Sunday, February 27, 2011

the filth and the fury

interesting debate at the Quietus between Rory Gibbs and Joe Muggs about the future of dubstep / crossover dilemmas

well i never thought I'd type these words... but i... find myself... in.... agreement........... with ................. Muggs

see when Gibbs complains:

"It feels like with a lot of the chainsaw side of the genre, producers, DJs – and, I suppose, crowds – are after 'filth', the hardest, nastiest sounds possible. It pushes music to the point where it becomes totally sexless, totally lacking in groove and soul. And though you might say it's punk as fuck, it's pretty hard to deny that there was still something sexy about 70s punk rock's defiant posturing and anti-establishmentarianism, which then later became further manifest in post-punk's obsession with groove. That sexiness is lacking in music by someone like Borgore"

i would say well, hmmm, sexiness was never Priority #1 with rave... UKG and 2step is the aberration here in terms of its amorousness... if you look at hardcore, jungle, grime, early dubstep... it's about a lot of things... darkness and daftness, aggression and euphoria, full-tilt fierceness and spacy psychedelic production mindfuck, spiritual vibes and impertinent wit... but sexiness? that's fairly low on the list of attributes/concerns/virtues with this tradition across its two decades-plus existence... indeed one of the innovations of rave was to uncouple dancing and sexuality (E obviously a big factor here)... (and actually the same could be said for punk, it uncoupled rock and sex through muting the blues basis of the music)

now this tune is ruff, and i dig the way the switch-up between manic (and Manix-y) italo-piano-vamping happy hardcore inna 94 style and slow-and-low flatus-of-Satan wobble-vom affirms both the continuum-ness and the lumpen-ludic strain within that tends to get,repeatedly, written out of it