graphics), wriggly with funkadelic detail. The Afro-future funk of "Claati Bros" (lyrically a droll if slightly opaque spoof on Brit Art, painters daubing canvases with elephant doo-doo, etc.) might be Groove of the Year; like "White Wee Wee," it's slinky yet ruff. And some of the best bits are the interludes—for instance, the Animal Collective–weird romp of "The Forest Spirit Sings the Bush Meat Song." <br /><br />Only toward the end does Livez's shtick gets a little fatigued—"Pononee Girl," from its punany pun on down, belabors a not hugely amusing sex-as-horse-riding metaphor. But then <em>Bush Meat</em> rallies with the brilliant "Last Nite." Over an apprehensive xylo-bass riff, Livez unfurls a panic-attack panorama of bad stuff, the mindscreen of a man unable to stop contemplating all the sadness and terrible goings-on in the world: stillborn babies, abused wives, teenagers scarred by a face full of shrapnel, murders in forest clearings, a Massai warrior losing all of his cattle. The chorus, nicked from Indeep's hymn to life-saving deejays, goes, "Last night I nearly took my life." <br /><br />Honestly, I'd be surprised if a better rap album is released this year, from anywhere.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-24756780317734611252008-04-16T17:41:00.001-07:002008-04-16T17:52:24.262-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #65]<br /><br />HIP HOP VERSUS THE ELECTRONICA INVASION<br /><em>Blissblog</em>, March 17, 2004<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />... On ILM I said rather metaphysically that dance isn’t generating anthems cos a culture in retreat isn’t going to have much call for rallying cries. The real explanation, though, is more prosaic. The kind of music being made now is made by and made for people who have been in this for a while; they’ve grown with the music, they don’t want to hear crass riffs and obvious hooks. Microhouse, especially, strikes me as music for seasoned sensibilities, sophisticates. <br /><br />But new recruits get pulled in by the most accessible hooky stuff. I just can’t see it as a music that is going to pull in that many new people. It’s not fierce or full-on enough. Some of the riff-patterns in Michael Mayer’s set at Volume last week verged on the imperceptible to be frank, minute fluctuations of texture. Well they don’t call it ‘micro’ for nothing. I think you can see this de-cheesing tendency across the genrescape. And of course that becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, the neophytes arrive in steadily diminishing numbers, leaving the connoisseurs in an ever increasing majority. <br /><br />^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ <br /><br />A culture in retreat. Well, I promised a fanciful and involved theory last week, so here goes. You know how certain rock bands get “destroyed” by their failure to conquer America--it’s their last chance to really make some money, to pay off their record company debts. A certain Liverpool band had to break America to pay for its cocaine requirements and made a fatally compromised album that lost them their fanbase. Another Liverpool band tried repeatedly to break America and broke up over 1 million pounds in debt, despite selling millions of copies elsewhere in the world over the years. Anyway, pondering the meaning of the word ‘retreat’, it occurred to me that Electronica’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to conquer America was a bit like the Nazi invasion of Soviet Union--a fatal act of hubris. In some weird way I think that was the beginning of the collapse. <br /><br />The Nazis did real well at first, drove deep into Russia (this would be Prodigy, the Chemicals, Underworld in '97). But the supply lines got too long, there was a punishing winter, and then Stalingrad--in this schema, the failed campaign for Fatboy Slim’s <em>You’ve Come A Long Way Baby</em>. I would single out Spike Jonz and his fucking terrible video for “Praise You” as the turning point. (Get Joy on this subject and you will hear a rant, she loves that song, and Jonz just made a joke out of what could have been a glorious redemptive anthem, a ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ or ‘Beautiful Day’ if done right). Oh Fatboy did alright what with the songs in movies and on TV commercials, but in the deepest and realest sense he lost: he never became a household name or star, not even on the Moby level. Astralwerks now is like some Wehrmacht division stranded and surrounded in the Ukraine: you can only stave off the inevitable for so long. <br /><br />The last gasp for Anglo-Euro-tronica, that would be Daft Punk. The Battle of the Bulge, in my schemata. D Day had happened, but the Germans unexpectly pushed back and looked like they might drive the Allies back to Normandy and another Dunkirk. They’d never win the war but they could dream of fighting on, forever. If the WW2 film I dimly recall from boyhood corresponds to historical reality at all, then the Wehrmatcht were so short of fuel their first goal was to capture the Allied gas depots, while all along their advance back into French territory they had to siphon fuel from the tanks of abandoned Allied trucks and armored vehicles. That’s Daft Punk, siphoning from America’s FM rock radio memory-banks in the hopes of infiltrating some house music into the US pop mainstream. Brave try, not a hope in hell. The writing was on the wall. <br /><br />In WW2, the Soviet Union engaged something like 70 percent of Axis troops and suffered the most casualties, 20 million, something like 30 or 40 times the Allied losses. Okay, then, in my strained and deranged analogy, who’s the Red Army? Black American music. Hip hop and R&B. Between ‘91 and ’97, I really thought us Brits (and some of you EC lot) gave hip hop a good run for its money. We were more sonically advanced, and the whole rave thing mattered almost as much. It was a close as we were going to get to something as important and life-forceful as rap. <br /><br />But around ’97, just as we started to flag, hip hop and R&B just <em>surged forward </em>again. I'm talking about the commercial mainstream street stuff of course. By and large, since then it has simply been <em>better</em> than electronic dance music<br />--better on every level -- just as, and probably more, inventive sonically, and it had personality, and an indelible, perennial connection to real-world stuff. How could trance, or nu skool breaks, or whatever you want to come up with, compete? That’s why even if Basement Jaxx could make the most fantastically excitement-crammed records of their genus ever (and they have, several times now, or so some claim), in America they’ll always sell less than, oh I dunno, Juvenile’s fifth, inspiration-sapped album, or Nelly’s nephew. As for poor old Armand Van Helden… <em>he</em> <em>knows the score</em>. <br /><br />The exceptions? Well 2step and Grime are nothing if not attempts to keep up with and assimilate the innovations of Black America. Plus you could see the London pirate continuum as Britain's own little internal Red Army of a black population--the equivalent of Tito’s partisans, perhaps. <br /><br />(Jamaica? The People’s Republic of China). <br /><br />Yeah, the Red Army, that’s what Black America is. <em>You cannot stop them</em>. I vaguely recall Julie Burchill in her Stalin-groupie mode going on about the Russian masses, the unstoppable force of "that deep moral fibre". Moral fibre's not exactly the word that springs to me when you think of rap but this is pop music so the values are inverted: in these terms, thing of whatever the energy is that makes Bling or Crunk. English people had to neck loads of E and other mindbending substances for ten straight years just to have the same kind of life-force that Black Americans generate just through living in America and dealing with all the shit they have to deal with! <br /><br />Okay, then, who’s Stalin? Timbaland, obviously. I never want to read another word about him (give it a rest Sasha!) but he’s pretty much the One who turned everything around in ’97. Interestingly he did it by being almost as good at being a Nazi (electronica, remember = Axis powers) as the Nazis were. He may even have ripped a few ideas off "us" (still not convinced by the he-got-it-all-from-dancehall argument, just don’t hear it to be honest). Jungle never happened in America. Except it <em>did</em>: that was “Get UR Rinse On”-- sorry, “Get UR Freak On.”SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-15705505514921201642008-03-30T17:54:00.000-07:002008-03-30T18:04:56.479-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #64]<br /><br />GARAGE RAP compilations<br /><em>Village Voice</em>, February 3rd, 2003<br />plus footnotes from Blissblog, February 05, 2003<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />So everybody knows about the Streets now, but only as an isolated case: that unprecedented phenomenon, the U.K. rapper who's both excellent and authentically English-sounding. Skinner actually comes from a context, though. It's not that perennial lame duck Brit-rap, but a new genre that some have dubbed "garage rap": basically, 2step fronted by MCs. Nowhere to be found in the American house tradition, the MC has been an important figure in U.K. rave culture from the start. All manner of Brit B-boys and dancehall chatters got swept up in the late '80s acid house explosion, and for a while there was even hybrid rave-rap, with performers like Rebel MC, Ragga Twins, and Demon Boyz. For most of the '90s, though, the rave MC knew his place: a strictly supporting role, exalting the DJ and hyping the crowd. Through jungle and early U.K. garage, there were star MCs, but they weren't nearly as well paid as the top DJs, and even when they appeared on records their careers were largely based around a few trademark catchphrases or signature vocal licks, like MC Creed's funky bullfrog stutter. <br /><br />Gradually, MCs started to write actual verses, and then, two years ago, came the putsch: They refused second-billing status (DJ/Producer X featuring MC Y). Suddenly the scene was swarming with MC collectives—So Solid Crew, K2 Family, Pay As U Go Kartel, GK Allstars, Dem Lott, Horra Squad, Nasty Crew—as if only by ganging up for sheer strength of numbers could they shove the DJ out of the spotlight. American rap's clan-as-corporation structure was also an influence, with collectives like So Solid modeling themselves on such entrepreneurial dynasties as Wu Tang and Roc-A-Fella. If the trend continues, the DJ in U.K. garage could become a vestigial figure, just like in mainstream American rap. This power struggle has musical implications. Listening to U.K. garage these days, the most striking thing is its torrential wordiness. Rave music was always about the nonverbal sublime. But in garage rap, verbose and swollen egos trample all over the loss-of-self that was originally house culture's promise and premise. <br /><br />With its raucousness and Englishness and sometimes sheer malevolence, garage rap is comparable to another music of the embattled ego: punk. The Englishness comes through in the delivery: Mic chat has always been fast in Black British sound system culture, but there's also a tightness-in-the-throat, a dainty crispness of diction, that is distinctly un-American. As for the nastiness, you only have to look at garage's current lexicon of superlatives —"gutter," "stinking," "disgusting," "thugsy" —to see where it's coming from. There's even a character called MC Vicious! Sometimes it's closer to the original '60s garage punk: lots of sexual malice and second-person hostility. But when MCs drop lines like "there's a lot of anger that's been building up inside," there's a sense of pre-political rage and social frustration that feels very 1977. As it happens, the state of the nation in 2002 uncannily mirrors the mid-'70s U.K. context that fueled punk's ire: a fatally compromised Labour government, recession, public service workers on strike, and resurging racial tension reflected in both electoral success for far-right political parties and a revived Anti-Nazi League. As far as U.K. garage's underclass audience is concerned, though, collective struggle is a sentimental, distant memory, strictly for suckers. And so it bypasses the failed realm of politics altogether, expressing its rage-to-live through individualistic fantasies of stardom or crime: Staggerlee transplanted to Sarf Lundun. <br /><br />Garage rap isn't all crime-pays false consciousness, though. Like punk, the nu-garage upheaval has opened things up for all sorts of quirky voices: Skinner obviously, but also honey-dripping Barrington Levy-like charmers such as Laid Blak's MC Joe Peng. On "Scream & Shout" (Moist import), he describes himself as "a nice and decent fellow," gently chides "the ladies dressed in black" ("those are the colors of a funeral"), and even pulls off a non-cloying plea to build a better world for our children. Judging by their name, Heartless Crew ought to be peddling more Social Darwinist ruthlessness, but "Heartless Theme" verges on positivity, talking about how hard they've worked for their success, and claiming that they're only heartless "cos our hearts are in the music." Then there's the geniality of Genius Kru, whose "Course Bruv" revives the amiable (if insanitary) rave-era ritual of sharing your drink. The insanely addictive chorus goes: Male Voice: "Can I 'ave a sip of that?" Genius Kru: "Course bruv!" Sexy Female: "Can I 'ave a sip of that?" Genius Kru: "Course luv!!" <br /><br />Your best chance of hearing "Heartless Theme" and "Course Bruv" is on (groan!) <em>Crews Control</em>, a Warnerdance U.K. compilation you might find in Tower or Virgin. Somewhat patchy, this double-CD justifies the import price by containing around eight certified classics, including Purple Haze's "Messy" and More Fire Crew's "Oi!" Early in 2002, the latter became the most avant-garde U.K. Top 10 hit since the Prodigy's "Firestarter," its dead-eyed drum machine beats sourced in Schoolly D and "Sleng Teng," its patois-tinged jabber equal parts Cockney Rejects and "Cockney Translation" (Smiley Culture's 1985 dancehall classic). <em>Garage Rap, Vol 1</em> (Eastside import) is more consistent and up-to-date, ranging from the quasi-orchestral grandeur of Wiley & Rolld Deep's "Terrible" to the thunderdrone rampage of GK Allstars' "Garage Feeling." <br /><br />The trouble with comps, even superior ones like this, is they inevitably lag behind where the scene is at right this minute. With 2step's crossover bubble long popped, it's like the "real musicians" (MJ Cole, et al.) have fled to more prosperous climes, leaving the genre in the hands of barbarian teenagers who don't give a shit about things being in key, who break the rules 'cos they don't know the rules. <br />Right now, London's pirate-radio underground is like a primordial swamp, seething with protean new forms and percolating with ideas nicked from Dirty South bounce, electro, ragga, even gabba. Much of it is sub-music: unfinished experiments, prototypes thrown onto the marketplace for the hell of it. Some tunes want to be proper rap, but sound like all those No Limit wannabe labels: cheap 'n' nasty synth-refrains inspired by or sampled from video-game muzik or cell phone ring-tones, doomy horn fanfares à la Swizz Beats or Ludacris. There's a whole vein of spartan tracks, just beats and B-lines, designed for freestyling over—the most famous and ubiquitous being Musical Mobb's "Pulse X," the U.K.'s very own "Grindin'." In techno, tracky tunes of this type are regarded as "DJ tools"—uncompleted work that only becomes music in the DJ's mix 'n' mesh. In U.K. garage, they function as MC tools, designed to both enable and test the rapper, the most extreme riddims as buckwild challenging to ride as a mechanical bull. Every big tune these days comes with an instrumental lick on the flip, so aspiring MCs on the pirates can version it, throwing down solo freestyles or sparring in on-air ciphers. Increasingly, they're using the instrumental B-sides of current rap hits. <br /><br />Like its precursors dancehall and hip-hop, garage rap is capitalist competition at its most honestly brutal, a free market governed only by the fickleness of popular desire, a/k/a, the massive. Reigning rhymestar Wiley asserts, "I will not lose/Never, no way, not ever"; he's next in line for So Solid-style stardom, alongside his Rolldeep cohort Dizzee Rascal (who's quite possibly the most inspired and provocative U.K. rapper since Tricky). But most MCs will be lucky to have one or two hot tunes, and run t'ings for a season before they're dethroned. <br /><br /><strong>Footnotes from Blissblog</strong><br /><br /><br /><em>1/ there was even hybrid rave-rap, with performers like Rebel MC, Ragga Twins, and Demon Boyz.</em><br /> <br />Plus the ones I didn’t have space to mention: Unique 3 (most reknowned for pioneering bleep’n’bass tekno, but on various B-sides and on the album Jus Unique they did a few rather shaky-sounding rap-rave tracks and were basically a B-boy crew who got tripped out by acieeed) and most heinous omission Shut Up and Dance. Who started out as the Britrap outfit Private Party ("My Tennants", way ahead of Roots Manuva, and a pisstake on Run DMC for sponsorship tune "My Adidas), then as SUAD did tunes like “Rap’s My Occupation” and “Here Comes A Different Type of Rap Track not the Usual 4 Bar Loop Crap”. Their conflicted relationship with hip hop (they wanted to be a UK Public Enemy, but thought the latter were sonically staid) was surpassed only by their conflicted relationship with rave (they deplored drug culture and declared “we’re not a rave group, we’re a fast hip hop group”). But despite doing socially concerned tunes raps “This Town Needs A Sheriff” most of their big anthems were sample-collages that updated slightly the DJ record style of Bomb the Bass/Coldcut/MARRS. Still, SUAD’s comeback of the last few years is all too appropriate, with killer tunes like “Moving Up” (not a fully-fledged rap track with verses, but with enough of a MC vocal lick thing to fit the current moment). Ragga Twins, who I did mention, were on the SUAD label and now seem especially ahead-of-their-time, with the Belgian h-core uproar of their “Mixed Truth” prophesying the gabba-garridge sound. <br /><br />But let’s not bring MC Tunes into this, eh? <br /><br /><em>2/ a strictly supporting role, exalting the DJ and hyping the crowd </em><br /><br />The MC's role in hardcore/jungle/earlygarage was paradoxically crucial-yet-menial: he (invariably a he) functioned as a membrane between the expressive/social and the rhythmic/technological, vocalizing the intensities of machine-rhythm and in the process more or less transforming himself into a supplement to “the drum kit”. Another key part of the job description: the rewind, in which the MC relays the will-of-the-massive to the DJ. A ritual aknowledgement, at least on the symbolic level, of the idea that he who pays the piper calls the tune. <br /><br />From ’92 onwards, though, you could sense a latent expressive potential in rave Mcing -- especially on the pirates, when MCs like Don FM’s OC or Trace and Ed Rush’s sparring partner Ryme Tyme would go off on one, get real imagistic and panoramic (“North South East and West, we got you locked”), as if surveying their domain from a lofty vantage point. Never quite getting to the point of storytelling, but still, you could tell that there was an artform in waiting, something that could bloom if given the opportunity. <br /><br /><br /><em>3/ there were star MCs </em><br /><br />You had name MCs from quite early on in rave--mentioned in the pirate ads, obviously considered part of the draw. But the real character MCs arrived with jungle, when rave's aerobics instructor/cockney street vendor style of hoarse hollered rabble-rousing was replaced by something more relaxed (even as the music got more frenetic), warmer, magnanimous, full of authority. These guys--GQ, Dett, Moose, 5-0, Navigator, et al--were almost MCs in the old showbiz sense, hosting the event, stroking the egos of all present, from the selecta in the booth to the massive on the floor. And now and then you’d get the first hints of the MC’s role as truth-teller and vibe-articulator, someone expressing the values of the scene. Overwhelmingly, these were black voices. While the DJ and production sides of hardcore/jungle/UK garage seem close to racial parity, MC-ing, from jungle onwards, seems like it's a 98 percent black thing. Does this monopoly of the role of host/articulator/spokesman have a symbolic role, expressing the dominance of black musical/cultural priorities in a subculture that in terms of population composition is actually pretty mixed? A sense that the public face of the scene ought to be black (the MC is generally actually more visible than the DJ, out there with his mic). Or is it just something about the grain of the voice, suiting the flow of MC-ing? <br /><br /><br /><em>4/ but their careers were largely based around a few trademark catchphrases or signature vocal licks </em><br /><br />Which could wear real thin real quick. Somewhere I have this eight-cassette pack, the looks-like-a-video sort you could buy back in the day as a memento of megaraves like Raindance or Dreamscape, but this was for a Pure Silk garage event in ‘98. Eight cassettes, eight top DJs, and all playing the same hot-that-week tracks as each other: talk about “changing same”. Worse still, there was two or three top MCs hosting the night, and so you get to hear the same trademark vocal gimmicks and human-beatbox tricks over and over and over again. <br /><br /><br /><em>5/ Gradually, MCs started to write actual verses </em><br /><br />Some key transitional records here: <br /><br />----DJ Luck and MC Neat, “A Little Bit of Luck”. Not many words by comparison with today’s norms, but the beginnings of MC tunes that actually said something (in this case, I-and-I survive, “with a little bit of luck we can make it through the night” doubling as a big up to his DJ, who takes first billing despite contributing a really rather perfunctory groove over which Neat croons the most naggingly catchy and rootically haunting lick). Big BIG tune this: I remember someone telling me they heard a pirate station play this tune over and over again for half an hour. For a month or so in 98 this tune WAS the scene. <br /><br />----Corrupted Crew, “G.A.R.A.G.E.” Again, not saying a lot really, but awesomely hooky and the MC (Neat?)’s baritone is wonderfully commanding. Also probably the first letters-for-words spelling anthem (“E’s for the Energy etc”), a routine that still gets re-used. <br /><br />--- N&G feat. Rose Windross and MC Creed, "Liferide” . A classic plinky xylo-bass tune, with Creed spinning out some dizzyingly assonance-thick rhymes in his trademark clipped’n’prim style (weird how something so compressed and inhibited sounding is so cool). <br /><br />---Middle Row's The Warm Up EP. Are these the first real narrative tunes? I’m talking about “Millenium Twist": Shy Cookie, Sweetie Irie and Spee reinventing the Englishness of canonical literature and costume drama with this hilarious slice of Dickensian dancehall, starring an updated Fagin from Oliver! instructing modern urchins how to duck 'n' dive Y2K stylee. And "K.O.", with its bizarre boxing-ring MC narrative (Neat again, accompanied by Shy Cookie and Spee). <br /><br />Should also mention perhaps the “singjay” tunes, half way between chat and song, by the likes of Richie Dan (on the M-Dubs tune “Over Here”) and Glamma Kid ("Sweetest Taboo", yes a Sade cover), not forgetting the various 2step hook-ups with dancehall dons and don-ettes such as Lady Saw (underlining the point that UK garage’s return to the vocal, after the vocal-free desert that was techstep drum’n’bass, wasn’t just about diva vocals but about ragga chat, e.g. Gant’s “Sound Bwoy Burial”). <br /><br /><br /><em>6/ they refused second billing status (DJ/Producer X featuring MC Y)</em> <br /><br />As in Scott Garcia feat MC Styles “It’s A London thing.” From ’97, which might very well make it the first garage rap tune of all. <br /><br /><br /><em>7/ Suddenly the scene was swarming with MC collectives </em><br /><br />There was a predecessor to So Solid Crew, a group no one cares to remember, because they weren’t much cop. I’m talking about Da Click of “Good Rhymes” infamy. A seriously naff record (Chic’s “Good Times” reworked) but it made the pop charts and was “important”, just like “Planet Rock” (surely the most over-rated dance record of all time? I always thought it wooden and dreary, but I bought it anyway: you just knew it was important). Same applies to “Good Rhymes”, had to have it, if only for the sleeve with its pix of 70 players on the UKG scene. Da Click was basically the scene’s premier MCs teaming up to make a record with the explicit intent of bigging up the role of the MC in UKG. They were inspired in a major way by Puff Daddy and the whole Bad Boy thing of flash thugs riding/rolling with this collective swagger. One of the record’s instigators, Unknown MC, used to be in Hijack, a Brit-rap group signed to Ice T's Rhyme Syndicate label. In late 2000, quite some time after the group’s profile had waned (the follow-up single was even worse), he told me “in London right now, there's a thing happening where true MCing is coming back to the floor. You have these clubs with 2000 people where the MC really is interfaced between the DJ and the crowd. And he's whipping the crowds up into mad frenzies, getting them involved in the party. Which I imagine is what it must have been like in the Bronx in the 70s, you know what I'm saying?” <br /><br /><br /><em>8/ American rap's clan-as-corporation structure </em><br /><br />Crews and posses have always been part of hip hop lore, but it’s fair to say that until the late Nineties rap's dominant lyrical mode had always been been first person singular. But with the rise of Ruff Ryders and Cash Money (both based around real families) and with the likes of Roc-A-Fella’s styling themselves as Cosa Nostra-like syndicates ("You Are About To Witness A Dynasty Like No Other), there’s been a dramatic first person pluralisation of rap; ego eclipsed by what might be called "wego," the collective triumphalism of Ruff Ryders's "We In Here" or Hot Boys's "We On Fire". Likewise in UKG you’ve got Kartels (PAUG) and Famos (K2) galore. <br /><br />It would be incorrect to suggest, though, that this vogue for presenting what are clearly economic organisations as quasi-families is just ideological window-dressing for business realpolitik. Hip hop’s family values represent a kind of privatized socialism, based around ideals like sharing, altruism, co-operation, and self-sacrifice. In the war of clan against clan, loyalty is paramount, not just because teamwork is more effective, but because cameraderie provides refuge and respite from what would otherwise be a grim dog-eat-dog struggle. Effectively, the rap clan offers a haven from the rapacious cut-throat competition of the hip hop industry/capitalism, and on some level offers solace and security in what would otherwise be a desolate moral and emotional void. This is also why the Ruff Ryders/So Solid style emphasis on unity resonates with their fans--the idea of the clan on the warpath magically reconciles the contradictory impulses to be a winner but also to belong. <br /><br />Of course, there’s a tension between business realities and these quasi-familial relationships: rappers like The Lox and Snoop Doggy are flexible in their fealty, shifting allegiances as deftly as sportsmen changing teams at the drop of a cheque. Still, for many, the "thick like blood" rhetoric is for real. DMX, in particular, regards loyalty as a transcendent value. In a hyper-individualistic world where market forces tear asunder all forms of solidarity and everybody has their price , he claims: "They do it for the dough/Me I do it for the love". Lyrically DMX is fixated almost exclusively on loyalty, betrayal, and retribution. Then there’s his curious obsession with dogs. Strikingly different from the lecherous hound persona adopted by George Clinton ("Atomic Dog" etc) DMX's use of "dog" seems to draw on the idea of canine fidelity--to the pack in the wild, to its owner (hence Fido). In song after song, DMX insists "I will die for my dogs". Then there’s the way he reinvokes what Foucault called “the Medieval symbolics of blood": Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, his new label Bloodline. All seem to relate to atatvistic notions of blood-brotherhood and the loopy fantasy of DMX and his dawgs as some sort of pedigreed aristocracy of the streets ("My dogs, the beginning of this bloodline of mine"). So it’s interesting that in UK garage slang “bruv” has been displaced by “blood” as a salutation or bonding term--“ya get me blood?” <br /><br />“Dog”, “blood”, “nigga”: all these terms have superceded the old racially encoded but more universalizing greetings like “brother”, which one associates with the civil rights era. The idea of family offers a kind of unity that seems more tangible and grounded than allegiance either to abstract, remote and problematic entity known as the United States of America, or any of the various forms of African-American nationalism. In rap and in UKG, group affiliation contracts to the compact and plausible dimensions of a clique, and one usually one tied to a place---a project, a council estate, a borough, a postal district (More Fire Crew shout out to the E4 and E11 crew on the sleevenotes to their debut album), or at the very most, a city (from “it’s a London thing” to “Millenium Twist”’s "L.O.N.D.O.N, London/That's where we're coming from"). As opportunities for feelings of solidarity and communality shrivel and retreat all over the social landscape, the withering especially pronounced in the very places where people once found them (trade unions, electoral politics, organized religion), it makes sense that this basic human need for a sense of belonging would find other points of focus, albeit on more diminished terms. In the neo-Medieval scenario of unchecked capitalism and holy war, it’s no surprise that we’re witnessing a resurgent atavism in the form of these Mafia-inspired clan structures (“amoral familialism”, Italian sociologists call it, diagnosing their persistence as caused by the relative weakness of nationalism in Italy--as a political entity, Italy is a relatively recent creation). Musical mobs indeed. <br /><br /><br /><em>9/ torrential wordiness</em> <br /><br />Never ceases to amaze me, this. In UKG at the moment there's almost like a battle between the words and the music for dominance, the MC's almost seem to trying to drown out the DJ. Are there even name DJs anymore? Who gets top billing on the flyers these days? Recently playing Pied Piper's 'Do You Really Like It', which can only be two years old, I was struck by 1/ how as MCing it just wouldn't cut it now, it sounds so wack, and 2/ there must be about 25 words in the whole song. That said, the first true examples of rampant logorrhea I can think of date from shortly before ‘Do You Really Like It?’: Sparks & Kie on Teebone’s “Fly Bi” (wrong Matthew, sorry this tune is the B.O.M.B. and what's wrong with the spelling thing anyway) and Skibadee on Teebone’s “Super S”, mad-hectic tongue-twisty sinous sibilant biznis. <br /><br /><br /><em>10/ with its raucousness and Englishness</em> <br /><br />One of my favorite bits ever on a garage rap record, can’t remember the tune or artist right this minute, occurs when, after a series of grisly threats, the MC’s killer verbal blow to his adversary is the instruction: “Behave!”. It’s like some eerie transcultural morphing effect: Bounty Killer turns into Frankie Howerd. That’ll be lost on non-Brits, I’m afraid, as is the next reference: the way Horra Squad’s Mr Guns’s has this bizarre tic-like mannerism of going “just like that”--an immaculate imitation of Tommy Cooper--right in the middle of the most bloodcurdling eruptions of “thugsy-ugsy” threats and “messy-essy” slackness. <br /><br /><br /><em>11/dainty crispness of diction </em><br /><br />Actually, it’s all about the tension between the impulse towards criss precision and the “drag” of the uncouth grain-of-the-voice that resists and impedes that impulse. But, and this is crucial (what some Americans, no offence, don’t get), the refinement doesn’t equate with whiteness and gentility (Masterpiece Theater, your daft ideas that the U.K is all castles and cucumber sandwiches), and the ruffness doesn’t equate with black/Caribbean. The uncouth element isn’t so much the patois as the Cockney gutternsipe factor, and the slick diction is more about a Black British elegance-smoothness aspirational thing. So you have this really semiotically rich and overdetermined criss-cross collision of class/race factors, a tug-of-war between assimilation and recalcitrance, “this is where we came from" and "this is where we're going" . But most of all it just sounds wicked. <br /><br /><br /><em>12/expressing its rage-to-live through individualistic fantasies of stardom or crime </em><br /><br />The art of Mcing doesn’t really entail opening up virgin zones of unexplored content. “Originality” means finding fresh twists on a stock set of themes. Like that literary critic who broke down the entirety of western drama and fiction to seven basic narrative structures (I.A. Richards?), here's my stab at isolating UKG’s core thematics (which are also stances, outlooks, dispositions, states of mind, ways of walking through the world). <br /><br />i/ “I will not lose/we’re gonna make it/ain’t know stopping us/we are coming through” <br />more on this below <br /><br />ii/ “know we/they don’t know/people dun know/if you don’t know, get to know”. <br />Probably the most interesting and unique to UKG theme (despite my Notorious BIG quote just now). Interesting, because the scenario it implies is that the MC is actually unknown---it evokes an imminence, a star status or stature that is being suppressed, thwarted, or is simply latent. The MC is an unknown on the brink of breaking out massively, a "supernova" (to quote Neutrino) microseconds before ignition. They don’t know but they should know and they will know. It’s hard to imagine an American rapper writing from this position: regal triumphalism, Jay-Z style, or even ennui (that standard face of blase derision you get in all the videos) seems to be more appropriate for a music that has won and is basking in its victory. Because “they don’t know” also suggests a collective demand for recognition, which US hip hop enjoys but UKG hasn’t; the theme seems to convey something of the marginality and underdog status of UKG-rap as a whole. “They” could be mainstream UK culture (which only acknowledges UKG when it is scapegoating it for street violence), or it could even be American hip hop. Alternatively, "They don't know" sometimes carries a suggestion of (see Black Ops cru) of secrecy, subterfuge, assassins with deadly powers moving unnoticed through society. <br /><br />iii/ making paper/chasing cheddar/we floss the biggest whips etc <br /><br />Wish fulfillment, one assumes, or hope: there can’t be that much money to be made on this scene, surely. (So Solid sold 400,000 of their album but when you divide the royalties by 30…). Nice UK-specific touches to the conspicuous consumption/status games, e.g. A-reg and K-reg license plate disputes. <br /><br />iv/ biters/why you want to imitate me<br /><br />yeah right, if you're so unique how come you sound just like everybody else? <br /><br /><em>v/“haters </em><br />—yeah yeah they're all sick to their guts on account of your wealth/fame/success with the ladies, well why not desist from rubbing it in their faces every chance you get then? <br />Biters and haters are essential accoutrements, status symbols, on a par with the flash phones and cars. Mo money mo problems etc. <br /><br />vi/ alpha male biznis (is that your chick/steal your wifey/kiss her on the lips you’re tasting my semen). <br />Char-ming. <br /><br />vii/ “wego-mania” (ride with us/imagine, you’re with a crew like this, etc) <br /><br />Viii/ “revenge/retribution/ultraviolence”. <br />the scenarios seem to get more vivid and colorful and cruelly creative every month <br /><br /><br /><em>13/ Laid Blak .</em> <br /><br />From Bristol, and not just a UKG outfit, their spokesman tells me, but a proper band that can do all sorts. I await their next release keenly and with real curiosity. <br /><br /><br /><em>14/ equal parts Cockney Rejects and "Cockney Translation" </em><br /><br />The cover of that More Fire Crew single is a beautiful thing. Not because it’s especially attractive or remarkable-looking (it’s quite plain and nondescript actually) but simply because it has these three black lads and the word “Oi!’ on the sleeve. And the last time the word “Oi!” appeared prominently on record sleeves, these were early Eighties Oi! compilations and the young men on the sleeves would have been cropheaded and pasty-faced hooligans with dubious political allegiances and jingoistic leanings. In one infamous case, Strength Through Oi! (a supremely tasteless and inflammatory title), the chap stomping his 18 hole DMs at the camera (almost as if to suggest if the photographer was the victim of a racial attack) turned out to be an ex-member of the British Movement or NF or some similar neo-Nazi outfit. So the More Fire Crew sleeve is an encouraging sign, in some weird way, of a degree of cultural miscegenation that's taken place in the last twenty years: a once noxious word being defused and reclaimed. (“Oi, oi!” was always a big MC chant on the hardcore scene, come to think of it). <br /><br />As much as electro or the proto-ragga Casio-riddim ‘Sleng Teng”, I like to think of Smiley Culture’s "Cockney Translation" as the Eighties Origin for “Oi!” and for MC garage as a whole. At least it makes for an appropriately fertile fiction, as Mythic Origin. Released on the Fashion label (worth rediscovery I reckon, it captured a phase-shift in the Caribbean-British story), this is the tune where Smiley translates back and forth between patois and patter, West Indies and East Enders. “Say Cockney say Old Bill/We say dutty Babylon”, “we say bleach. Cockney knackered”, “Cockney say triffic. We say waaacked…. sweet as nut. just level vibes. Seen?” <br /><br />It pointed ahead to the future hybrid argot of multiracial London, the hardcore/jungle/garage mix’n’blend of rhyming slang and rhymes-and-slang. <br /><br />And talking about the More Fire Crew song, here’s a particularly apt line from Smiley’s song: <br /><br />“We bawl out YOW! While cockneys say Oi!” <br /><br />“Cockney Translation” is an ancestor for garage rap in more than a symbolic/mythic way, though. The tune was an example of the UK fast-style reggae sound, which Dick Hebdige describes as “reggae’s answer to rap”, as spearheaded by the Saxon International Sound System and its MCs like Tipper Irie, Asher Senator, Lady Di, and Philip Levi. Fast-style chatter is, if not ‘the roots’ then one key root for everything from Ragga Twins and SUAD to jungle/UKG MCs like Skibadee. <br /><br />More Fire’s debut album is good BTW. <br /><br /><br /><em>15/ a Warnerdance U.K. compilation you might find in Tower or Virgin. </em><br /><br />At one point I was thinking about framing this piece as a ‘world music’ story. Because that’s what this music is at this point—impossibly exotic and hard to get hold of outside the UK. In America, it’s easier to buy records of Madagascan guitarpop or Javanese court gamelan than it is to acquire UKG. <br /><br /><br /><em>16/ "I will not lose/Never, no way, not ever" </em><br /><br />Been really struck by the recurrence in UKG Mc-ing of expressions of uncontainability: “we’re coming through, whether you like it or not” (Black Ops), “this style be original/we can’t be stopped” (GK Allstars). Or a sense of destiny and determination that would seem pie-in-the-sky if it wasn’t marked by such hunger--the scrawny ardor animating lines like: “always believing/follow my heart, keep up the dreaming/behind the cloud, there is a shining….I know my time is coming.” (GK Allstars again). Talk of dedication, hard work, all of my energy going into this. Again and again, this almost-American insistence, not that anyone can make it, but I’m gonna make it (I’ve got to make it; there is no alternative). Flying in the face of statistical reality. <br /><br />Here’s Peter York (an under-rated analyst of UK socioculture) on what happens in a tightly class-stratified country like Britain where talent is “blocked off from conventional embourgeoisment”. “If you have a whole lot of people who are blocked, then the steam is much more intense. And where it finds a crack it rises more violently.”SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-68054487040178247362008-03-26T10:05:00.000-07:002008-03-26T10:11:35.403-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #63]<br /><br />THE MOST OVER-RATED SCENES/GENRES OF ALL TIME PART 2: THE MOD/SOULBOY CONTINUUM<br />from Unfaves 2001, Blissout<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /> <br />Thoughts prompted by three near-simultaneous irritations: seeing the video for Style Council's "My Ever Changing Moods" on VH1 Classic (Weller and Talbot as Tour De France cyclists); reading Kirk De Giorgio's Invisible Jukebox in <em>the Wire</em>; perusing the suspiciously dapper and small-faced Paul Gorman's <em>In their Own Write</em>, with its excessive number of quotes from Paolo "Cappucino Kid" Hewitt. <br /><br />I'm using "mod" here to signify not so much a specific period in the Sixties, or even its revivals and explicit echoes, so much as a UK youth cultural continuum, a perennial space in the sociocultural field of possibilities. And it's something whose appeal almost entirely bypasses me; it consistently non-resonates. And obviously in this respect I'm just as much trapped in my own class identity (middle middle class, as opposed to lower middle class). What irks? Mod's non-Dionysian, neat-freak retentiveness? Its refusal of both "revolution" (mod is essentially about resignation: youth as brief burst of energy and hope before capitulation to the humdrum) and "bohemia" (which as someone wise said, basically replaces politics with art as solution to/salve for the contradictions of late capitalist society)? <br /><br />The mod/soul-boy continuum occupies a thin strip of sociological terrain--basically suburban upper working class/lower middle class--and is defined on one side through its disdain for the "studenty" (that bedrock of all things "progressive", Floyd to Radiohead) and on the other through its recoiling from the base pleasures of the un-sussed plebs (your proper proletariat). Caught between these two equally unattractive prospects and with the dire fate of suburban mediocrity staring it in the face, Mod escapes England through a massive projection towards Black America (never, crucially, rock'n'roll America) and through its flirtations with European-ness. As per Style Council's <em>Our Favorite Shop</em>, what's imagined is a utopia of perfect consumption: transcendence achieved through the details of a lapel, the iconicity of a label. <br /><br />At the core of the mod self-conception is the idea of being one of a select few white boys who truly understand black passion and black style, simply through strenuous self-education in all its crucial details. The original mods were at least dealing with contemporary Black American music, but by the Seventies, with Northern Soul, the mod continuum became increasingly and paradoxically opposed to Black Modernity--it was equally horrified by white misappropriations of black music and by black musician's own deviations from the true path. <br /><br />For <em>Energy Flash</em>, I was interviewed by Robert Elms on his GLR show, and during a desultory interrogation, with one eye kept on the Test Match playing on a little TV above the studio console, the former doyen of the style bibles opined that as far as he was concerned, house and techno had been the death of the British working class's love affair with black dance music. Like everybody else from a certain mid-Eighties moment in style culture/London clubland, Elms seemed to have imagined that rare groove/"the jazz revival"/go-go should have just have extended itself in perpetuity: a Thousand Year Reich of refinement and righteousness. <br /><br />Elms's inability to accept house and techno as "proper black music" (let alone all the things that followed like jungle and 2step), then gets weirdly echoed by your Terry Farley types who went a bit further than Elms, falling in love with deep house, but stops there. Read his house review column in <em>Muzik</em> and you sniff the tell-tale neo-mod whiff of "we are the custodians", signaled by phrases like "proper black dance music" and "this is real black house music for those who know". Then there's Kirk DeGiorgio with his historically confused insistence that Detroit techno came entirely out of black synth-exponents like Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and Bernie Worrell, and owed not one whit to Kraftwerk/New Order/Depeche. DeGiorgio operates some kind of web-site project dedicated to documenting early Seventies black music year by year down to every last record released--so far as he's barely got to 1971!. <br /><br />I've strayed a bit far from mod here (DeGiorgio is probably as much a case of a jazz curator or Steve Barrow-style archivist type as anything...) but the syndrome is essentially the same: what typifies the mod/soul-boy mentality is this weird self-effacing relationship with black music, where the best one can aspire to is to emulate/simulate black music as closely as possible. These white people are continually complaining about other white people ruining black music, making it too "white boy." <br /><br />Like the house bods referenced earlier, these guys always seemed destined to become curmudgeons, disenchanted by the direction that their beloved black music has gone. Because their attitude to black music is so reverential, conservationist, and purist, they cannot comprehend black musicians own impulses to be faithless and heretical, to miscegenate. Your actual black musicians, on the whole, give or take a few real cultural protectionist/Afrocentric/black power sorts, don't think like this: in fact they think as musicians first, responding to excellence wherever it comes from. The examples are too numerous: southern soul singers who loved the plaintiveness and everyman's-woes aspects of country, George Clinton loving the Beatles and Vanilla Fudge, Ice T's penchant for Phil fucking Collins and making bad hard rock records, jungle with people like Goldie being into The Stranglers, David Sylvian and PiL as much as Loose Ends, Maze, Marley Marl; Jeff Mills's digging post-DAF Euro Body Music and actually playing in an industrial band called Final Cut.<br /><br />For your mod/soulboy types, this sort of swerve is a real headfuck. And so electro and the hard, drum-machine driven rap of the early Eighties totally wrongfooted the chaps at <em>Echoes</em> and <em>Blues & Soul</em> [supposedly they formed a--admittedly jokey organisation--called something like LADS, League Against Disco Shit if I recall rightly], and most of your style bible clubland guru types consistently backed the wrong horse, rallying to go-go or rare groove rather than rap or house. All hand-percussion and call-and-response, go-go corresponded to their received ideas of proper blackness; Troublefunk's shows in 1986 were wall-to-wall white hipster funkateers, barely a black face in sight. <br /><br />Black music has an inherent mutational drive that is continually pushing it into directions that are "un-black"--in the process challenging and complicating the reified notions of blackness ("swing", "funky", "soulful", "warmth" etc) cherished by the white believers. (And sometimes the black believers too: in <em>The Death of Rhythm and Blues</em>, Nelson George's ideas lead him towards the paradox that, post-electro, the true conscientious custodians of black music, the people who really cherished and had a gut-understanding of its principles, were all white and mostly British: your George Michaels, Phil Collins, Daryl Halls,Steve Winwoods, Mick Hucknalls etc.) Time and time again, a younger, upstart generation of black musicians will find themselves attracted to some new white music and embrace its qualities (hard attack riffs, distortion, machinic angularity), and the result is the next quantum leap for black music. Time and time again, the white soulboys huddle in horror and disdain, holding tightly onto models of black innovation that have become essentially antique. <br /><br />And here's the truly perturbing twist---quite often it's been the "pale theory boys", the studenty, art-school, pretentious twats that your mods and soul-boys love to mock--who are not only the first to grasp the new cutting edges of black music (I'm thinking here of your Cabs, New Orders, Mark Stewarts) but who even occasionally have reciprocal influence back on black music (DAF and Throbbing Gristle with the Chicago house pioneers; Pop Group deeply shaping members of Massive Attack, etc). Standing to one side of this fruitful dialectic of funklessness and refunktification, the mod/soulboy types condemn themselves to irrelevance and redundancy. Can you imagine any black musician being inspired by, or finding some re-deployable element worth stealing in, the music of Jamiroquai or the Style Council?SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-54982433079793523132008-03-19T12:37:00.000-07:002008-03-19T12:43:25.686-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #62]<br /><br />CANNIBAL OX <br /><em>Village Voice</em>, October 9th 2001 <br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Rap's a funny business, really. People pay good money to experience as "entertainment" what in real life they'd run a mile from. Bug-eyed sociopaths threatening cruel and unusual deaths, nouveau riche bores droning on about how much they make and the expensive shit they wear... And (let's not forget the underground) paranoid poets who've never met a conspiracy theory they didn't like, crackpot autodidacts who glimpsed the secret of the cosmos in a cloud of weedsmoke and they just have to tell you---the sort of I-be-the-prophet spiel you can endure for free if you hang out on the subway long enough. <br /><br />The cipherpunks of undie hip hop can be a real chore for ear and brain: barely scanning stanzas overcrammed with too many words per bar (at its worst, indie-rap rivals opera for its anti-musical subordination of sonix to textuality), as imagistically over-ripe and knotted with riddles as a late period Costello lyric. Your typical undie MC sounds like he chomped down a dictionary for breakfast and it keeps repeating on him. The prolix code-flow and hermetic, baffle-them-with-thy bullshit shtick is just the bookworm counterpart to gangsta machismo---often just a more convoluted and encrypted battery of boasts and threats. Jesus, with all the wordy machismo and heated who's-really-real debates, it's a bit like rock criticism with a beat! <br /><br />Actually, the consciousness informing underground hip hop reminds me more specifically of nothing so much as prime period <em>Forced Exposure</em>, the legendary post-hardcore noisezine: the recondite reference points and in-jokes, the cultivated trash aesthetic, the ultra-condensed and jaggedly stylized writing style. As Sasha Frere-Jones quipped in these pages a while ago, El-P--lynchpin of late lamented undie-rap gods Company Flow and producer of Cannibal Ox--is something like the Steve Albini of hip hop: fanatically opposed to the major label rap industry, addicted to noise. Extending the analogy a bit, you could imagine <br />a few years down the line the emergence of a rap equivalent to grunge ("grime", maybe): underground in style and sound, but hooky and forceful enough to storm the barricades of Hot 97 and BET, and end the entire bling-bling era (hip hop's equivalent to hair metal). And a few years after that, El-P will be drafted into uglify and render radio-unfriendly the post-breakthrough album <em>In Wu-Tero </em>by spearhead grime-rappers Gnosis.... <br /><br />El-P's the anti-Bling king, with an approach to sound that equates "independent" with "fucked". (His forthcoming solo album's titled <em>Fantastic Damage</em>). <em>Cold Vein</em> is actually steeped in some of the same Eighties electro and Nineties technorave synth-sounds you can hear in Hot 97-style rap, but the chrome futurism is rust-speckled, worm-holed with the metallic equivalent of cancer. El-P's sound--electronic-but-dirty, grooves that are borderline dysfunktional--has a lot in common with IDM groups like Autechre and the whole glitch approach to using software malfunctions and digital distortion. Something of a convergence is taking place between underground rap and left-field electronica, signalled by the recent Chocolate Industries compilation <em>Rapid Transit </em>with its mix of MCs and IDM artists, or figures like Prefuse 73's Scott Heren who has a foot in both backpacker and nerdtronica camps. Indeed, the response to Cannibal Ox has been warmer outside rap than within: cover stars of <em>The Wire</em>, rave reviews everywhere from <em>Urb</em> to <em>NME</em> to <em>CMJ</em>, but so far snubbed by <em>The Source </em>(perhaps because Vordul demands "108 mics", 103 more than the highest mark in the mag's album grading system)<br /><br />What El-P shares with your Autechre sorts (who typically started out doing breakdancing and graf) is roots in that brief post-electro, pre-sampling phase when rap tracks were built around drum machines, scratching, and not a lot else: Schoolly D's "P.S.K", Skinny Boys's "Rip the Cut". Back then that slow, torturous sound struck me as closer to post-hardcore bands like Swans and Big Black than the mainstream black pop of the day--it was music for wigging out, not dancing. Company Flow's debut EP F<em>uncrusher</em> had a title more redolent of Godflesh than a modern rap group, and Cannibal Ox itself sounds like a grindcore band. Cannibal Ox are essentially the continuation of Co-Flow--same soiled samples, entropic tempos, and sprained-in-both-legs beats--but fronted by two new MCs, the marvellously monikered Vast Aire and Vordul Megilah, both formerly of the Harlem group Atoms Family but now live-in proteges chez El-P's Red Hook, Brooklyn apartment. <br /><br />The worldview that V&V tout is deeply unjiggy: gangsta hyper-realism, but without the crime-pays glamor or delusions of invincibility. "Iron Galaxy" is their trope for an uncaring cosmos. The track starts with a movie sample, a blase white voice going "Yeah, tell me about it... it's a cold world out there... Sometimes I think I'm getting a little frosty myself". Then, riding a groove uncannily reminiscent of Donna Summer's "State of Independence", the duo unfurl a panorama of urban decay, rife with imagery of vultures, dogs eating dogs, roaches and rotten apples, little black girls getting shot, absent fathers ("Course his pop's gone/What you figure?/That chalky outline on the ground is a father figure?"), stillborn babies.<br />"Molested children" gets rhymed with "rats in ceiling". Clearly Cannibal Ox have inherited the Co-Flow mantle of "#1 feel bad crew".<br /><br />Although Vast spells out their ghetto-realist creed with the lines "I guess that's why I was born/To recognize the beauty of a rose's thorn", <em>Cold Vein</em> isn't relentlessly grim. There's a sense of deadly frolic, pure linguistic sport. On "Raspberry Fields," Vast kills his battle-rhyme opponent repeatedly in successive reincarnations ("this is the next lifetime"). This "scissortongue" MC with a "mouthful of parables" prides himself on vocabulary and the writerly art of elegant variation: when he drops the verse "the sample's the flesh and the beat's the skeleton/you got beef but there's worms in your wellington/i'll put a hole in your skull and extract the skeleton," he immediately corrects himself ("oh my god, said a word twice") and then repeats the whole verse changing the second "skeleton" to "gelatine". Vordul favors breathless sprints of assonance-dense rhyming like "stress got my chest a mess/breathless and vexed/trying to escape/from outa the depths of hell's nest" that suit his blurting flow, a logorrheiac lockstep that often seems barely tethered to the groove. Vast is more ruminative and languid, crisply enunciating choice lines like "the beat be trying to sex me and marry me/I'm talking white picket fence and a family" and audibly underlining specific words to ensure your close attention. On "Vein" he verbally smacks down a 12 year old baby-gangsta who flashed a gun in his face (the kid's got saggy pants, but "thoughts gotta pull up") while "The F-Word" explores the vulnerability of being a love triangle's third side (the dirty word in question is "friend", as in "just friends", as in being the thankless, nookie-less role of shoulder-to-cry). <br /><br />Throughout El-P's sonic choices are stunning--the galactic funk of "Battle for Asgard"; the dank futurism of "Vein"; the melted-candle sample-slurry of "B-Boys Alpha"; "Raspberry Fields" with its Butthole Surfers-like slowed-down vocals and dying-walrus guitarwail. "Real Earth" simultaneously reminds me of Flipper's cosmic dirge "Survivors of the Plague" and a slowed-down version of the <em>Blade Runner</em>-esque techy-sounding drum'n'bass purveyed by E-Sassin and Dieselboy. His tour de force comes with the closing songs "Pigeon" and "Scream Phoenix" (a hidden track). The avian imagery has run through the album: pigeons representing the world's small fry, the dowdy downtrodden. The phrase "Scream phoenix" is V&V's grimy equivalent to Curtis Mayfield's "move on up": imagination soaring free of reality's chains. In an alchemy of soul, every pigeon can will their metamorphosis into the glittering phoenix. El-P rises to the challenge of such epic concepts. "Pigeon" sounds literally Gothic: Rome after the barbarians, temples sacked and torched. A grandiose horn fanfare conjuring the twilight of empire, and Neil Hagerty-like guitar raining down on the smoking embers. "Scream Phoenix" is a woozy delirium of just-offkey angelic chorale and a looped tic of beautiful blues guitar. The way the final track offers a glimpse of hope recalls Tricky's similar move with "Feed Me" at the end of <em>Maxinquaye</em>. <br /><br />If there's one drawback to <em>Cold Vein</em>, it's that the music's so strong and strange it almost overshadows the words; simultaneously, focusing on Vordul & Vast's dense verbal flow with anything like the intensity it deserves makes it hard to wallow in the sonics. Separate dub and accapella versions would be a dream. Mind you, this splitting of consciousness/double-tiered focus effect only adds to <em>Cold Vein's </em>sensations of disorientation and out-of-jointness. After 74 minutes of gruelling brilliance, you'll probably need to lie down and unclench your brain.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-51545189401442575372008-03-15T10:31:00.000-07:002008-03-15T10:35:37.456-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #61]<br /><br />JAY-Z, <em>The Blueprint</em><br /><em>Uncut</em>, autumn 2001<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />This is supposed to be Jay-Z's big comeback. Which is odd 'cos he's been "away" a year, and the last album sold a couple of million. Then again, the one before sold more, and the album before that shifted five mill. So the perception was that Jay-Z had fallen off significantly (and bar the Neptunes-produced monstergroove "I Just Wanna Love U," the last record did show signs of burn-out) while the hype is "Jay-Z reclaims the throne"--a coup almost unprecedented in the merciless, high-turnover world of rap supastardom. <br /><br />Clearly the embattled star felt he had much to prove, because it's all nonstop Jay-Z: no verses farmed out to proteges from his Roc-A-Fella camp, and the only celebrity guest is Eminem, whose flow on "Renegade" is so dense and twisting it damn near sprains your brain. The CD booklet shouts out "To This Whole Fake Bulls**t Industry, Thanx 4 being so Fake and Keeping me on my Toes!!!," and the lyrics stomp down various upstarts who'd been sniping that Jay was slippin'. "Takeover" absolutely DESTROYS Nas, ridiculing his output ("that's a one hot album in every ten years average") and boasting alpha-male style of fucking his girl ("you know who/did you know what/with you know who"). The track is based on The Doors's "Five To One" (Morrison hoarsely hollering "gonna win, yeah/we takin' over") and there's more inspired pop intertexuality when the chorus from Bowie's "Fame" is transformed into a series of deathblow disses: "that's why you're... LAAAAAME!!!". <br /><br />If <em>The Blueprint</em> is a triumph, it's one of form over content: Jay-Z's got nothing new to say, but loads of fresh twists on the same-old same-old. Plus he's always been able to cherrypick the hottest tracks from the most inventive trackmasters, and the sonics here are relentlessly ear-catching. Almost every tune sounds like a hit: Kanye West's insanely catchy Jackson 5-based "Izzo," the swampy reggaematic fonk of Timbaland's "Hola Hovito", the drum 'n'bassy tympani thunder of Bink's "All I Need," Just Blaze's "U Don't Know" with its sped-up diva histrionics like parakeets on amyl, the crunchy-yet-wet percussion and snakecharmer melodics of Poke & Tone's "Jigga That N***a" . <br /><br />Apart from Jay's mic' hogging, the most striking thing about <em>The Blueprint</em> is how deeply steeped it is in 70s soul. Ignoring the fact that this music's melt-your-hard-heart tenderness was originally radically opposed to big-pimpin' niggativity, Jay-Z deploys the timeless sweetness of Al Green, Bobby Blue Bland, and David Ruffin to sugarcoat his own ultra-cynical worldview. The plea for social redemption in "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" gets flipped around into Jay-Z complaining about resentful haters: "where's the love?," he asks, as if it never occurred to him that rubbing your success in people's faces will rub 'em up the wrong way. Jay-Z's OG shtick involves the fact that he was wealthy through drug dealing before he became a rap star, and that "the rap game" is just a phase before even greater glories. "Put me anywhere on God's green earth/I triple my worth... I'm a hustler, baby/I sell water to a well". The sole chink in these delusions of invincibility comes with "Song Cry", an almost-apology to the girl he lost through fucking around. The title's clever concept is that the music (more symphonic soul) sheds the tears Jay-Z's too tough to weep. <br /><br />Rap's mystery is that people pay to be entertained by what they'd normally flee: vivid death-threats, bores bragging about their income and sexual conquests. Clearly a deeply unpleasant fellow, Jay-Z is also mildly evil. How about the line "I'm still fuckin' with crime, 'cos crime pays" for socially destructive myth-mongering? Ultimately, though, resistance is futile. So give it up for the don of disrespect, the virtuoso of vanity, the king of conceit.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-4477521649496604532008-03-11T11:37:00.001-07:002008-03-11T12:02:57.438-07:00<strong><em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #60]<br /><br />AALIYAH, <em>Aaliyah</em><br />unpublished* review, <em>Village Voice</em>, August 2001<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />I was going to call myself an Aaliyah fan--after all, she's made two of my<br />all time favorite singles, "One In A Million" and "Are You That Somebody?"--but somehow the idea of an "Aaliyah fan" seems faintly absurd. There's dozens of websites devoted to the singer whose name is Swahili for "most exalted one", but beyond her obvious beauty and vocal skill, what are these folk latching onto? The sites are uniformly thin on biographical content or back story. Of all the premier league R&B goddesses, Aaliyah seems the most blank: she doesn't even have a <em>persona</em> as such, let alone exhibit actual this-is-me personality. This is a young woman who's been involved in the music industry for most of her 22 years, working her way up the rungs from the age of nine. In a recent <em>Billboard</em> interview, droning fluent bizspeak about the importance of "versatility" and the need to pace your career, unfurling cliches about creative "chemistry" and thriving on "pressure", Aaliyah comes over as a dour professional and a workaholic strategist who's cannily diversified into movies like <em>Romeo Must Die </em>and <em>Queen of the Damned</em>.<br /><br />More than just impersonal, there's something almost <em>immaterial</em> about Aaliyah<br />(it's hard to imagine her flossing her teeth, or wiping her bottom). Aaliyah might be best understood, and enjoyed, then as a figment--a phantom of cathode-ray dazzle and studio-processed breath--concocted by an ensemble of stylists, choreographers, make-up artists, personal trainers, lighting technicians, video directors, song-doctors (like her main writer, Static from Playa), and, not least, trackmasters like Timbaland, her primary production foil until now. Timbaland has said he uses Aaliyah as "a probe" (itself an oddly depersonalized phrase), a vehicle for testing his most far-out ideas in the "urban" marketplace. That metaphor fits "One In A Million", the 1996 smash whose stutterfunk kick drums created the rhythmic template for the last five years of R&B and rap, and it works for 1998's "Are You That Somebody?",<br />which took the stop-start groove thing to the brink of rhythmic arrest. But the sole novelty of last year's "Try Again," its acid-house Roland 303 bassline, was fresh only in context (urban radio), while this year's "We Need A Resolution" continues the decline in daring, showcasing no new moves whatsoever. Everything in the song is decidedly <em>deja</em> for Tim-watchers, from the snake-charmer flute motifs ("Big Pimpin'") and tabla-like percussion ("Get UR Freak On") to the sinister slither of the reversed-sounding techno riffs ("Snoopy Trak," off Jay-Z's <em>Vol. 3</em>). With his two other cuts on Aaliyah's new album being the catchy but unstartling "More Than A Woman" and "I Care 4 U", a five year old, Missy-penned out-take from the One In A Million album sessions, there's a suspicion that Timbaland shot his wad on <em>So Addict</em>ive and is all innovated out for the time being.<br /><br />The other producers involved in <em>Aaliyah</em>--Keybeats, Inc (a/k/a Rapture & E-Seats), Bud' Da, and J-Dub a/k/a Rockstar-- aren't probing any outer limits either. The result is an album that is unspectacular, but very listenable. From the ungainly title/chorus down, "We Need A Resolution" wasn't exactly singular as a single, but its midtempo understatedness works just fine as an album opener. The same applies to most everything here: <em>Aaliyah</em>'s all album tracks and no obvious hits, but it's expertly paced and programmed, the whole stronger than any individual part. Make it past the first, underwhelmed listen and its cumulative seductiveness kicks in.<br /><br />Rapture & E-Seats's stand-out "Rock The Boat" is all diffuse sensuality and shimmering sleekness. The song's "adult" lyrics--"stroke it for me/work it to the middle/change positions"--are something of a maturity move for Aaliyah, and not wholly convincing. She doesn't really do "hot", it doesn't suit her gritless voice, at times so snowy-textured and sparing with the melisma that it's almost white. Showing more skin than usual, draped in snakes and caked in vampy make-up, she looked uncomfortable in the "Resolution" video, and you can't really imagine<br />her mucking in with the harlots of "Lady Marmalade". Until now, her two primary modes have been near-virginal devotion ("One in a Million", "4 Page Letter") and tension, a yearning-but-holding-back wariness of love. Both "Are You That Somebody" and "Try Again" are premised on the idea of Aaliyah as hard-to-get, while "Resolution" is all about people not getting (it) on.<br /><br />Outside these two modes, <em>Aaliyah </em>doesn't fare so well. The twittery-vocaled<br />anti-wife abuse schlock of "Never No More" is a calculated display of versatility, announcing "I can deal with heavy topics". "U Got Nerve" is a weak stab at Beyonce-style toughness, and "I Refuse", from its I-am-woman-hear-me-roar defiance to the baroque'n'roll bombast of J. Dub's arrangement, is a "Bills Bills Bills" knock-off two years tardy. Mind you, this Austro-Hungarian Rhapsody might be the album's most authentic Aaliyah moment, given that her all-time favorite band is apparently Queen! <br /><br />On two songs, you get a glimpse of Aaliyah as a potential auteur, rather than just a key component of hit records, the brand name front for a collective of expert technicians. Bud'Da's "I Can Be" is Aaliyah at her most frosty, shrouded in a skein of glassy guitarscree that seems to belong more on a Banshees or Cocteaus album. And the J.Dub-prod. "What If," daubed in garish metal-funk guitar, even sees Aaliyah rock out with a modicum of sass. The song's sheer overwraughtness feels cathartic after so much mature'n'demure restraint. <br /><br />Hints, if not of darkness or deepness, of at least an aspiration in that direction: Aaliyah as ice queen of Gothic R&B! "I Can Be" especially is a glimpse of the more audacious album <em>Aaliyah</em> could have been, if, for instance, the singer had<br />done a collaboration with Trent Reznor as she once improbably contemplated with apparently genuine enthusiasm ("I think he's a genius!", she gushed). For the time being, though, <em>Aaliyah</em> is a fine third album. And Aaliyah remains a exquisite cipher.<br /><br /><br />* unpublished: this had to be pulled at the minute having been written and edited and ready-to-roll but then Aaliyah died in that awful plane crash.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-21927355743756852532008-03-11T10:48:00.000-07:002008-03-11T11:40:09.115-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #58]<br />CEX, live<br /><em>Village Voice</em>, May 2 - 8, 2001<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Cex, a/k/a 19-year-old Baltimore-based Rjyan Kidwell, is an infamous figure in the world of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music). A recent IDM digest contained an open e-mail to Kidwell and mentor kid606: "Do not bowdlerize our subculture just so you can finally get your goofy looking nerd asses laid." Their crime? Bringing too much showmanship to live performance, which left-field electronica purists believe should be faceless and abstract. The trouble with the purist line is that IDM, because it's not dance oriented, can't count on involving the audience through physical participation; in the absence of visual stimulation, it runs the risk of lapsing into background ambience. <br /><br />On April 23, a kid606-and-friends night at Tonic showcased various strategies for avoiding the laptop musician's nightmare scenario: that "all is lost" switch point when the audience chatter gets louder than the music. kid606 held the listener rapt through sheer density of sonic events per second (and was helped not a little by Kurt Ralske's ravishing improvised video projections). Matmos usually incorporate an eye-catching performance-art element in their sets, but tonight they simply played tunes from their new plastic-surgery-themed album (<em>A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure</em>) against a backdrop of discomfiting close-up footage: ear canals, eyes, hair follicles, and the like. <br /><br />Opening the night, Kidwell took the most radical approach. Instead of playing what he puts out on record (plaintive, melodious electronica perfectly suited to the IDM palate), he's got a totally different live set based around the premise of Cex as "#1 Entertainer in the Game." Naked save for his fashion briefs, he looks like an emaciated computer programmer but sounds uncannily like Eminem, his rhymes oscillating wildly from professions of alpha-male omnipotence ("I know you're stressed/cos there's only one Cex/and your girlfriend's pissed/cos it's not you") to touching admissions of terminal dorkhood. Often he's rapping over purloined grooves (like the Neptunes-produced instrumental track from Jay-Z's "I Just Want to Love U"), and like a rap CD, he does between-song skits—like his hilarious fantasy about going to the MTV Awards "the year minimal techno blew up." <br /><br />"Representin' for fun" versus art-techno solemnity, Cex reminded the audience, "You got booties, let's use 'em," and then vowed to "take your maturity/eat it up, spit it out" (this accompanied by cartoon-raptor gestures of devouring/regurgitation). Surprisingly, the audience lapped up Cex's wiggatronica shtick, avidly participating in call-and-response and throwing hands in the air on cue. As an in-joke/polemic within the cloistered IDM context, Cex's Apple Mack Daddy persona is inspired, although you do wonder how a real rap audience would respond to his not-exactly-fluent freestyles. Then again, only the sternest purist (techno or hip-hop) could fail to chuckle at Cex's adapted-for-PC booty song, which starts by exhorting "Ladeez in the house, get the fellaz in the house, to take their balls out," then extends its equal-opportunity agenda to the inanimate: "Objects in the house, get the people in the house, to take their balls out."SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-69637181892737199432008-03-07T10:09:00.000-08:002008-03-11T12:05:16.566-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #56]</strong><br /><br /><strong>BREAKBEAT GARAGE a.k.a "Grime Ahoy!"<br />from Unfaves 2000 (written spring 2001)<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />When this flavour of "garage" first started to come through--must have been late <br />1999, with Deekline--I remember being excited by the way the sultry, swinging R&B-2step flow would be disrupted by this much more raw, stripped down and rhythmically unsupple sound that was disconcertingly similar to Big Beat: 130 bpm breaks, bulbous bass, wacky samples. But what was refreshing about these tune--"I Don't Smoke", later the more electro-flavored "Dilemma" by So Solid Crew--when they were a brief tang of different flavour, becomes tediously homogenous as a scene/sound on its own. Stanton Warriors's Da Virus" especially seems to be the drab template for a lot of this stuff, and "138 Trek" wore out its welcome fairly quick. There's some cool-enough stuff, I suppose--like Blowfelt's bippety bassline tune "Lickle Rolla"---but generally it sounds too much like jungle minus the extra b.p.m speed-rush, hardcore without the E-fired euphoria. Or worse like nu-skool breaks (alarming to see Rennie 'Stupid Fucking Name' Pilgrem reviewing 2step tunes in <em>Muzik</em>'s breakbeat column). <br /><br />That said, the last batch of pirate tapes I got, showed signs of a new twist in this breakstep (or whatever they're calling it) direction: not so much jungle-slowed-down, and more like a post-rave, drum'n'bass influenced form of English rap. On these spring 2001 pirate tapes, there's hardly any R&B diva tunes, and every other track features very Lunndunn-sounding MCs or ragga-flavored vocals, over caustic acid-riffs and techsteppy sounds, like some latterday Dillinja production. Unlike with techstep or recent d&b, there's very little distorto-blare in the production, there's this typically 2step clipped, costive feel, an almost prim and dainty quality to the aggression-- a weird combo of nasty and neat-freak. Lyrically, the vibe seems to be similarly pinched in spirit, a harsh, bleak worldview shaped subconsciously by the crumbling infrastructural reality beneath New Labour's fake grin; UKG seems to be already transforming itself from boom-time music to recession blues. The Englishness of the vocals reminds me of 3 Wizemen Men and that perpetual false-dawn for UK rap. Lots of killer tunes I can't identify, but one in particular stood out that I could: "Know We" by Pay As U Go Kartel. As I say, quite mean-minded and loveless music but sonically very exciting-- a new twist if not quite paradigm shift from the hardcore continuum.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-46651263152730951512008-03-07T10:03:00.000-08:002008-03-11T12:06:25.110-07:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #55]</strong><br /><br /><strong>WU-TANG CLAN, <em>The Wu</em><br /><em>Uncut</em>, January 2001)<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />Wu lynchpin the RZA is almost unique in the pantheon of great hip hop producers for having not-a-lot going on rhythmically. Most of his creativity goes into Wu's trademark cinematic arrangements--<em>noir</em> strings, moody horn stabs, dank wafts of gloomy ambience--and even these tend to be looped and layered in fairly straight-forward fashion. Trouble is, in this post-Timbaland era of futuristic cyberpunk and jagged riddim science, it simply doesn't cut it anymore to take a breakbeat and let it roll. Track after track, that's exactly what the RZA does. It took me a while to work out why his beats are so subdued and <em>pro forma</em>. In contemporary rap and R&B, the drums are basically lead voices, duetting with and sometimes upstaging the real vocalist. But for Wu-Tang Clan, the Word is King. Rhythm is subordinated to a supportive role; it should never draw attention to itself.<br /><br />What Raekwon, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, GZA, and so on do is great. But it's hard to see why headz rate the Clan on a higher level of consciousness than, say, Jay-Z. Sure, they invented that we-are-crime-family, collective thang. But everybody's now copped the blood-brotherhood, dynasty shtick. And, 90 percent of the time, all the Wu offer lyrically is more complicated boasts and threats than your average gangsta. You get the alpha-male humiliating his inferiors by stealing their women: "You know me/Every time you kiss that ho, you blow me". You get delusions of invincibility and thugly nonsense about fucking "bitches raw". You get crime/rhyme analogies ("used to be in chains/now we snatch chains/took the crack game/applied it to the rap game") and realer-than-thou bluster about how "the streets raised us" and living on "hostile blocks" where "Glocks is spittin'". Basically you get the same old shit--redeemed, just, by the cinematic vividness and rapid-fire relentlessness of image-flow. <br /><br />That said, <em>The W </em>contains a fair few exceptions to this deadly combo of "talking fast saying nothing" over perfunctory beats. Standard-issue RZA dirge-murk "One Blood Under W" is given added ache by Junior Reid's mournful roots vocal. Ol Dirty Bastard drools neat, wacked-out drivel on "Conditioner". "Let My Niggas Live" is the only really rhythmically inventive track--a percussive roil of brooding avant-funk that could be Last Poets or <em>Tago Mago</em>. Based around a beautiful if over-used sample source, "I Can't Go To Sleep" is a howling blues of racial paranoia. The similarly themed "Jah World" makes an abject plea for deliverance from intolerable conditions the Wu apparently believe are only one tiny step up from slavery.<br /><br />In some quarters, <em>the W</em> is being hailed as a return to <em>Enter the Wu-Tang </em>, the group's worldstorming debut. And there's little here that would sound anachronistic in 1993. OK, it's a great Wu-Tang Clan LP, complete with the obligatory, well-stale-by-now snatches of dialogue from martial arts movies. But the rap game's changed several times since '93, and, beyond the diehards, does anyone really care any more?SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-36393602917682257412008-03-07T09:20:00.000-08:002008-03-07T09:47:43.370-08:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #53]<br /><br />JIMI HENDRIX RECONSIDERED <br />essay contributed to feature package on Hendrix, <em>Uncut</em>, July 2000<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong> <br /><br /><br />Think ‘Hendrix’, and the first image that comes to mind is the onstage Jimi – a sensual inferno of improvisatory creativity, fingertips ablaze; Jimi the aural arsonist, sonically torching the Stars and Stripes; Jimi the Dionysian dandy, the pyrotechnician who put the flambé into flamboyance. But – and you knew this was coming right? – there was another side to Hendrix that runs against this pat if not entirely misleading image: Hendrix the diligent, patient craftsman, the ‘studio rat’ who methodically pieced together <em>Electric Ladyland</em> over several months of <br />ten hours per night, all week long work. Some <em>Ladyland</em> songs were re-mixed <em>three hundred</em> times. <br /><br />If Jimi onstage was a case of never-mind-the-Pollocks, a volcanic spermatozoic splurge of garish gushing expressionism, in the studio he was more a landscape painter, endlessly layering overdubs, tweaking equalisers and echo buttons, trying out new effects and arrangement ideas. With <em>Electric Ladyland</em>, Jimi exhibited the kind of obsessive detail-oriented perfectionism you associate with ultra-white, classicist-not-Romanticist auteurs such as Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney/George Martin, Todd Rundgren, even Brian Eno. This isn't a Dionysian lineage (frenzy, intoxication, orgiastic chaos – think Stones, Doors, Stooges) but an Appollonian one (Apollo being the god of serenity, sanity – art as contemplation, Nature garden).<br /><br />As well as this unlikely white company, you could also place Hendrix in a black lineage of studio science and producer wizardry – Lee Perry, George Clinton, Sun Ra, Prince. In the ‘Afro Futurist’ pantheon, the band leader or producer orchestrates all the sonic strands into funkadelic symphonies, using texture, polyrhythm, and multi-track spatiality to weave what critic Kodwo Eshun calls "sonic fiction". A crucial aspect of this producer-led approach is that effects and studio as-instrument processing are as important as the musicianship. In Hendrix's case, the two things were always inseparable: using wah-wah, sustain, distortion, fuzz-tone, feedback modulated by the tremolo arm, etc, he refracted the blues into a vast spectrum of timbres. And this was a pretty radical idea at the time. When Jimi did a session for Radio One, the crusty old BBC engineers were hopelessly confused, and in the end the producer had to speak up: "Look here, Jimi, I'm terribly sorry, but we seem to be getting quite a bit of distortion and feedback and can't seem to correct it."<br /><br />As Hendrix's music evolved, its timbre-saturated colour motion got more ultra-vivid and kaleidoscopic. It also got more spatialised. ‘3rd Stone From the Sun’, a sirocco roar of controlled feedback and one of the few songs on <em>Are You Experienced?</em> to extend beyond three minutes, looks ahead to <em>Ladyland</em>'s studio-spun immensities, and further still – to the drone swarm daze of My Bloody Valentine (who worked with Roger Mayer, the geezer who built FX pedals and technical gizmos for Jimi), to Husker Du's wig-out blizzardry, to Sonic Youth's "reinvention of the guitar". Jimi's guitar becomes increasingly gaseous and contourless, like radiation or a forcefield in which the listener is suspended. Contemporary rockcrit Richard Meltzer described how Hendrix replaced the "tunnel space" of conventional rock production (the guitarist distinctly positioned in the stereo-field) with "paisley space" (a wormholey, fractal surroundsound with Jimi coming at you from all sides, from behind you, sometimes seemingly from <em>inside</em> you). <em>Electric Ladyland </em>had a ‘3D sound’ that, Jimi later complained, the technicians who transferred the masters to vinyl "screwed up… they didn't know how to cut it properly. They thought it was out of phase." <br /><br />Jimi's music was about space in another sense. His lyrics are full of extra-terrestrial journeys and kosmik imagery – ‘3rd Stone’'s <em>Barbarella</em>-like request, "may I land my kinky machine?", and bizarre narrative about aliens visiting Earth, deciding chickens are the smartest species, then blowing up the planet; the imagery of "Jupiter sulphur mines/Way down by the Methane Sea" in ‘Voodoo Chile’; the solar system tour guide of ‘The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice’, a title that non-coincidentally acronyms the hallucinogens STP and LSD; unreleased songs like ‘South Saturn Delta’ and ‘Valleys of Neptune’. Jimi was an avid consumer of sci-fi, fantasy, and all forms of mysticism. His obsessions included the I Ching, numerology, astrology and the symbolist poets' belief that there are synaesthetic correspondences between colours and sounds; he believed he had ESP and could recall astral travels. All these traits came together in his dream of an "electric religion". He died before he could pull together the overtly transcendentalist double album, <em>First Rays Of The New Rising Sun</em>, his hymn to the Eternal Cosmic Feminine, featuring songs like ‘Hey Baby (The Land Of The New Rising Sun’ about a female messiah leading humanity to the promised land.<br /><br />Like other Afro-Futurists, Hendrix was as interested in mythic antiquity as in the outerspatial tomorrow – Nubia, Atlantis, the whole "ancient to the future" (Art Ensemble of Chicago) shtick. His song ‘Pali Gap’ was named after the Hawaian goddess of the volcanoes aka Pele (beating fellow space cadet Tori Amos by a couple of decades). ‘Purple Haze’ was influenced by Hopi Indian myths, and ‘Voodoo Chile’ taps into West African magick via Haiti and New Orleans. In terms of his own mystique, Jimi achieved a double-whammy, being half black and half-Native American. For the beats and the hippies, blacks and Red Indians represented two kinds of authenticity and exoticism that beckoned as alternatives to consumerland emptiness: blacks incarnated passion, sexuality, energy, soul, and Native Americans represented mystery, ritual, ceremony, a non-alienated relationship with the land.<br /><br />The culmination of all these tendencies – the black science fiction, the studio wizardry, and the alienation from contemporary Western industrial culture – was <em>Ladyland</em>'s closing song suite, ‘1983 … (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)’, and ‘Moon, Turn the Tides… Gently, Gently Away’. The lyrical scenario is Jimi and girlfriend abandoning a war torn, despoiled Earth for a subaquatic paradise, ignoring their sceptical friends who argue "the machine, that we built, would never save us… it's impossible for a man to live and breathe under water… anyway, you know good well it would be beyond the will of God". Flouting the patriarchal <br />reality-principle, Jimi and his water babe are reborn as aquanauts in a womb-like wonderland beneath the waves. Sonically, ‘1983’/‘Moon’ is a masterpiece of stereo panning and guitar-treatment techniques (slowing down and speeding up tapes to depict a shoal of fish swimming up to check out the human visitors, then darting away again; seagull noises created from headphones feeding back into mics), with all the myriad components painstakingly assembled and then mixed live in a way that anticipates both dub reggae and ambient. All undulating flow and flickering refraction, this is rock unrocked and un<em>cock</em>ed, androgynised, Jimi exploring the anima kingdom inside his own soul. There is nothing else like it in rock except maybe Robert Wyatt's similarly oceanic/amniotic <em>Rock Bottom</em>, Can's moonstruck ‘Come Sta La Luna’, John Martyn's dubby-bluesy shimmerscapes ‘I'd Rather Be The Devil’ and ‘Big Muff’.<br /><br /><em>Electric Ladyland</em> is sometimes accused of being somewhat self indulgent and over-produced, but if anything it's not self-indulgent enough. The double-album was, however, the climax of his burgeoning relationship with engineer Eddie Kramer, who was able to implement Hendrix's vague desires ("I want the sound of underwater") and who gradually displaced the Experience as Jimi's foil and launchpad. With <em>Ladyland</em> less like a power trio than a 300-piece guitar orchestra, songs like ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘Burning of the Midnight Lamp’ are stately constructions rather than spontaneous combustions – haciendas and pagodas gyrating in the sky.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-83863589707994058812008-03-04T10:26:00.000-08:002008-03-04T10:35:24.196-08:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise </em>deleted scene #52]<br /><br />PAUL GILROY, <em>Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line</em><br />director's cut, <em>the Village Voice</em>, May 2 2000.<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br />It was Randall Jarrell, I think, who took the entire oevure of Yeats, did the pre-computer age equivalent of a word-search, and discovered the matrix of forty or so favorite (that's to say, over-used) words and tropes that encapsulated the poet's aesthetic. You could do something similar to <em>Against Race</em>, the new book by Paul Gilroy, the black British cultural studies maven and Yale Professor of Sociology and African American studies. On one side, there'd be the list words that make Gilroy frown: purism, essentialism, roots, unanimism, primordialism, homeland. On the other, the words that make Gilroy smile: hybrid, syncretic, cosmopolitan, transcultural, creole, heteroculture, and, especially, diaspora. <br /><em>Against Race</em>'s contentious contention is that even in their "weak" cultural forms ("mild ethnocentrisms" identity politics, discourses of racial pride), the first frowned-upon cluster of words are philosophically on the path that leads to a bunch of even nastier words: ultranationalism, fraternalism, militarism, fascism, ethnic cleansing. <br /><br /><em>Against Race</em> is going to upset a lot of people. With admirable courage and forthrightness, Gilroy dismisses race as a quasi-biological mystification, a toxic concept that, even when turned around into black-is-beautiful pride or made the basis of resistance, has basically fucked up our thought. Railing against the "cheap pseudo-solidarities" offered by ethnic loyalty on the grounds that they effectively terminate politics (in the sense of coalition, mediation, negotiation, alliance), Gilroy aims to discredit what he calls "race-thinking" or "raciology". He aims to analyse the history of race as a concept in the same way that Michel Foucault interrogated "sexuality" as discourse and discipline. Gilroy traces the way the near-simultaneous birth of "rationality" and "nationality" at the start of the modern era led to pseudo-scientific mergers of superstition and logic such as eugenics and theories of racial decline through miscegenation. Imperialism, Darwinism and the emergence of ecology, and the growing importance of what Gilroy calls (after Foucault) "biopolitics," created the context for ideas of the people or volk as a quasi-biological organism rooted in specific territory. This in turn led to the Nazis's demand for lebensraum and the literalisation of their slogan "blood and soil"--where the soil is soaked in the blood of the original but now exterminated inhabitants of the conquered territory. <br /><br />What is going to offend a lot of people is the way that Gilroy shows that fascism is not the special genius of the German people, or even the white race. He reveals not just alarming parallels but strange alliances and mutual respect pacts between black separatist groups and white supremacists. The British National Party actually demonstrated in support of a Bermudan Rastafarian who wanted the UK government to fund his "return" to Ghana. That sounds bizarre, but if you listen to the Seventies roots reggae of groups like The Congos and Israel Vibration, you will hear the word "repatriation" being sung with disconcerting yearning and anticipation. Even more startling is the story of how Marcus Garvey met with the Ku Klux Klan in 1922 and concluded that they shared similar ideals of purifying and standarizing the race. Gilroy dubs this syndrome "fraternalist mirroring"--blood-brotherhoods who are enemies but who respect each other as honest representatives of their race, and actually even admire each other's brutality. Garvey's United Negro Improvement Assocation anticipated the European fascists with their use of uniform and drill. In 1937, Garvey boasted "we were the first Fascists... Mussolini copied fascism from me. " Long after the defeat of the great dictactors, his son Marcus Garvey Jnr called in 1974 for "African lebensraum" and talked about "African National Socialism." What connects these depressing examples is a fundamental nation-building narrative, argues Gilroy, that goes back to Moses and underpins the careers of Hitler, Farrakhan, and Milosevic to name just a few: the shepherding of a weak, scattered, decadent but "chosen" people, by a messiah-like leader, towards its manifest destiny and/or promised land. <br /><br />Against all these different manifestations of "ethnic absolutism", with their tendencies towards authoritarianism, militarism, and pageants of primordial kinship, Gilroy marshalls the concept of diaspora. As developed in <em>The Black Atlantic</em> (his book about the cultural traffic connecting West Africa, the Caribbean, the Southern USA and the U.K), diasporic identity has nothing to do with chosen exile or mere migration; Gilroy stresses the crucial dimension added by the forced nature of the dispersal. It might seem odd to valorize such cataclysmic traumas as the scattering of the Jews or slavery, but Gilroy--himself a child of the Black Atlantic--values the end result: a kind of subject-in-process, neither totally assimilated to the new culture nor able to preserve the old folkways. In turn, diasporic peoples unavoidably transform the cultures they pass through; they unsettle as they settle. London, whose popular culture is a mish-mash of Jamaican, Indian and imported Black American music and style, is one example; the entirety of Brazilian culture is another, where the ideal of <em>mesticagem</em> (mixing) was enshrined as state policy only a few decades after slavery was abolished in the late Nineteenth Century. <br /><br />Unfortunately the weakest parts of <em>Against Race</em> are those concerned with the play of hybridities and essentialisms in modern pop culture. While you've got to admire his guts in dissing current rap as mere "pseudo-rebellion" and appreciate his chutzpah in using Luther "2 Live Crew'" Campbell's professed debt to lecherous Brit comedian Benny Hill as proof that hip hop is not a purely black artform, Gilroy's analyses of contemporary rap and R&B are riddled with strained over-interpretations, non-sequiturs, and arguments that trail off frustratingly. There's also a fogey-ish slant to his repetitious complaints about the video age and its privileging of image over sound, or his misinformed identification of sampling and programmed rhythm with musical de-skilling (no, Paul, it's just a new form of digital-not-manual virtuosity). Despite his nostalgia for the bespectacled seriousness of Curtis Mayfield and the fluent fingers of bassist Marcus Miller, he does acknowledge that it's precisely in the domain of computerized dance music that the praxis of "multiculture" is at its most vital--clubs, raves, pirate radio, are the real Rock Against Racism, he argues. Indeed, rave's implicity anti-fascist bodypolitics can be traced all the back to the secret parties in Nazi Germany where "niggerjew" jazz was played on gramophones rather than by live bands. The sound-not-visuals oriented hybridity of underground dance contrasts with the "specular" orientation of "corporate sponsored multiculture", where imagery of blackness as vitality, health, beauty and physical potency circulate in music videos, sports, fashion, and advertising, and negritude has been transformed "from a badge of insult into an increasingly powerful but still very limited signifier of prestige". <br /><br />As Gilroy concedes, some of the race-thought eradication he wants to see is already being implemented by globalisation. But he doesn't really take on the quite powerful notion that ideas of local tradition and ethnic identity might be useful resources for resistance, if only in the mechanical sense of a drag or recalcitrant counterweight to capitalism's tendency to dissolve all forms of solidarity and difference. This in turns opens up another set of problems that Gilroy acknowledges but doesn't attempt to resolve: how to avoid the kind of homogenisation caused by globalisation without being insular, Luddite, nativist; how to avoid the weak and banal forms of rootless cosmpolitanism in which "everything becomes... blended into an impossibly even consistency" . The problem is that Nietzche was right: a fierce sense of identity and an us-versus-them worldview creates a certain kind of will, vehemence, and certainty that people find attractive and energizing. Which is why, as the old ethnic, regional and religious tribalisms fade, new ones keep emerging around culture and consumption--new volks like death-metal fans, snowboarders, Abercrombie and Fitch wearers. Maybe, for all Gilroy's hopes, there's actually an innate and almost pre-cultural instinct towards tribalism--look at the way children instinctively form gangs and show hostility towards the non-same. Humanism and tolerance have to be learned, they're part of the civilising process (which is why Nietzche was against civilisation and regarded the "will to stupidity" as an evolutionary advantage). Fascism and ethnocentrism can also draw upon all the irrational romance of the archaic and mythological--the seductive sagas of decline and rebirth, the resurrection of lost imperial powers and the inauguration of new eras. In response, Gilroy imagines abandoning the mythopoeic allure of antiquity and instead relocating utopia in the future: a "heterocultural, postanthropological and cosmopolitan yet-to-come". <br /><br />In the end, the grand problem at the heart of <em>Against Race</em> is how to reinvent "that perilous pronoun "we" without lapsing into the inclusion/exclusion effect, into us/them psychology with all its consolations and intoxications. Gilroy's answer is to wield a bigger "We" that will hopefully subsume the smaller, squabbling "we's"--a species-level "strategic universalism" that repairs the shattering damage caused by raciology to the notion of the human. Following his hero Franz Fanon, the great anti-colonialist thinker, he wants to renew Europe's humanist project and simultaneously "purge and redeem" the Enlightement of its darkside (imperialism, racism, the coupling of reason and superstition that culminated in the scientific slaughter of the concentration camps). It's a noble but somewhat woolly ideal, and it's ironic that Gilroy takes heart from the way white and black unite to fight malevolent extra-terrrestials in movies like <em>Independence Day</em> and <em>Men In Black</em>, without realising that this is just racism on the cosmic scale, war against monstrous Others that truly are alien. <br /><br />Weirdly , <em>Against Race</em> feels both overlong and sketchy. Passages of amazing lucidity and original insight alternate with garbled meanders where Gilroy seems perpetually on the verge of actually saying something. He also has an annoying habit of ending sections with long series of questions that propose fruitful areas of further enquiry, which only serves to frustrate the reader by making you think 'well, why <em>didn't</em> you enquire further?' Gilroy's prose demeanour can also be off-putting--a controlled simmer of indignation beneath the cool Sidney Poitier-like surface of elegant professionalism, revealed in odd verbal tics of squeamishness like his use of phrases like "unwholesome ideology" and "unsavory political phenomena" to describe things he disapproves of, like the Afrikaaner Voortrekkers. Other rhetorical gestures have the flavor of the lectern--lots of "I want to ask" or "I want to argue" , constant admonishments not to overlook or pass over too quickly the role of X in Y, calls for vigilance and diligence, soundings of notes of caution. Schoolmarmy tone and what Gilroy himself calls "my own wilfully dislocated argument" aside, <em>Against Race </em>is a brave and compelling book.SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38310548.post-91550725053033315192008-03-04T10:15:00.000-08:002008-03-04T10:26:03.156-08:00<strong>[<em>Bring the Noise</em> deleted scene #51]<br /><br />JAY-Z, Vol. 3... Life and Times of S.Carter <br />DMX,<em>And Then There Was X</em> <br />JUVENILE, <em>Tha G-Code</em><br />THE LOX, <em>We Are The Streets </em><br /><em>Uncut</em>, May 2000<br /><br />by Simon Reynolds</strong><br /><br /><br />Critics love lost causes. It’s almost part of the job description. At a certain point, though, doggedly insisting “this should be pop, not that chart crap” gets counterproductive, blinding you to vital things going on in the world of the stuff that sells. It’s particularly problematic with rap, a megabuck entertainment industry these days, but still motored by the cruel fluctuations of popular desire, aka “the streets”. Predictably, last year’s critics polls endorsed such “lost causes” as the Roots and Prince Paul/Handsome Boy Modelling School, and overlooked huge-selling records by DMX and Eve, Lil Wayne and Hot Boys, despite the fact that the two labels/clans to which these artists are affiliated (Ruff Ryders and Cash Money) are at the forefront of a creative upsurge in hardcore rap. Yo, reality check: a bitter pill to swallow, but the truth is that Nineties rap was shaped not by <em>3 Feet High</em> or <em>Fear of A Black Planet</em> (twin totems of the critic-cherished “lost golden age of 1988-91), but by NWA’s <em>Efil4zaggin</em> and Notorious BIG’s <em>Ready To Die</em>. Similarly, the directness of Tupac has proved far more influential than any Wu-Tang clansman’s virtuoso encryption skillz. <br /><br />These new platinum-selling monsters by Ruff Ryders’ DMX, Cash Money’s Juvenile, and Jay-Z (don of his own dynasty, Roc-A-Fella) completely shred the tired critical line: major label = formula and indie (aka “undieground”) = inventive. Take Jay-Z's single "Do It Again": Rockwilder's production as harsh and mechanistic as a track by Jeff Mills, just a melody-free spasm of sub-bass, a nagging blurt of computer-in-distress bleeps, and an asymmetrical loop of punishing kicks and snares. Not for nothing does the track start with the warning: “it’s about to get real <strong>ugly</strong> in here”. Street rap like Jay-Z’s is unpretty in another sense. Like the Swans circa <em>Greed</em>, the lyrics--an interminable catalogue of boasts, threats and flaunted wealth--offer an X-Ray view of capitalism’s primary drives of will-to-power, alpha-male display and ravenous appetite. But where Gira’s vision was a Beckett-style dehumanized hell of domination/submission, Jay-Z and Juvenile make like they actually <em>enjoy</em> living like this. Lyrically, “Do It Again” revels in the playa's nightly cycle of clubbing, drinking, pulling, and taking the ho home: "6-AM I be digging her out/6-15 I be kicking her out". But the music (<em>tres</em> Swans, actually) makes it sound like a treadmill grind. <br /><br />As superthugs go, DMX is the most interesting, because he doesn't glamorize the gangsta lifestyle. Produced by Ruff Ryders chief soundboy Swizz Beatz, "One More Road To Cross" has the accursed, burdened heft of Blacks Sabbath and Flag--a perfect fit for DMX's stoic description of a carefully planned liquor store heist that goes bloodily wrong. "The Professional" is a bleak glimpse into the mind of a hired assassin ("Shit ain't go too well/THAT'S MY LIFE/Know I'm going to hell/THAT'S MY LIFE") while the betrayal-and-retribution themed "Here We Go Again" starts with the insuperably fatigued murmur "Same old shit, dog/Just a different day". This vision of thug life as agony, repetition, and endurance is communicated as much through DMX's hoarse rasping timbre (pure Ozzy/Rollins) and his flow (alternating between pay-close-attention-this-is-hard-earned-knowledge-I'm-sharing slow to rapid-fire blurts like he's got too much pain to cram into the rhyme-scheme's stanzas.)<br /><br />The Ruff Ryders camp has its moments of exuberance, like the rowdy call-and-response clamor and bruising bass-bounce of The Lox's "Wild Out" . It’s almost exhilirating enough to make you forget socially irresponsible couplets like "if a nigga step on your goddamn shoes/fuck him up/WILD OUT!!!"--virtually incitement to over-act to any perceived insult or threat. Lyrically, no two ways about it, street rap is pure evil: spiritually bankrupt, in thrall to false consciousness (delusions like “crime pays” and “some gangstas stay on top for ever”) and basically no advance on the black nihilism and commodity-fetishism of Schooly D circa 1986’s “PSK” and “Gucci Time”. <br /><br />Word-wise the creativity resides in the endless, black-humorous twists on murder/money/misogyny. Jay-Z’s OG shtick pukes up some of his wittiest wordplay. In “Do It Again” he’s so iced-out with diamond-encrusted jewelry , his “wrists’s frostbit minus two degrees”, while “S. Carter” turns the rapper’s real name into the jeering chorus: “S dot carter/you must try harder/competition is NADA!”<br /><br />Juvenile’s old-head-on-young-shoulders, worldly and slight-weary persona is much easier to warm to than Jay-Z’s richer-than-thou condescension. It helps, too, that Cash Money’s trackmaster, Mannie Fresh, is rap’s most creative producer right now, merging the joyous electro-style bass-boom and ear-tickling triple-time hi-hats of New Orleans bounce with incongruous stuff--baroque pseudo-classical synth-melodies, jazz-fusion guitar licks, techno stabs and textures. Fresh used to make house tracks with Chicago pioneer Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley. There’s been a bizarre convergence between rave and rap in the last year: Jay-Z’s "Snoopy Track" sees Timbaland blaring Numan-meets-Beltram synth-bombast, while his Swizz-produced “Girls Best Friend” has the off-kilter lurch of 4 Hero’s early breakbeat hardcore. <br /><br />On the latest Ruff Ryder product, the Lox’s album, though, Swizz’s sample-free digital synth sound (theme-from-<em>Rocky</em>-style triumphal fanfares, spindly videogame semi-tunes, atonal keyboard trills) is sounding a little threadbare from over-use. The Lox don’t help with lines as blunt as “I turn your face into pudding”, “I’ma make a nigga leak”, and the niggativity nadir of call-that-a-worldview? couplet “all I know is drugs and guns and plenty of weed/and that bitches suck dick and niggas’ll bleed”. <br /><br />The trouble with hardcore rap is that while producers keep coming up with sonic surprises, the MCs face a tougher challenge: how many different ways can you say “I don’t give a fuck”?SIMON REYNOLDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282478701882900354noreply@blogger.com0