THE NEXT MEDIUM-SIZED THING
"Energy
Flash" column, Sonicnet, September 2000
by
Simon Reynolds
Like a
lot of people, I've been wondering when the Next Big Thing in dance music is
going to turn up. It's long
overdue. At the same time, it's really
hard to imagine what it could possibly be. Every day, it seems more likely that the
initial onrush of rave culture carried the music to its furthest stylistic
extremes by the mid-Nineties. By 1996, say, drum & bass had taken rhythmic complexity as far as conceivable
or desirable; gabba had gotten as fast,
punishing, and distorted as the human nervous system could cope with; minimal techno had stripped itself down to
the barest bones of bangin' beats and
abrasive textures. Subsequently, dance
culture has advanced not by expanding its boundaries but by developing the
territory within those already-reached frontiers. The difference here is akin
to the difference between explorers and settlers. So instead of pushing the
envelope, you get "internal hybrids".
For instance, the UK micro-genre "nu skool breaks" is a fusion
of Big Beat and drum'n'bass, basically
deploying the latter's neurotically intricate production techniques at the
former's more dancer-friendly 130 bpm tempo.
All
this is why, for the foreseeable future (until someone invents a new technology,
or a new drug) we're going to see a
succession of Next Medium-Sized Things, rather than a singular Next Big Thing
that installs itself as the leading edge and eclipses everything else that's
going on. One defining characteristic of
a NBT is that its novelty is incontestable, even by those who can't stand it.
Jungle, for instance, was patently a great leap forwards--nobody had made beats
so frantic and chopped-up, nobody had invented a music with an internal
split-tempo (basslines running at half the velocity of the sped-up breakbeats).
You could hate it, but you couldn't fail to recognize its unprecedented nature.
The
hallmark of a Next Medium-Sized Thing, though, is its "plausible
deniability" (to adapt a phrase hitherto associated more with IRAN-CONTRA
and White House skullduggery). The
innovativeness of these micro-genres is
all a matter of perspective: you have to be immersed in dance culture, or even
immersed in the particular parent genre, to perceive the difference and feel
the impact. I first noticed this with speed garage back in 1997--the fusion of
jungle bass and house beats had massive implications and reverberations in UK
clubland, but it was hard to persuade American listeners that it was more than
just a slight twist on ye olde house.
Here
are a bunch of Next Medium-Sized Thing contenders that people are talking
about, followed by what doubters will probably say to dismiss them as hype:
PHUSION
(a/k/a
nu-jazz, broken beats---semantic profusion is a hallmark of the Next Medium-Sized
Thing; the slighter the claims to novelty, the more names there'll be for the
alleged genre)
Artists
IG
Culture/Likwid Biskit/ New Sector Movements,
Phil Asher, Patrick Forge, Modaji, Bugz in the Attic, Alex Attias/Mustang/Plutonia, Domu.
Labels
People,
Visons Inc., Main Squeeze, Laws Of Motion, 2000 Black, Bitasweet.
What
is it exactly?
An
Afrodelic boogie wonderland land where Alice Coltrane, Airto Moreira &
Flora Purim, Rotary Connection and Fela Kuti mingle with 4 Hero, Masters At
Work, and Carl Craig. In other words, a fusion of old skool fusion (Seventies
stuff) with Nineties fusion (arty drum & bass, deepest house, the jazzier
side of Detroit techno) to produce a brand nu skool of fusion. There's so much
fusing going on it's getting confusing. Phusion hallmarks include a passion for
time-signatures other than
four-to-the-floor, a mix of acoustic/analog/digital textures, and a
quality of hand's on feel and fluency to the music even when it's computerized.
West London connoisseur shit, dig.
What
the sceptics will say:
It's
just acid jazz with samplers.
TECH-HOUSE
Artists
Laylo
& Bushwacka!/Matthew B., Mr. C., Nathan Coles, Pure Science, Terry Francis,
Charles Webster
Labels
Plink
Plonk, Pagan, Wiggle, Eye for Sound
What
is it exactly?
Like
the ungainly name suggests, this micro-genre occupies the not exactly vast
sonic hinterland between Detroit techno and Chicago house, juicing up the
former's austerity while shunning the latter's vocal element. The result is
sleek, shiny, propulsive, tastefully
trippy, and cunningly poised to be just "deep" and "progressive" enough to keep out
the riff-raff (i.e. ravers) while not losing the dancefloor appeal.
What
the sceptics will say:
There's
always been techno-tinged house and there's always been house-leaning techno --
it's hardly worth starting a movement around.
BREAKBEAT GARAGE
Artists
Stanton
Warriors, Donna Dee, Headtop, So Solid Crew, Reservoir Dogs, DJ Dee Kline,
Phuturistix, El-B, Second Protocol, Zed Bias
Labels
Pulse,
So Solid Beatz, Ghost Trax, Mob
What
is it exactly?
Provisional
name (in circulation while people think of something snappier and more
evocative) for a subgenre some believe will soon break off from UK garage, and
marked by an even more tangential verging on non-existent relationship to the
garage/house continuum. Sheds UK garage's girly vocals, bump'n'flex grooves,
and shuffling hi-hats in favor of looped breakbeats, cheeky/cheesy samples in
the spirit of hardcore rave and jump-up jungle (ie. soundbites typically
referencing weed-smoking or martial arts movies), and stomach-churning bass
that often has an early Eighties electro
flavor.
What
the sceptics will say
Isn't
this just jungle slowed to 130 b.p.m?
(NB:
Breakbeat garage's slowed-down jungle often overlaps uncannily with nu-skool
breaks's slowed-down jungle, showing how people increasingly end up
occupying the same "internal
hybrid" zone even though coming from different directions).
HARD HOUSE
Artists:
Anne
Savage, Pete Wardman, Lisa Lashes, BK, Rachel Auburn, Lisa Pin-Up,
Brainbashers, Fergie, Steve Thomas, Baby
Doc
Labels:
Tidy
Trax, Tinrib, TEC, Nukleuz, Tripoli Trax, Duty Free, Rock Hard, Fever Pitch
What
is it exactly?
Both
the name and the music it describes have been around for some time, but
recently the style has refined itself down to an incredibly narrow strip of
sound: a concussive concoction of banging kick-drums, hoover basslines,
synth-stabs, and belting diva vocals. Hard house's no frills thrills are
increasingly displacing fluffy Euro-trance as the pill-head's favorite
soundtrack to nights of XTC--which is why it's getting a lot of press in the
dance mags.
What
the sceptics will say:
This
stuff is the pits. In all decent, discerning company, it should be
unmentionable. It doesn't deserve a name at all.
bonus beat - on hard house - from the great Tony Marcus
this was published in a weekly dance magazine whose name I forget but seems to have attempted to ride the absolute boom-time peak of interest in dance culture (where there were about four or five dance-dedicated monthlies and various ex-fanzines also)
that bubble burst soon enough
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