Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

I still don't know how to tell if something's dubstep unless someone tells me it's dubstep tbh.

Tbh, anyone watching Fallon is probably stoned enough that the clarification was warranted.

^^^ misread that as 'Falcon' and envisioned dudes re-watching Balloon Boy youtubes and doing bong hits.

Well, yeah.

heres the thing -- im fine w/ dubstep existing in its own world & 'continuum' (that i mostly ignore) but it really does feel like every time theres a new microgenre of triphop in the uk everyone starts shitting themselves about how its the next big thing & wow this totally avant garde timekeeper zeitgeist music is blowing my fuckin mind man. then i go to a party here where someone's playing dubstep & it looks like an IT dude with a ponytail is playing Quake while he DJs this generation's IDM to some stoned hippies in hoodies.

one of the reasons ive really been drawn to funky house is that it feels like a genre so unconcerned w/ hitting some linear PROGRESS OF MUSIC narrative & instead is simultaneously "not doing anything new" but more accurately doing something very very new, w/out lazy signifier of THIS IS THAT NEXT SHIT-type acid squelches or grinding basslines or ridiculous dissensus narratives imposed & overdone (i.e. is anyone gonna pretend that the concept of Burial doing ghostly versions of two step is a concept deserving of more than a couple songs?)

this is also how i feel about gucci, its w/in a traditional rap framework, sure, no autotune, hes not feeling to disco, instead hes subtly & quietly doing a whole bunch of shit w/ his music that i havent heard an artist do before ... its not advertising itself as NEXT LEVEL PROGRESSIVE CRIT MUSIC but its basically the freshest sounding rap music out right now (ties in w/ what matt is saying about quik & kurupt etc too -- altho dude that marco polo / torae album is super dry)

nstead hes subtly & quietly doing a whole bunch of shit w/ his music that i havent heard an artist do before

Really? Like what?

should say "fleeing to disco" not feeling

trying to decide what's a worse name - Arch Cupcake or Porcupine Tree

^^^totally feelin deej on dubstep, I gotta say. I hate that whole forced "music must move FORWARD" narrative. load of bullshit.

I AM FEELING TO DISCO TONITE, MY SWEET FOXES...

the band is called "fleet foxes" jon

were rock stans this belligerent when the genre was 25 years old and people didn't think it was still some radical new force for shakin up the charts and started lookin around for other shit to get excited about?

wait lol don't answer that

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 5:02 PM (39 minutes ago)

nah

http://dkpresents.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/2503394061_e13334a22a_o.jpg

was my "don't answer that" joak at the end of the post there really so opaque

altho dude that marco polo / torae album is super dry

ah man it's nothin' new for sure, but that shits like pizza to me. just what i want sometimes you know?

nstead hes subtly & quietly doing a whole bunch of shit w/ his music that i havent heard an artist do before

Really? Like what?

― the blackest thing ever seen (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i mean...i'm not near as big on him, but i think deej is right in a way, he's definitely...eccentric i guess seems like the right word...like his words and flow is eccentric in a way that's not instantly going to hit you like "weird" like a doom or kool keith but IS really weird in a way...but you gotta kinda dig to hear it.

Dubstep is probably the most backward looking "continuum" genre ever though. It's a new genre name, but anyone pretending its anything outside a refinement of existing genres is fooling themselves.

i read that as "deej please don't bring gucci into this" :(

xxp

"(i.e. is anyone gonna pretend that the concept of Burial doing ghostly versions of two step is a concept deserving of more than a couple songs?)"

1) this is a pretty vast oversimplication of Burial and 2) you could make the claim that virtually nothing is conceptually deserving of more than a couple of songs.

Really? Like what?

― the blackest thing ever seen (HI DERE), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 4:39 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol @ this turning into deej on gucci again but:

hes sorta found a way out that balances the whole 'character' narrative of southern/gangsta rap with lyricism, basically becoming like this venn diagram intersection for ppl who want rappers lyrical & ppl who want rappers gangster & ppl who want rappers-playing-interesting-characters, hes come up with a way to adapt to an era where an artist needs to release lots & lots of music & his audience expects it for free, by setting up maybe fifty to a hundred individual ideas & basically mix-and-matching variations on each as he freestyles much of his lyrics, so each song is fresh because hes doing a totally new flip of a joke he already made. hes also really good at coming up w/ evocative images for these jokes. (the one i always talk about is his drop top/missing roof jokes: "panoramic roof clearer than a cup of water" "eazy e drop top call the car roofless" ((eazy e was with ruthless records, get it??)) & then just combines them in different orders, making new jokes, i.e. combing gucci concept of 'killing the parking lot' w/ aforementioned missing roofs: "got a murda one, i just killed the parkin lot / decapitated bmw, i cut off the top"
& he does this all w/in a framework of being entertaining, un-intellectualized regular southern pot-bellied backwoods character w/ a sense of humor & really good taste in beats

i mean...i'm not near as big on him, but i think deej is right in a way, he's definitely...eccentric i guess seems like the right word...like his words and flow is eccentric in a way that's not instantly going to hit you like "weird" like a doom or kool keith but IS really weird in a way...but you gotta kinda dig to hear it.

― hotel coral essex (M@tt He1ges0n), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 5:44 PM (17 seconds ago)

i'm a gucci fan but havent put nearly as much thought into him as, say, deej or sarge. i don't think you have to get all masters thesis to get to the point w/ him, which is that he's an excellent technical rapper & lyricist and great personality. it's that simple for me

what I hear you saying is "he is writing interesting rhymes w/in an interesting persona" which, good on him, but it doesn't sound like he's breaking down any doors the way these radical dubstep pioneers are every night tbh

lol @ this circling back to gucci mane but it's actually pertinent to the discussion of the sasha frere jones article that is being discussed itt.

lol what doors are these j0hn d.

yeah i'm just saying though cuzza his voice and style it's not like ppl are going to instantly notice "hey he's saying really weird/funny/cool punchlines" the way that like MF Doom really says HEY CRITICS LOOK AT ME I AM A WEIRDO IN A MASK you know?

like i'm sure you could just hear it and have it pass by you like another club rap song and not notice that shit

(i love doom btw)

deej if that doesn't parse instantly as elbowing deej in ribs I don't know what I'm doin wrong

Apparently not elbowing him hard enough.

burial may have only played to a hundred stoned hippies in hoodies but all of those stoned hippies went home and started dubstep message boards

if louis was alive i bet he'd make a dubstep remix of Elbow

RIP LJ ;_;

gucci mane: big and rich for '09?

hahahahahahahahahahaha omar

doom is great

tbh tho, SFJ was on the lil wayne bandwagon like a lot of people & it's pretty irresponsible for him to have recognized what wayne did and write the article that he did now w/o mentioning gucci mane

Totally irresponsible.

Was there already a clusterfuck thread about the Doom article in the NYer?

what a disaster for responsibility

i guess if u 'love the game' of indie re: omar's indie-nfl parallel then yah gucci could be yr big n rich

Totally irresponsible.

― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 4:57 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha, well. if you're gonna write an article about the state of the rap game!!

"...gangsta rap's "are you ready for some football?" has finally arrived"
- GQ Magazine

http://resources.mygen.co.uk/contacttables/BigandRich2.jpg

bigucci & rich

If you don't appreciate advanced chord changes, you have no taste in music. Stop making fun of this guy because he has more taste than you.

Sondre Lerche is amazing, btw, but his first two albums were his best, and he hasn't managed to follow them. Partly because the production has been too "rough" on the followers. The first two were more polished-sounding, which suited him better.

...

lol geir droppin' the lerche bomb

this shit is on like donkey kong

A) I too miss hip-hop’s blues-based swing.
B) I really like the myers article, and am pretty sure that for the most part formal innovation lost its way sometime in the last 20-30 years or so.

Was there already a clusterfuck thread about the Doom article in the NYer?

dunno if there's been a thread. I didn't even read that thing, I was surprised they published that piece after SFJ wrote a big Madvillainy article not that long ago.

Geir I hate to break this to you but there's no such thing as an "advanced chord change"

Pretty sure the bard class was able to play an "advanced chord change" once it got to 12th level.

</http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x0/x446.jpg>

saving throw against Gm7b5

i've been aug'n all my chords lately, shit sounds so smart

but then i might just throw in a diminished, keep it fresh you know?