Flippin' heck that Jaxx album's a bit of a flailing over-egged pudding isn't it? I suppose if your founding premise is "more is more" then it's a bit hard to back away from that or scale it down. The record only really gets enjoyable for me at the point where most reviewers seems to think it starts to flag, 2/3 the way through when it calms down a lot and empties out a bit. Otherwise it's just way crammed and fizzing with whizzing clever bits. It's like they're trying to throw the wildest grooviest party ever with the most eclectic soundtrack and the most unexplected guests (well the Siouxsie track is great admittedly), but it's all a bit strained and strenous. For Basement Jaxx now just about the most surprising and radical thing they could do would be an album entirely consisting of ballads.

Likewise the new OutKast, which I've haven't heard, but somehow just the idea of such a sonic banquet causes all appetite to fade. Plus at this point the very concept of them seems fatigued in advance--that sense (which began to stick them fatally circa Aquemini, which I never cared for) of OutKast as somehow improving, for hip hop, and for the listener. Stankonia, I confess, is one of those records that got ruined for me by the reviewing process; by the time I was done, I'd used up all possible pleasure I could ever derive from it. Such a rich, readable, celebrate-able, eminently endorseable pop-text, and yet as fruity and extravagant and audaciously over-reaching and androgyny/sexual-ambiguity drenched and stankadelic as their music is, it's so hard not to produce an appreciation that doesn't have the faint taint of piety (I certainly failed w/ Stankonia) although SFJ at Slate almost manages and nearly resuscitates my lapsed Outkast-fandom. OutKast have such impeccable sonic/psycho-sexual/cultural/etc credentials, and it seems perverse and churlish to not to join in the applause.... but they're starting to seem like a sort of Fugees of Crunk, donchathink?

It's the Prince syndrome, really, with them and Jaxx too. Adored the Purple One so intensely for so long back in the day but it's been a small aeon since I've felt even the slightest inkling to listen to him. Prince knew about this syndrome very early, he wrote that song on 1999 called "All the Critics Love U In New York", right?

Fascinating stuff in that Hyperdub/Plasticman interview about the power shift away from djs towards mcs. Mr Plastic sez:
"Your tune could be catapulted as the biggest tune in the scene because the MC has spat a certain lyric on top of it, just by chance…. The Djs at Eski [sole Grime rave of note Eskimo Dance]
are only as big as who is spittin’ on their set. The Djs don’t get rated so much for their mixing skills…. there wasn’t so much of a reaction when a tune dropped but rather when an MC dropped a lyric. It was just like 8mile... ”

new and notable blog (by Ronan of ILM fame) Must-Try-Harder weighs in on Mr Scruff. And somebody else also told me Scruff was a blindin' deejay...