Nick Gutterbreaks, back from his summer hols, jolly good on noise, and he dunnarf make the Pan Sonic record sound alluring. I'm a little wounded he chose to cut out the Stud Bros piece on Front 242 but not my noise thinkpiece. I wouldn't call Front 242 "noise" --just sort of unpleasant. One of those groups it was kinda fun to write about and use as a theory springboard, but not necessarily listen to. (Although the Studs actually did listen, avidly, to all that stomping stentorian stuff-- Ben's knee would pump furiously. But maybe that was just the over the counter slimming pills). All that Euro Body stuff, I found it incredibly hard to dance too. You could only stamp your feet to it, which is incredibly tiring. Of course EBM then turned into the glorious Belgian hardcore (see below) but what they did was bring in just enough of a house feel, a kick/hi-hat swing to pull at your whole body not just your feet.

Apropos of nothing really, here's Green slagging off noise again. This could be ammunition for the pro-pop position actually:
"It's easy to end up in a kind of infantile anarchism, if you're not watchful...although it's arguably
difficult to point a way out of that...that anarchic f*** it completely attitude...But I think it's such an arid, sterile place to end up! There's a half-assed, ill-thought-out proclivity to drift romantically towards the margins, in a juvenile, narcissistic way, which you find in some quarters of the indie scene... "And having been on these margins of convention myself, I can testify that is no greater power or truth or radicalism there...which is not to say I won't revisit them, or that history might put me back there. But to seek them out and install yourself on them, amass some sort or armament of difference for yourself, mark out an identity by choosing from the catalogue of stylistic and theoretical positions with attendant aesthetic preferences..., well, it's just a trip...I couldn't make any claims for it."

Also apropros of nothing really, I must say I think it EXTREMELY ironic that Green, while making that last confused album with all the US undie-hop rappers on it, was actually living in East London, chez his sister I believe, Hackney/Dalston if I recall correctly. This is late 90s we're talkinga bout. So he would have been right in the heartland of 2step, right as it was happening. Given what he'd last been doing musically--all those early 90s tracks that melded his lover's rock voice with the ragga grain of Shabba Ranks and Sweetie Irie, covers of the Beatles and such--this must go down as one of the all-time Great Missed Opportunities, On Yer Bleeding Doorstep and Ya Missed It, in pop history. Green used to go on about how there's a "kind of criminality", a violence, to 'sweetness". 2step would have been perfect for him.