Amazingly detailed evocative stuff here from Robin at Undercurrent on jungle's dangerbass--this in the middle of an equally excellent thing on Dizzee (yet more proof of A/ how he's really yet to be exhausted, discursively, which is pretty amazing really, and b/ how something about Dizzee-as-topic makes writers raise their game).

The Name Game

Well, if it’s not going to be Grime, I’d almost prefer Eski. At least it sounds new and strange. So what if it’s totally bound to that one-man-genre Wiley--there’s precedents for a brandname becoming the preeminent term for a whole genus--look at the way people in the UK say “I’m going to Hoover the carpet” even if the vacuum cleaner they’re using’s a different make.

As for “garage”, well why not take the anti-neologistic stance even further? How about “hardcore” for real continuum continuity. Or ‘Nuum Beat. (Only kidding).

(Angus's point about “garage” preserving the nonexistent link between Larry Levan and Wiley is cute but.… well you know there is a scene and a sound at stake here you know!)

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what any of us decide to call it or not-call it-- the scene will decide. Wish it would hurry up.

That to me is the most intriguing thing: the failure of the scene to come up with its own genre term. It doesn’t seem a particularly encouraging sign.

The semantic vacillation and indeterminacy is actually hurting the scene, holding it back, I think. Genre names, when spontaneously generated from within a scene as the condensation of popular desire, have a powerful centripetal force. You can track a genre coming through (the shift from jungle tekno in 92 to jungalistic hardcore in 93 to JUNGLE in 94) and feel a subculture achieving a sense of its own identity and purpose. The name becomes a rallying cry, a recruiting tool. Names, well-chosen names, are semantic weapons for storming the barricades of the media, announcing yourself to the wider world. Loud and proud. We're here, get used to it.

The inability of the G**** scene to name itself suggests both a lack of will to power and, more worryingly, a lack of internal cohesion. It's like it's simultaneously withdrawn, insular, yet paradoxically fractured, fractious. A centrifugal tendency is at work that is really undermining its impact.

In terms of outside coverage, it’s quite comical the way newspaper pieces have to say “the music that is known variously as V W X Y Z” or “no one’ s quite decided the name for this new genre yet but…”. In his Dizzee piece in the New York Times, Kelefa Sanneh listed about six synonyms for Diz’s scene (including “gutter garage”, which never had any real currency outside my head! Well good to know who one of Blissblog's readers is anyway).

In terms of G****’s internal politics, the non-consensus over a name seems to reflect its excessively Balkanized crew-against-crew territoriality. That’s got to have some relationship with the poor sales of the music. The whole dubplates/specials thing, that JA sound system-descended strategy of keeping your own music tightly to your collective chest so that punters have to go to the dance if they want to hear it AT ALL (or tune into that specific pirate, even that specific crew show)…. it’s been taken way too far. The dubplate thing, once so exciting, has now ventured along its own axis right into a Zone of Fruitless Intensification. Even a lot of people in London must feel: if you're going to make it that hard to get hold of your music, I’m not going to bother. Presumably most people just tape it off the pirates and then by the time the vinyl’s come out a small aeon later, they can’t be bothered, they’ve moved onto to something else. That's if it ever comes out at all. Hence the syndrome Matt noted, where sales of 1000 are astronomical, the cue for incredulity. Shit, I can remember when Deep Blue's “Helicopter Tune” sounds 22 thousand, when a medium-level jungle tune sold 5 or 6000.

The way it’s going, I can almost see G*** turning into something like the NZ noise scene, lathe-cut editions of 25. Except it’s actually easier to get hold of Dead C-type music in the rest of the world!

Following this train of thought has made me feel quite gloomy re. G***, Eski, whateverthafuckitwantstobecalled. Although people on the ground tell me that my 2step Revival/Reinvention fantasy is just that, a fantasy, I do think that some kind of swing the other way is inevitable--towards extroversion, groove, inviting people in, openheartedness. Only three year and a half years ago the 2step generation rule da nation. It owned UK pop music. Now it’s shunted itself into a skrewface corner, clutching its shrinking pie. If experience shows us anything, it’s that there’s some kind of Internal Pendulum inside the Pirate Continuum, whenever the music goes too far along one axis (into a Zone of Fruitless Intensification), it’ll swing back violently the other direction. It’s a sort of self-correcting device. G**** is on the edge of the ZFI, maybe already some distance into it, on multiple axes --clunky/cruddy-soundquality/non-danceable/words>music/testosterone/dark'n'moody -- and it’s easy to imagine it whizzing back the other into swing/deluxe-gloss/groovy/music>words/oestrogen/light'n'happy. The ‘Nuum’s dormant/latent House genes will surely reactivate.

Have also to second Matt's comments about D Double E's "mui mui" noise: "“Birds In Da Sky” = most heinous omission from my Faves 2003 and if I’d done a Fave Discrete Sounds of 2003 list "mui mui" would have been in the Top Five.

How about Unfave Discrete Sounds of 2003? Hands down #1 would be that bit where the singer in The Darkness squeals "geetar" just before the guitar solo come in during "A Thing Called Love". Phenotext to genotext, semiotically and symbolically, that is one repulsive little moment there. The aural equivalent of their thumbs-up gesture. It reminds me of when Robbie Williams does that self-undercutting eye-rolling thing while simultaneously apparently trying to deliver an emotionally convincing rendition of a song. (And how fitting that The Darkness made their mark supporting Robbie Williams at Knebworth). In writing on The Darkness, one thing that seems to crop up regularly are analyses on the lines of "they have a healthy sense of their own ridiculousness", or of "metal's ridiculousness" or variations thereof. Metal inoculated by its own internal Spinal Tap blah blah. Well I would venture that for artists a sense of your own/your genre's ridiculousness is an unhealthy thing, a little tumour of not-really-meaning-it, of witholding-yourself-from-full-engagement. I would venture further that all great metal, and possibly all great anything, is competely oblivious to its own ridiculousness--yes even AC/DC. (Queen i'm not sure about, early on I suspect they were oblivious and then at some point in the early Eighties they became aware of it --but, well, i'm not exactly a connoisseur of the oeuvre). To take the argument outside metal, look at Tom Jones. As soon as he realized that he'd become
a figure of fun, and decided to laugh with the audience at himself, to milk that kitsch/camp appeal, he turned to shit. (Maybe Ozzie has become metal's Tom Jones then). Mind you ol' frizz-hair tried the opposite tack simultaneously, trying to become hip (at NY's eve on some US channel Tom Jones did the most frightful version of "Burning Down the House"). Whereas someone like Neil Diamond say seems to have retained a modicum of dignity.

Jesus, how did I get from D-Double E to Neil Diamond?