I wrote a thing, for a journal called Loops, which was put together by the excellent Richard King at Domino Records and Lee Brackstone at Faber & Faber (who got me brain-bent at Green Man Festival shortly after its publication).
I did a mix. Where the previous ones I’ve done have mainly had a theme or concept to them, this one is just “here’s some bang up to the minute club tracks”.
A couple of weeks ago I took part in a panel discussion hosted by The Wire, talking to Kode 9, Simon Reynolds and Lisa Blanning about “Aesthetics, Innovation and Tradition” - which kind of amounted to “is there anything new in rave music, and if so what is it and where does it come from?”
With each shift in British and global electronic music culture, a myriad but finite set of influences get shuffled about, some occurring for the first time, some returning to prominence, others disappearing completely. But certain of those influences abide through the decades, whether that be soul, psychedelia or electro. And electro’s presence seems to be as strong as ever
I still find it odd how few people are documenting the history of rave culture and music, at least in relation to other comparable movements. The 60s pop explosion and counterculture have been picked apart in acres of print
This mix relates partly to what I said the other week about grime and partly to what I said about smooth soul. It also features the first of many things I’ll be doing with artists I met in Brazil this month, in its intro track by the outstanding Anna-Anna.
I’ve been thinking about acid, and house music, and electro, how they all fit together, how they are retro and how they are modern. I’ll do a notebook piece about it later, but here’s a DJ mix I did (on Ableton, mind - my mixing skills are much untidier than this “live”) while I was thinking about it.
I’ve had a lot of contact with the new school of instrumental grime recently, and it’s an area rife with possibility. It’s going to be absolutely fascinating seeing where it goes over the next year and whether it can capitalise on the opportunities presented or whether it will (no pun intended) shoot itself in the foot. What’s clear, though, is that it is rambunctious party music and buzzing with innovatory spirit. I’m not even going to mention riots or inner city anger.
This weekend I’m going to Camp Bestival, dressing as a sinister monk and playing music for the Kids’ Disco Silent Hour on Saturday evening. THEN the following weekend I will be bringing the absolute best in bass to the Big Chill, as - together with Richie “Slugraver” Rundle - I will be helping out with Tom Middleton’s Sound Of The Cosmos tent.
It’s come to my attention that in my “Slow it Down” post I pretty much missed out one area in which the tempo drop is very much in evidence at the moment: slow HOUSE music. Quite an oversight really as my review of Lukid’s “Chord” - which is contains some dramatically slowed-down and abstracted house - in the January 2011 issue of Wire was the seed for the ideas in “Slow it Down”.
