Get It On -Josef Fritzl Goes Disco

Nice Picture- Shit Record

Half an hour of my time I will never get back, review for 3 Bar Fire....

Rasmus Faber-Where We Belong

Farplane

Somewhere in the deepest bowels of Hades lies a “nitetclub”, little known to all but the most cretinous of sinners.

In one room the entertainment is provided by the worst remains of indie trust fund rockers, pumping out insipid guitar anthems to moronic middle aged sinners; the other rooms bounces to the sound of ‘funky house’, and it is here that Rasmus Faber plays on rotation, for eternity……

A turbulent mix of ‘dance music’ and R&B, funky house manages to strip the only worthwhile elements of both genres and distil them down to a base torridness of plodding beats and detached vocal clichés.

Rasmus Faber has seeming picked up this baton, turning his attentions to creating “Where We Belong” an over polished, under nourished collection of vacuous funky dance pop.

It’s difficult to pick out highlights, as a succession of female vocalists implore you to ‘get down’, and ‘get with it’ in tones so detached they appear to be singing through from inside a locked bank vault.

Meanwhile on another continent Mr Faber pumps the identi house grooves, occasionally flecked with Latin percussion or over filtered pianos for that ‘authentic’ vibe.

These ‘tunes’ are destined to turn up on a double pack mixed CD adored with scantily clad females, or pumped through inadequate sound systems in suburban wine bars for perpetuity.

File next to the smell of burning flesh.

Toby Hemming

You know the score.....

After flicking through the superb cartoontastic Suburban Base cover art yesterday, I also came across a new (ish) post on music critic Simon Reynolds blissblog. Reynolds is participating in an event called The Hardcore Continuum, linking to a selection of his writings in uber music geek magazine Wire.

Reynolds is one of the only writers to discuss the idea of a UK hardcore heritage, most famously though his book Energy Flash, where he argues a case of UK rave and hardcore music as a genuine artistic subculture. In the process Reynolds intellectualises it with a critique that draws as much upon academic critical theory as rude boy ramblings.

The articles are great, and its bloody good to see a considered approach taken to music that doesn’t traditionally fit into the four white boys playing the blues school of rock journalism.

However there is a stage where it’s tempting to criticise Reynolds as slightly missing the point. Talking about The Aesthetic of Disappearance, in relation to a home grown youth culture does go someway to legitimising the backroom knob twiddling of the network of misspent youths who made it happen. However, the music has existed and evolved precisely because of its lack of media spotlight and legitimisation.

At what stage does a critic like Reynolds become the cultural big game hunter, on safari in the badlands of the jungle?

DAVE NODZ- SubBase

Check out the superb Woebot blog for an online exhibition of cover art from 90's hardcore/jungle pioneers Suburban Base. Apart from being visually stunning, the art captures a real moment in time, and sums up the tunes inside perfectly. Its blindingly obvious now to spot the hip hop and cartoon infulences in both Dave Nodz cover art and the rolling ragga and beats influenced scene. However at the time the whole thing was a big infulential Fuck Off to the tastemakers who ruled clubland with a Gaultier clad iron fist..

Tomorrows World

Who's trying to tell me that the 70's had no style.......??

Clip from the futureproof Tomorrow's World.

M.M.M.M.Mantronix.....

Digging in the crates, well the cardboard box under the stairs this morning, looking for something to play in the car on a dark rainy morning I came across this.

Always loved a bit of Mantronix and this album in terms of energy and production detail is a blinder. Innovator, legend etc. are big shouts but Kurtis Mantronix is one of the few people to genuinely alter the path of electronic music.

Schooled in old school hip hop and electro from the school of Arthur Baker and Marley Marl, Mantronix pushed it as far as they could; combining peerless studio production techniques with the traditional electronic sounds of YMO, Kraftwerk and Neu and most tellingly the sonic sculptures of dub reggae. In fact Kurtis has a Jamaican /Canadian heritage, and it’s the simplicity and space in his sound that echoes the rhythmic mastery of dub that sets his work apart.

At the back end of the eighties Mantronix dropper rapper Mc Tee and embarked on a more club friendly direction, releasing proto swingbeat classic, “Got To Have Your Love” . It appears the trail soon went dead as he hung up his slipmats and drifted into obscurity before being rediscovered by London Soul Jazz collective in the 21st Century.

Here’s one of Kurtis el Khaleel aka Kurtis Mantronix’s finest moments:

Mantronix: Who is it? (Dub)

Acid Man

As I havent written any reviews in ages (boooo), thought I would higlight this excellent article I came across in FACT Magazine- essential reading for disco head nodders

It comes from the fantastic German Best Before Disco fanzine. I don't neccesarily agree with the idea that acid house is 'funkier' than disco- but its bloody welll written, so worth a look.

Disco vs Acid House - Tuesday, 20 January 2009

To me, disco music becomes interesting by the late '70s when producers started to tear down disco's "wall of sound" and got rid of all those sickening orchestral sections, mostly made up of string and horn compositions. Not only the reduction to the bare musical essentials, but also the concept of automatization was necessary to help disco become fresher.

Back in 1975, during the production of Donna Summer's 'Love To Love You Baby', Giorgio Moroder advised his drummer Keith Forseth to play the drums in perfect sync with a Wurlitzer Sideman - the first commercially available electronic drum-machine, which was made in 1959. While the rather crappy Sideman sounds (created from vacuum tubes!) were not used in the song, Moroder's approach was clear: to seek for funk in a dry, steady machine-like beat. The bass drum was recorded very loud and with a distinct punch and although the track runs on only 96 bpm (a term that came up in the disco era btw.) it might mark the beginning of a new technique that soon became essential for dance music production.

While house music adopted disco's 4-to-the-floor rhythm structure and thus created an apparent connection, the sound aesthetics slowly became more abstract and futuristic. A Ron Hardy Warehouse mix from the mid-'80s is loaded with edits of cheesy, ornamental Disco tracks, suddenly cut through by minimal pumping House rhythms that sound like they slipped in from a wormhole. One wonders why wunderkind DJ Ron Hardy hadn't just dismissed Disco completely after house music was born. From the view of a DJ or dance music producer, the focus on pure rhythm rather than on opulent orchestration should be a logical consequence.

However, the advent of programmable drum machines like the gritty sample-based Linn LM-1 and the Roland TR-808 and 909, with their archetypical pounding bassdrum circuitry provided the necessary equipment to make the crowd "jack". Soon, rhythmical paradigms were broken up and snares and handclaps were put all over the place while never loosing their quantized tightness.

I feel that acid house finally liberated dance music from individual-related live music and erased the reference to disco music as far as possible. With acid, atonality found its way into house and the snatchy rhythms coupled with the staccatos and portamentos of the 303 are a perfect match. I wouldn't argue that Acid House is more intelligent than disco - it might even be more stupid - but it's surely closer to catharsis and much more funky!


Suggested Listening

Chip E. - 'Time to Jack' (Gotta Dance Records, 1985) [above]
Hercules - '7 Ways' (Dance Mania, 1986)
Mr. Lee - 'House This House' (Trax Records, 1987)
Tyree - 'Acid Crash' (Rockin House Music, 1988)
Gherkin Jerks - 'Acid Ingestion' (Gherkin Records, 1988)
Armando - '151' (Warehouse Records, 1988)
Mike Dunn - 'Magic Feet' (Westbrook Records, 1988)
Two Of A Kind - 'Acid Bitch' (West Madison Records, 1988)
Fast Eddie - 'Acid Thunder' (DJ International, 1988)
Spanky - 'Acid Bass' (Trax Records, 1989)


Roglok [dsico-fanzine.com]