A question I've been wanting to ask for a while now: does anybody else find both the
concept and the reality of Katy B as boring as I do?
And here's an answer, sort of - Luka, blogging legend, pops up on Dissensus celebrating what he calls Rinse FM Pop.
Into which category Katy B and Disclosure - although Luka doesn't mention either - fall, alongside Clean Bandit, Duke
Dumont, Jess Glynne, Gorgon City, Rudimental, and a host of other UK Top 5 occupants of the last year or so.
Luka:
"this stuff is like someone asked me to list all my favourite records
then they listened to them sort of semi digested them and churned out these
amazing records that amalgamate them all so how can i not love it. its like it
was made exclusively for my benefit.... like
dance music but turned into proper pop that is perfect for daytime radio"
But that’s
the problem for me with all this stuff...
Such a
cautious composite, a puree of historical high points
... the power
of past breakthroughs utilized, redeployed, but never built on or extended, let
alone matched
But this angle
of animosity is anticipated by Luka, fended off by the deft rhetorical move of flipping a weakness into a strength. He sounds some Retromania-ish
notes, except that he sees not the glass half-empty but the glass brimming over with
post-historical, atemporal-and-blithely-unconcerned-about-it poptasticness...
"its not a shameless pastiche of old
house though is it. the internet is a huge dressing up box
"i'll put on that dubstep bass, that rave piano, that
hardcore breakbeat, that garage vocal treatment
"like ten years ago when i first started seeing young people
dressing 90s and they would have a grunge shirt, a bomber jacket and cap eazy e
would wear... all the individual items would have been worn in the 90s but
never by the same person and certainly not in the same outfit"
and earlier in the thread he started:
"pop music that was so hip, this amalgamation of all my
favourite things. made me really proud of the children of today...
"its come to terms with what it is. post time and space
music. internet people. stopped having a crisis of conscience about it.
"you have to know where you are. what your historical moment
is."
Fair enough. And in fact I know perfectly well the feeling Luka
got from listening to daytime Rinse FM during a stint at a shit job.... it's the same sensation I've gotten from listening to American pop radio and commercial rap radio these past four years in LA. The feeling is basically the surprise and relief an old
man gets when he finds he can still fall in love with pop music....
"i listen to this and i feel like im 19 again well
powerful i wish i was part of this generation they are well optimistic and on
to it"
(Meanwhile the same syndrome is going on with the post-pirate underground
– the atemporal but increasingly undeniable freshness and force of deep tech: a spruced-up, bass-intensified and digi-brite renovation of the
jackin’ frenzy of early house)