jungle tekno versus ethnotechno / record collection rock versus ardkore

VARIOUS ARTISTS
ETHNOTECHNO: SONIC ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME I 
(Wax Trax/TVT)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
THE DEFINITION OF HARDCORE 
(Reinforced)

The Wire, early 1994

by Simon Reynolds

"Ethnotechno" is a post-rave update of Byrne & Eno's "My Life In The Bush

Of Ghosts" aesthetic, and as such resurrects all the attendant ethical

dilemmas. Is it demeaning to use world musics as exotic threads in an otherwise

Western sound-tapestry, in the process divorcing these musics from the cultural

fabric that gives them meaning? Is this just a cheap holiday in other people's

ethnicity, or is all the world's music a sound-library ripe for the borrowing?

Frankly, I dunno, but I will say that the 'sample dis, sample DAT'

approach of the various intelligent-technoheads on this compilation sounds and

feels more enjoyable than, say, the pan-global virtuosi studio jams convened by

Bill Laswell, even if the latter are a more reciprocal meeting between West and

non-West. In fact, the more deracinated the samples the better, as with the

Burmese drumming that adds just a tint of otherness to High Lonesome Sound

System's shimmering electronica, or the way Juno Reactor's "Alash (When I Graze

My Beautiful Sheep)" turns gutteral Siberian throat singing into a gurgling aciiied

bassline. Other highpoints include "Limbo" by Sandoz (a.k.a.  Richard Kirk), a lush

lattice of polyrhythms around a Yoruba chant, and Steel Porn Rhino's "AKA Electric",

in which Pygmy plainsong figures as rippling, water-spashy sound-surface.

Of course, techno is itself the new world music, in so far as it's boys

tinkering with the same hi-tech toys, speaking the same non-verbal Esperanto,

whether they're in San Francisco, Sheffield, Frankfurt or Tokyo.  Techno

inhabits Jon Hassell's Fourth World, where all musics are equally de-rooted

and thus equally up for grabs as they float by through the virtual ether.

At the opposite extreme--totally local, UK-specific--another post-rave

subgenre, 'ardkore jungle, offers its own kind of ersatz ethnicity, cobbled

together out of pop-cult detritus: shards of soul or reggae vocals,

Nth-generation breakbeats, video-nasty soundbites. For its increasingly

multiracial, underclass audience, jungle offers a tribal identity: it's the

residue of class consciousness left after the withering away of the organised

Labourite proletariat.  If junglist kids inhabit the UK's internal

colonies--inner city ghettos and suburban estates--then jungle is a kind of

postmodern dub reggae: several times faster of course, in keeping with the pace

of hyper-reality, but with the same sensi-seismic bass, and the same aura of

spiritual exile, sufferation and survivalism. Instead of Zion, though, utopia

is getting off your face at the weekend, and instead of the brotherhood of

I-and-I, there's paranonia and disconnection.  Jungle is for those who don't

just survive but thrive in the concrete jungle; similarly, calling yourself

'dark' (1993's dominant ardkore style and buzzword) means 'don't fuck with me'.

Once pioneers of the 'dark' sound, the Reinforced roster are now presiding

over hardcore's shift to a new sophistication, taking on elements from jazz,

quiet storm, garage and ambient. This compilation captures the label midway

between 'dark' and the New Thing, making a music at once morbid and mellow: a

phantasmic swarm-swirl of soul-diva whimpers, strings, jazz-inflected chords,

Cabaret Voltaire synth-slime, and off-kilter death-funk rhythms that recall

Material circa "Ciguri". This is the fitful, fever-dream sound of British

culture falling apart and struggling to re-integrate itself.

Right now, jungle is the tribal music of a generation who grew up after the death

of 'community'. But labels like Reinforced and Moving Shadow are pushing

hardcore forward to the point where it could blossom into a real culture: Britain's

very own equivalent to (as opposed to imitation of) hip hop. This noise is its birth-pangs.

                                                        

Column in the series "The Knowledge"
iD, late 1993

by Simon Reynolds

Brian Eno has argued that the old model of the Artist, as a

Romantic figure gushing forth inspiration, is obsolete.  Instead,

today's artist isn't a creator but a curator: someone who rearranges

elements from the archives, forming striking new configurations.

Such scholarly pick'n'mix is certainly the name of the game in

Nineties music. I call it 'record collection rock'. At best, it can

mean a homage to the lost mythic immensity of rock'n'roll (Primal

Scream, Teenage Fan Club) or a sepia-tinted invocation of pop's

bygone grandeur (Saint Etienne, Denim).  At worst, it can mean the

clumsy, corny chameleonism of The Black Crowes and light-fingered

Lenny Kravitz.

Primal Scream have been arch-exponents of record collection

rock since their earliest days: back in 1986, Bobby Gillespie

compared rock to a library whose shelves were stacked with timeless

classics that you could dip into at will. Primal Scream's music has

evolved (and improved) as Gillespie's record collection has

expanded, from their early incarnation as Velvets/Byrds/Love

fetishists to 1991's "Screamadelica", which layered a smorgasbord of

unimpeachable taste (from Tim Buckley to Augustus Pablo to P-Funk to

Brian Wilson to Coltrane) over contemporary rave rhythms .

But the ultra-hip approach of bands like Primal Scream can seem

a bit oppressively tasteful, and so there's a counter-reaction: the

rehabilitation of the unhip and maligned pop tack of previous eras.

And so Saint Etienne, Denim, Pulp etc have lambasted the official

canon of rock visionaries, and erected their own pantheon of the

inauthentic and synthetic: a constellation of kitsch-adelic

extremists like David Essex, Glitter, The Sweet, Sparks, Joe Meek

etc.  The Saint Etienne/Denim approach offers much delight

(personally I adore "So Tough" and "Back In Denim") but 'delight' is

the word, with all the limitations it implies.  This is music that

offers titillation (the frisson of breaking rules of taste, of

staying ahead of the middlebrow consensus about 'good music'). But

it fails to provide the passionate involvement, the urgent

connection with life and desire, that pop has always been about. In

the end, it's just as trainspotter as the indie snobbery it defines

itself against: a kind of inverted snobbery ('we're too cool to fall

for the authenticity con', 'the more plastic, the better').

In recent years, some bands have tried an even more cunning

maneouvre, in an attempt to leap outside the game of hipster

oneupmanship altogether: they've pledged allegiance to only the

least esoteric of influences. The Stone Roses were first, citing

only The Beatles, Sex Pistols, Hendrix, with the heavy implication

that they too belonged in that class of world-historical band. The

Manic Street Preachers were next, aligning themselves with the

Pistols, Public Enemy, Guns N' Roses as a way of elevating

themselves above indie small fry. Most recently, Suede have rejected

hipster obscurantism and deliberately paid homage to embarassingly

obvious influences like The Smiths and David Bowie. But you have to

wonder whether Suede have really escaped the insidious,

all-pervading knowingness of record collection rock. Were Bowie and

Bolan ever as boned-up in pop iconography as Brett Anderson?

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation game continues, as bands push back

the taste barriers erected by punk (this month, Can and Faust are

hip, next it could be Mountain, Van Der Graaf Generator, The Enid).

And the frissons get milder as taste buds get jaded. Too often, new

bands invite responses like "it reminds me of...." or "they're like

a cross between X and Y" - reactions that have nothing to do with

the possessed, all-consuming HERE-AND-NOW-IS-ALL-THAT-COUNTS of the

true pop experience. Whither, you might well wail, the innocence?

The closest thing that I can find to a haven of 'innocence' in

Nineties pop is the hardcore techno scene.  'Ardkore is "unknowing",

not least because the vast majority of its members are either dim or

have stupefied themselves with drugs. But what really makes hardcore

refreshing is that its creators aren't steeped in rock history,

aren't inhibited by discernment.  The cult of groovy braindeath via

E, spliff, and BASS, has emptied a lot of heads, leaving them

totally open to ideas, some of which just happen to be avant-garde.

'Ardkore youth have no preconceptions and no discrimination when it

comes to making music: if a noise or riff can be made to work in a

track they'll nick it.  Ardkore is record collection pop in the

crudest sense (I imagine these hyped-up hooligans rifling through

their elder brothers' albums looking for samples) but the

subculture's general impulse towards disorientation means that

initially recognisable soundbites are gradually warped, distorted,

debased, rendered alien.  The commonest, but still highly effective

method, is to speed up voices into a cartoon chipmunk babble,

Martian doo-wop.  The tawdry and corny can be rendered sublime, as

with that track that reinvents the Korgis' soppy ballad "Everybody's

Got To Learn Sometime", or another track which turned the

'Eastenders' theme into something resembling a John Cage percussion

piece.  Elsewhere the most incongrous sources - folk-rock maidens

like June Tabor, Guns N' Roses riffs, Led Zep moans - are

revitalised by being shoved into an inappropriate context. Sparks

fly as incompatible sound-sources are forced to rub shoulders.

Junglist 'ardkore's version of 'postmodernism' has

a vulgar exuberance that's infinitely preferable to the wan

reverence of the record collection rockers, with their ill-concealed

nostalgia for a lost golden age when pop was somehow more POPTASTIC.

Hardcore returns us to the "unknowingness" of a time when pop lived

in the present tense, rather than being a dwindling series of

footnotes to its own history. Thank God, the nutters have taken over

the academy! Ignorance is bliss!