New Burial album. More info?

"The irony about Burial is that he superficially genuflects towards this ideal but his music lacks the rudeboy element that I think is common to all those moments. Hence the critical line from those who take the notion seriously is that Burial "mourns" the "death" of this music.

It's a take on the music I disagree with - it might have had some credence if the music was made specifically by and for Dissensus readers but it seems pretty clear to me that the appeal of this music to much of its audience (who, as pipecock says, don't necessarily know 2-step etc.) is precisely that it lacks that sort of rudeboy element (by which I mean both roughness and pop irreverence, and more besides).

-- Tim F"

im not sure that the rudeboy element as you put it is all that spot on either, though. sure, there was always a little of that (aphrodite, dj hype, etc) but there was also a ton of stuff that really had nothing to do with that perspective (cloud 9/nookie, peshay, photek, ltj bukem, etc). for me, i love both sides of the coin in both genres, 2-step and jungle, but it is all the same thing! and burial's music is mainly a tribute to one side more than the other. look at goldie or a guy called gerald, both had something of the rudeboy to them but their music didnt really have that edge when they made the records that influenced Burial.

I know what you mean but I think you're misinterpreting me a bit - I'm not saying that all the records in these genres were fundamentally rudeboy, but what inhered in the transition from one genre to the next was the rudeboy element.

Nor am I saying that Burial's music is not influenced by all of these genres or that he's not paying tribute to people that have gone before him - rather, that whatever he's paying tribute to it's not "the hardcore continuum" as such. Anyway it's not as if this notion is self-evident to anyone who listens to all this music.

(OTOH I think that's a bit of a mischaracterisation of Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald. Remember that at the same time that Goldie was making Timeless he was also making "VIP Rider's Ghost" and "Saint Angel" and some great slamming remixes. And A Guy Called Gerald made some awesome hardsteppy, proto-techstep tracks.)

But anyway the whole point with jungle/drum & bass is that (according to "hardcore continuum" orthodoxy) it was moving towards a moment of internal rupture between people who wanted to stay true to that inherent flavour even if it meant abandoning the genre outright, and people who stayed loyal to "drum and bass" as such.

2-step never went through such a split, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a prominent producer who didn't stay true to that rudeboy flavour to some degree.

"Nor am I saying that Burial's music is not influenced by all of these genres or that he's not paying tribute to people that have gone before him - rather, that whatever he's paying tribute to it's not "the hardcore continuum" as such. Anyway it's not as if this notion is self-evident to anyone who listens to all this music."

youre right, it is not necessarily self evident, but i feel like people who were into the specific strains of those genres would be the people most easily able to feel his music, especially the first record which defnitely had less pop elements in it. i mean, when i heard his music the first time, i knew that he was listening to the same things that i had been. the spirit, more than a specific sound, was in there.

"(OTOH I think that's a bit of a mischaracterisation of Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald. Remember that at the same time that Goldie was making Timeless he was also making "VIP Rider's Ghost" and "Saint Angel" and some great slamming remixes. And A Guy Called Gerald made some awesome hardsteppy, proto-techstep tracks.)"

i mean, AGCG had a record called "28 gun badboy", goldie did plenty of harder edged material. but there was always that extra atmosphere that their music had that put it above being "just" hard/dark music. i feel like Burial rides that line too, he uses the growling "terrorist" bass, but his atmosphere is so prevalent that it doesnt feel as menacing as it could.

"But anyway the whole point with jungle/drum & bass is that (according to "hardcore continuum" orthodoxy) it was moving towards a moment of internal rupture between people who wanted to stay true to that inherent flavour even if it meant abandoning the genre outright, and people who stayed loyal to "drum and bass" as such.

2-step never went through such a split, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a prominent producer who didn't stay true to that rudeboy flavour to some degree."

Wookie? MJ Cole? K-Warren? artful dodger? i guess all of them had *something* of that flavor to them, but it was very very small and not hardly the concentration of their music. and i disagree about the "split", i remember distinctly in early 02 when the more soulful 2-step sound started disappearing almost completely and grime was keeping that beat alive (though it was called "8-bar" mostly at the time) while so many of the soulful producers went back to 4 on the floor house (plus new producers at the time like Qualifide and the like).

it was really like there was hardcore at the top, then progressively the subgenres split off more and more. jungle had its harder edge and its softer side. 2-step came out of that original jungle feeling, but it was even further from its roots and when the split in there came, it was an even more sudden break. eventually it arrived at the 2 components that originally set off hardcore: grime and dubstep representing hiphop and reggae and the reversion to 4 on the floor representing house music. and the bad part of this is that in the splitting off, that original feeling was completely lost. it is not represented anywhere in drum and bass (aside from a select track here or there), nor anywhere in dubstep. it is now represented almost solely by Burial!

just to let you know, i don't really care how much weird venom is thrown here.....

but you guys are teaching somebody who doesn't know quite a bit.

must search threads for jungle when not drunk.

all i know is that i sort of believe what pipecock is saying when it comes to music in general. that's how one gets into music, right? you hear something you're not familiar with and you like it, you investigate, sometimes quite encyclopaedically and to the neglect of other musics.

eventually it arrived at the 2 components that originally set off hardcore: grime and dubstep representing hiphop and reggae and the reversion to 4 on the floor representing house music

total madness

"total madness

-- moonship journey to baja"

but why?

Pipecock when I say "rudeboy" I (perhaps deceptively) mean something broader than just, say, "Super Sharp Shooter". I mean that whole cross-section of rude-freshness that runs (in the case of 2-step) from "Rewind" through K-Warren (particularly his delicious Underground Mix of Richie Dan's "Call It Fate" - total sufferation on the dancefloor!) and MJ Cole in both his bass-friendly and more refined incarnations (okay, maybe not "Sincere", but definitely the effervescent "Crazy Love") as much as the more obviously ruff post-jungle stuff from Zed Bias, Groove Chronicles etc.

It's hard to explain, but it's a certain energy that I think 2-step in particular embodied wholeheartedly (and for its duration... 2-step itself may have splitted off into grime, 4/4, dubstep etc. but it's not like you have a genre that calls itself "2-step" now that is liked by an entirely different type of audience to the one it had in its heyday - c.f. jungle).

It's precisely this energy that Burial intentionally lacks.

I guess it's kinda comparable to the difference between, say, dancehall (be it the more hip hop flavoured stuff or one drop revivalism) and Rhythm & Sound.

pipecock, combining genres isn't like combining chemicals. they don't combine and diverge quite as easily as that, and genres don't map onto each other quite so cleanly or neatly, except for people who're trying to make a point.

there's a bunch of minor problems: for example the assertion that grime is hiphop but not reggae (ELEPHANT IN ROOM = dancehall), the idea that hiphop is hiphop and not reggae and vice versa, the idea that dubstep is reggae vis-a-vis grime's hip-hop.

another big problem is the idea that hardcore = house + reggae + hip-hop. what about the hypnotist? what about what about urban hype? what about nebula II? cosmo + dibs? what gets ignored in the rush to make hardcore and jungle (and by extension, most all of dance music) fit into some imaginary soul -> funk-> reggae -> hiphop continuum is is as important as what is cited.

"It's hard to explain, but it's a certain energy that I think 2-step in particular embodied wholeheartedly

It's precisely this energy that Burial intentionally lacks.

I guess it's kinda comparable to the difference between, say, dancehall (be it the more hip hop flavoured stuff or one drop revivalism) and Rhythm & Sound.

-- Tim F"

i feel you on the energy tip, but im not sure that burial totally lacks it. it may be subdued compared to many other aspects, but his beats have a wicked snap to them (especially on this second album which definitely is more dancefloor oriented.... at least the kind of dancefloor i like) that should make people move. its like what happens with deep house, where at some point a 110 BPM dirty disco loop repeated ad nauseum that would be a boring listen at best and isnt even considered "house" music by some people will cause a near riot, the energy is in there but it is just "deep", its not simplistic dancefloor fodder like jungle or 2-step can often be.

i think the comparison with rhythm and sound is perfect actually, because of how deep and abstracted they are. their tunes dont seem very "dancefloor" when youre rocking them at your house, but when they were booming out over that ridiculous Funktion 1 soundsystem near the end of their set at DEMF 07, people were going completely nuts, probably even moreso than if it had been dancehall.

at this point in my life, i am convinced that the deeper ends of music will always produce a better dancefloor experience, once you can get your body locked into that groove and it makes your thoughts go away, the tiniest thing sets you off, it doesnt need to bang you over the head! Burial is just the deeper end of this strain of music which doesnt have many people currently mining that kind of territory.

Yeah I chose Rhythm & Sound so as to emphasise that it can be a positive as much as negative distinction - and that it doesn't mean the music isn't good to dance to.

I sorta disagree about deepness always being better. I am rather fashionably on a deepness tip right now, but at the same time prime (non-deep) 2-step is the music that changed my life and in some ways my physical relationship to music. I think the issue is more "okay I have a strategy for blowing dancers away, can I live up to it" - where the strategy can be deepness or it can be what i'm calling rudeboyism or it can be something else. There's no necessary heirarchy of strategies here.

"pipecock, combining genres isn't like combining chemicals. they don't combine and diverge quite as easily as that, and genres don't map onto each other quite so cleanly or neatly, except for people who're trying to make a point."

i dont think there was anything neat about it, in fact it was quite complex. but i definitely think that you can see the rise of the crossover of the musics, the maturity into the distinct sound of jungle, and then everything after that was some sort of breakdown into smaller pieces, it was no longer growing and expanding. and even when it was broken completely down into its most current forms, those forms are not exactly the same as the original music that went into jungle, but you can see which side each of the original materials has fallen on. bassline house and funky house are not the same as the acid and deep house that originally helped kick off jungle, but their DNA is very similar. the same way with dancehall and hiphop and grime.

"there's a bunch of minor problems: for example the assertion that grime is hiphop but not reggae (ELEPHANT IN ROOM = dancehall), the idea that hiphop is hiphop and not reggae and vice versa, the idea that dubstep is reggae vis-a-vis grime's hip-hop."

i think there is definitely something to be said for dubstep being the more reggae part of the influence and grime being the more hiphop, but the idea is still the same and hiphop and dancehall are so closely interrelated, especially in the time since jungle has existed. obviously kool herc was a jamaican cat whose influences were the sound system, and that was instrumental in the conception of hiphop. and hiphop in the early days was not that dissimilar to reggae soundsystems playing dubs with the deejay chatting on it. but the parallels are even greater by the early 90's when the genres were being made on the same equipment with alot of the same ideas (sampling earlier hits, beefing up the drums for the dancefloor). dancehall and hiphop have had massive crossover for years. not that they are the same thing, but they are far more closely related (today at least) to each other than house and hiphop are (though in the early days house and hiphop were not so dissimilar!).

essentially what happened is that hiphop and house music changed over the years that jungle and then 2-step were in existence, but they never went away. they were constantly in there with their influence, even if it was just on the fringes in some cases. eventually the old guard became more powerful than the eventually watered down forms and then their influence becamse even greater, leading to the splits.

"another big problem is the idea that hardcore = house + reggae + hip-hop. what about the hypnotist? what about what about urban hype? what about nebula II? cosmo + dibs? what gets ignored in the rush to make hardcore and jungle (and by extension, most all of dance music) fit into some imaginary soul -> funk-> reggae -> hiphop continuum is is as important as what is cited.

-- moonship journey to baja"

i dont think it really is imaginary. music didnt come from nowhere, and the culture of jungle was heavily taken from those cultures. reggae even was influenced by r+b that the jamaicans were picking up from US radio stations! all this black music is heavily interrelated, and jungle was just an extension of that. any of the other forms of music that might have influenced those guys (rock, progressive rock, jazz, etc) is all part of that family tree as well.

there is always a big push in the media to label genres of music as being "new" but that is basically never the case. there is always direct influence and taking of things from already existing music cultures, it is only new to people who werent paying attention and lack the ability to musically connect the dots. nothing is new, everything has been done before.

"I sorta disagree about deepness always being better. I am rather fashionably on a deepness tip right now, but at the same time prime (non-deep) 2-step is the music that changed my life and in some ways my physical relationship to music. I think the issue is more "okay I have a strategy for blowing dancers away, can I live up to it" - where the strategy can be deepness or it can be what i'm calling rudeboyism or it can be something else. There's no necessary heirarchy of strategies here.

-- Tim F"

well perhaps "better" wasnt the best word to use, but the problem with the more obvious dancefloor material is that it relies pretty heavily on novelty and that kind of thing. this is evidenced in the hyper accelerated shapeshifting that these obvious dancefloor musics go through: banging techno, mnml, glitch, techstep, etc etc. these records do not hold their dancefloor value, they are satisfying only on the most base level. a deep record can do the same thing to a dancefloor for 35+ years after it is made.

i am very interested in the idea of music being timeless. i believe that there is some jungle and 2-step that is timeless, but the overwhelming pressure for things to "move on" for those genres really killed those producers work. they could no longer be successful doing that kind of stuff. that was a huge problem for me when i was deejaying jungle and then 2-step, i always wanted to mix it up, play old shit, new shit of different styles, etc.

eventually i found what i was looking for in deep house, disco, and detroit techno. people have been dancing to that shit for over 30 years. and in many cases, THE SAME people have been dancing to it for that long, the old the new and everything inbetween.

one of the things i like about burial is that he is taking that same kind of approach to his music. it is distinctively "now" but it has history and it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong. his music will sound good in 30 years because it is so simple in the way that it works!

it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong

...and what way is that ???

" it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong

...and what way is that ???

-- pollywog"

listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't.

success?

j/k :-)

does anyone know what some of the samples he uses on this album are
I am throughly convinced that christina agulera is on "ghost hardware"

oh and Archangel is my track of the year.
This album is also great for driving home late at night from an involving show.

dipshits on the dubstepforum are deleting comments from people who know the samples. i've been on that forum for a while now and i have to say it's the most idiotic bunch of knuckleheads i've ever mingled with. everything is LARGE or HUGE of SAFE. it's ok for Burial to steal samples without clearing but it's not ok for me to download the Burial remix of Bloc Party?

do you happen to know what he uses on Etched headplate

it sounds so familiar but im not sure what it is

AMANDA PEREZ "Angel"...fyi

listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't.

...so he's got crackle, hiss, a real depth of emotion to his ambient arrangements layered on a bed of shitty sounding drums and some wonky vocals

that's hardly insisting everyone else has got it wrong...

...re the samples: I heard an en vogue sample in one tune from the intro to Hold On

and yeah dubstepforum sux balls...

that place has gone nowhere since they banned me...heh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VXT15Kf4s

Ray J "One wish". Vocal samples on Archangel.

christ, that's the same Ray J who was tapping Kim Kardashian in that homemade sex vid. jeez. on the one hand, i respect burial's sampling skills. on the other hand...

I respect tapping Kim Kardashian, the "One wish" tune, and Burial's sampling skills.

hey jim!

how do you feel about dubstepforum?

Some nazi admins. Some idiots. But also some good folk and it's the best source of information about dubstep.

you broke my cover! :P

yeah, it's not a bad place to learn about upcoming releases but lately i've been really put off by the attitudes of the core group of admins/posters.

oh well.

back on topic, i've been working on an arrangement of Burial tunes in 1 playlist. i believe Untrue is poorly sequenced and a bit too heavy on one style of tune. some say this makes it more coherent, i think it makes it unlistenable as an album in one sitting. i'm working on a sequence of both LP's, the 2 EP's and the 3 remixes i have from him. i think the new tunes will merge with the others to form a great listening experience. has anyone done this yet?

this explains his motivation for hiding his identity - so he can avoid the inevitable shit-storm when it's revealed how many uncleared samples he has used.

"bit of a copout dont you think ???

...so he's got crackle, hiss, a real depth of emotion to his ambient arrangements layered on a bed of shitty sounding drums and some wonky vocals

that's hardly insisting everyone else has got it wrong...

-- pollywog"

"soul" is the word i was looking for, but yeah he has all those things too......

Okay, close thread, "soul" has now been used to justify an otherwise arbitrary distinction between different production styles.

Nothing more to see here!

http://www.smakaho.com/soul-glo.gif

"Okay, close thread, "soul" has now been used to justify an otherwise arbitrary distinction between different production styles.

Nothing more to see here!

-- Tim F"

otherwise arbitrary? maybe if youre fucking deaf, which wouldnt totally surprise me. jungle and dubstep are the ultimate in technology triumphing over soul in music. everything is so heavily engineered to sound loud and bassy that there is no room for any real expression. Burial give a big fuck you to that whole idea.

Ok, you're an idiot.

Quiet and trebley = soul?

Of course there is a difference between Burial and other dubstep (or 2-step for that matter), but if you make a question-begging statement like "listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't," and when pressed on what this magical quality is, you resort to "soul", well... that just strikes me as evasive reasoning.

Like "soul" is a placeholder for the time and effort it would take to think (or at least talk) through what might be a persuasive argument in Burial's favour here.

I think the flaw in your argument extends here:

"jungle and dubstep are the ultimate in technology triumphing over soul in music. everything is so heavily engineered to sound loud and bassy that there is no room for any real expression."

This combined with your statements about the timelessness of deepness imply that you're simply fetishising musty production-values in the same manner that you complain of minimal/dubstep/jungle fetishising high production-values (I'm not sure that the last two do that, actually, but for the sake of the argument let's provisionally accept that they do).

Funnily enough, at least people who do go on and on about the specifically engineered sound of a bassline etc. (much as I think they're usually making a big deal over nothing much and often a bit tiresome in their obsession with particular club sound systems) are honest in admitting that what they're responding to is something primarily sonic, i.e. it's a production technique, not some mystical quality of "soul" or "expression".

A more honest argument in favour of Burial (and perhaps by extension Theo Parrish or Rhythm & Sound or "deepness" generally, though I wonder at how flexibly this term extends to cover Burial) would be to talk about how his specific sonic approach (yes, quiet and trebly, but also papery, echoey, at times quite warped sounding, etc etc.) can be as effective and affecting as high production values, without recourse to transcendental evasiveness. But then I often sense a certain reluctance to engage with the actual aboutness-of-sound when it comes to talk about Burial, Theo Parrish, and all these artists praised for their "soul", as if there's some sort of cultural cringe at the perceived profanity of actually getting down to the mechanics of sonics, arrangements, engineering and so forth - as if this would reduce these geniuses to the humiliating level of being "merely" great production outfits.

soul pipecock ???

so you think burial is a black guy...

...for some reason he sounds white as snow to me

Don't be a dick, Robert.

Some whiteboys have a little soul, Todd Edwards maybe?

"Quiet and trebley = soul?

-- jim"

"soul pipecock ???

so you think burial is a black guy...

...for some reason he sounds white as snow to me

-- pollywog"

my guess is you people wouldnt know soul in music if it smacked you in the face. if you think a frequency range or dynamic level has anything to do with soul, youre probably retarded.

i actually assume burial is a white guy. but what does that matter? are rhythm and sound not soulful? Francois Kevorkian? the Talking Heads?

"Of course there is a difference between Burial and other dubstep (or 2-step for that matter), but if you make a question-begging statement like "listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't," and when pressed on what this magical quality is, you resort to "soul", well... that just strikes me as evasive reasoning."

i just dont see how it is. i made my argument, i think it is quite obvious that there is something that Burial's music provides to people that other music in these genres isn't. let's face it, you could drench brittney spears in noise and crackle with weird beats and melacholy atmosphere and that is not gonna make people love her anymore than they already do. he has not taken the easy way out in any manner with his music, yet he is still ridiculously successful and his music crosses over to fans of many genres. if he was just generic artist X in the genre, he would receive exactly the attention that the other artists get: not much outside of a very niche crowd. but as people like goldie and even mj cole did in the past, the guy made some records that expressed things that people wanted to hear, and he took something that is not mainstream and people still love it because it transcends the genre nonsense. most times hype is hype, but every now and then the hype is right. this is one of those times!

"Like "soul" is a placeholder for the time and effort it would take to think (or at least talk) through what might be a persuasive argument in Burial's favour here."

yeah, i dont think or talk about music, ever. come on.

"I think the flaw in your argument extends here:

This combined with your statements about the timelessness of deepness imply that you're simply fetishising musty production-values in the same manner that you complain of minimal/dubstep/jungle fetishising high production-values (I'm not sure that the last two do that, actually, but for the sake of the argument let's provisionally accept that they do)."

i mean, i do love me some lo-fi type shit, i cant lie about that. but being lo-fi is nothing in and of itself. the brilliance is that if you can make something sound beautiful and captivating without regard to the sound quality, you have something very special on your hands. it is about stripping away everything except that which is most important in music: expression, emotion, soul.

"Funnily enough, at least people who do go on and on about the specifically engineered sound of a bassline etc. (much as I think they're usually making a big deal over nothing much and often a bit tiresome in their obsession with particular club sound systems) are honest in admitting that what they're responding to is something primarily sonic, i.e. it's a production technique, not some mystical quality of "soul" or "expression"."

i mean, that is fine for those people, especially if they can admit they are interested in that kind of thing. but that shit is science, its fun, its cool, its what i study in school! but it is not very good art, there is little being revealed of these artists' emotions or ideas.

"A more honest argument in favour of Burial (and perhaps by extension Theo Parrish or Rhythm & Sound or "deepness" generally, though I wonder at how flexibly this term extends to cover Burial) would be to talk about how his specific sonic approach (yes, quiet and trebly, but also papery, echoey, at times quite warped sounding, etc etc.) can be as effective and affecting as high production values, without recourse to transcendental evasiveness."

i mean, r&s are not stylistically identical to theo parrish who isnt stylistically related to burial. but they all put the same thing at the front of their music, and that is their artistic expression. its not about the production value being effective or not. there are good electronic musicians who can express themselves quite awesomely and keep the sound "clean" (UR, 4 Hero, Metro Area, Carl Craig, etc etc) and i appreciate them very much as well. of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks.

"But then I often sense a certain reluctance to engage with the actual aboutness-of-sound when it comes to talk about Burial, Theo Parrish, and all these artists praised for their "soul", as if there's some sort of cultural cringe at the perceived profanity of actually getting down to the mechanics of sonics, arrangements, engineering and so forth - as if this would reduce these geniuses to the humiliating level of being "merely" great production outfits.

-- Tim F"

but it is not about sound, thats why! these artists just go straight for the unquantifiables in their music, everything else is secondary. im sure there are people who are just into lo-fi sound, but thats a whole other area of distorted thought that may as well the same as people who are only into hi-fi sound.

the basic idea is that Burial has transcended his genre of music by stripping away the backwards thought that has driven the creativity in two genres of music that i have loved for a long time into the ground. people quit caring about music and started caring about nonsense, he took it back to the music alone and some people hate on him for that! how crazy. when making beautiful soulful music is the exception and it causes people to dismiss you, something is terribly wrong with the standards!

the basic idea is that Burial has transcended his genre of music by stripping away the backwards thought that has driven the creativity in two genres of music

...what creativity driving backwards thought has burial stripped away to transcend his genre ???

ya'll talkn some crazy shit bro...

Some whiteboys have a little soul

maybe back in the day but not so much now. I mean i'm fucked if any white boy jumps out of the pack at the mo screaming 'check me out I'm a fucking soulboy'...

...least of all burial, thats just ludicrous

Burial is white.

This thread is hilarious.

Hmm I don't think there is any point in us continuing this particular debate pipecock, as I am very anti the use of the word "soul" in discussions of music outside of the soul-the-genre. I think we'll have to accept that we have fundamentally different approaches to thinking about music and leave it at that.

Except to say that this argument:

"of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks."

... seems so consummately antithetical to my whole notion of the value of dance music, that from my perspective it verges on Geir-like levels of bizarro.

"...what creativity driving backwards thought has burial stripped away to transcend his genre ???

ya'll talkn some crazy shit bro...

-- pollywog"

the backwards thought is that there is some "standard" of production values that are needed to make a valid song in the genre. the trend in drum and bass and dubstep is to sound as nearly alike as possible to every other artist, i cant really figure that one out. how exactly is an individual supposed to be able to express themselves properly when they have to fit into a super-limited framework?

dnftt

"Hmm I don't think there is any point in us continuing this particular debate pipecock, as I am very anti the use of the word "soul" in discussions of music outside of the soul-the-genre. I think we'll have to accept that we have fundamentally different approaches to thinking about music and leave it at that."

that is of course a completely ridiculous approach that you have if nothing can have soul unless there is an r&b singer on it. is jazz not soulful? house? bob fucking dylan has more soul than most dance music produced these days. people need to quit being afraid to be different, no two people are the same, so why should their artistic expression sound indistinguishible? it is completely crazy.

"Except to say that this argument:

"of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks."

... seems so consummately antithetical to my whole notion of the value of dance music, that from my perspective it verges on Geir-like levels of bizarro.

-- Tim F"

dance music is the oldest shit on the planet. house and techno music are the modern examples of the most basic percussive music that dates back as long as the idea of music has existed. it is not significanly different in intent or execution from tribal drumming. dance has existed a long long time, and it doesnt need synthesizers, ableton live, or max/msp. all you need is a funky beat and maybe a little melody. it is very simple. if youre relying on modern production gimmicks to excite people, that shit is novelty and not much else. drum and bass and dubstep were both music that was rhythmically interesting. they sacrificed that quality to become production trick music, which is why they are niche music that production geek people are interested in. they have become failures of what dance music is all about.

Geir-like levels of bizarro.

-- Tim F

pipecock = the nu-dance geir

dance music is the oldest shit on the planet. house and techno music are the modern examples of the most basic percussive music that dates back as long as the idea of music has existed. it is not significanly different in intent or execution from tribal drumming.

-- pipecock

this is just plain wrong! the earliest forms of music are vocal, the earliest instruments weren't drums but flutes! the idea that bones could be struck together to make a sound seems to have arisen nearly a thousand years AFTER the idea of blowing through them to make tones.

the earliest african music is chanted vocal harmony music, which proves my contentious that polyphonic progressive trance music is actually the most african dance music.