T2 ft Jodie - Heartbroken

it's part of a tradition now, same way 'soulfulness' is.

so not particularly oppositional?

I'm not thinking it's an opposition so much as a way of signifying that the emotions that the lyrics are pointing out are notional, or that the listener is feeling it and mocking themself feeling it all at once.

what i like about it in theory is the attempt to fuse elements of 2 Step and Speed Garage which didn't really happen before in quite the same way, or at least just the decade later update (like comparing the best current DnB to it's 97/98 equivalent I guess). you might prefer the aforementioned 'Nicole's Groove' which is a lot darker than 'Heartbroken'. haven't heard anywhere near enough of this stuff still tho. also want more stuff to sound like the Iggybaby edit of Omarion's 'Ice Box' but that's veering off course into almost quasi-Baltimore/ghetto house meets crunk territory (but with noticeable 'rave' feel - v good thing).

I don't think Helium-ated vocals are babyish, per se, and they're also stock in trade for massive swathes of dance music, surely.

never said this - pointed out 'sweet like chocolate' as an example of where it works better and there are countless more examples.

I am totally on this Bassline thing's dick at the moment, I'm just too shy/dilettante to throw meself into the serious business thread.

i'm not really a big fan of diva-fireworks stuff either, but there's kind of a camp self-mocking thing there too? god knows why we want it in either case!! typical english button-down attitude.

what i like about it in theory is the attempt to fuse elements of 2 Step and Speed Garage

this is what i pick up on from the commentary -- is this really the same as liking something? that it fulfills an evolutionary step? especially when the two genres are liek elder and younger siblings, incest-y.

there's kind of a camp self-mocking thing there too? god knows why we want it in either case!! typical english button-down attitude

Hell yes totally, but maybe it's not just english stick-up-arseness, maybe it's partly about music being a public-sphere thing. We can all see each other breaking down when we're singing in the pub and we all kind of want to front it out a bit, perhaps.

This Thomas Gold mix I've just nicked is pretty fucking epic, btw.

interesting stuff upthread re soul. unfortunately i don't think it applies re jodie ayasha. it does just sound like an attempt at sincerity without anything ele (no 'mocking' aspect like you might get from the more madcap production of '92 ardkore tracks attempting a similar thing via soulful samples e.g. Nino's brilliant 'The Gun') but one that doesn't work for me almost entirely because she sounds like a 9 year old and not really heliumy.

Oi'll get me coat (and take it to the teenpop thread).

i guess you could argue the bit where her voice is cut-up is an attempt at something like that tho? this is, by no coincidence my favourite thing in the song (as opposed to the bass drop).

BTW if you haven't followed the Bassline thread they linked to this blog which has got some sweet compilations on it.

I'd say there's actually a lot of space in this record, as there was with most 2-step - a lot of moments where the bass, the beats, the vocals, are all cutting out so that you can focus on just one level rather than all of them at once. In this sense "Heartbroken" is closer to 2-step than most bassline is actually - if you listen to other tracks there's often few if any moments that the bassline and the 4X4 beats aren't going full tilt.

In a lot of ways that count bassline is sonically more like speed garage X grime (esp. "R&G") - any similarities it has to 2-step can be better explained as similarities to those genres. The main similarity to 2-step is more in terms of the broader musical-cultural intersect - e.g. its (potential) viability as a launchpad for charttopping pop songs.

"Sweet Like Chocolate" isn't really helium-ish BTW. The chorus is quite high but the verses are sung with a certain bellowy diva quality.

A better example might be the Architechs' remix of "The Boy Is Mine" - also an excellent example of the sparseness and space-filled quality of 2-step - lots of moments of absolute silence on that record.

I'm not always great at identifying genre differences but from what I've heard the Bassline, um, bass lines, are fairly Speed Garage-y but the drum patterns are generally straight House-ish. Is that close?

Yes. But I'd say the metallic, sickly quality to the basslines takes as much from grime as it does from speed garage (against my own observation above, those metallic sounds really started filtering in during the 2-step era, but they really took over as 2-step transformed to grime.

Something like the vocal mix of "Pulse X" (with great diva performance from Lorraine Cato), combined with house beats, basically = bassline.

Yeah I hear that about Grime but I always thought those were mutant 2-step bass lines anyway.

i think speed garage, 2-step, and grime have enough familial connectionss to make it kinda hairsplitting to say this is more liek the first and last than the middle one!

("Pulse X" was the signature tune that heralded the end of 2-step and the beginning of grime - of course there was actually considerable overlap stylistically and chronologically such that it can't be pinned down to a particular tune, but nonetheless...)

x-post yes, definitely, but the way they dominate the tracks feels very grime to me. 2-step tracks were much less likely to be built around the bassline so explicitly - often the big bassline only came in for the instrumental sections. Simplyfing enormously, grime kind of took those sections and made that the whole track. Bassline is structured in a similar way.

xx-post nrq - point taken, but I think your claim was just flat-out wrong (2-step had quite a bit of space in it relative to most other dance music), such that it's worth being pedantic.

And, um, speed garage, 2-step and grime all sound very different to me!

Would it be pedantic to say "this performer sounds influenced by the new romantics rather than post-punk"?

the most distinctive thing about this music for me is not the basslines (this music isn't actually bassiER than Grime, Speed Garage or even a lot of 2 Step altho i know the reason for the term is more because the bassline is more isolated and pivotal here and now), but the girly vocal hooks and subsequent popness, which is where the 2 Step connection makes most sense to me.

not sure i ever heard vocal mix of 'Pulse X' tho!

but you just said "there was actually considerable overlap stylistically and chronologically" and "Simplyfing enormously, grime kind of took those sections [from 2-step] and made that the whole track".

so "very different" -- really?

the immediate association this track brings up for me was 2-step anyway; but it's possible i dislike it for totally different reasons.

Would it be pedantic to say "this performer sounds influenced by the new romantics rather than post-punk"?

-- Tim F, Sunday, January 20, 2008 1:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sonics of new romantics and post-punk were pretty different, despite the lineage. but in a sense it gets more pedantic the more time elapses...

I dunno, I could make the same sort of arguments: "the new romantics took the synth-experiments of the post-punkers and put them in the service of..." etc. etc. How did Simple Minds get from Empires & Dance to New Gold Dream in two years?

Again, the reason I'm standing by my acknowledged hairsplitting is that I think a part of the major shift from speed garage (apart from, like, the shift from 4X4 beats to syncopated beats - a pretty big dif. in my books) is the introduction of space. I'm still curious to know what you're basing your original comment on. Maybe I've misinterpreted what you're talking about here?

Steve I will post the vocal mix of "Pulse X", it's ace.

yeh i relistened and maybe it isn't about space in 'that way'.* am still baffled as to what's good about the track! and with the choppy vocals, skippy beats, and stabby bits it does still sound 2-steppy to me in lots of ways; obviously it sounds different in other ways, but these things stick out -- but this is beside the point, which is 'is this good?'

*i have to imagine that the track has actual bass cos i listened via youtube so it didn't, and so maybe that's the kind of space i meant, in a southall sense

I should note that I agree the track has a lot of similarities to 2-step! As I said: "In this sense "Heartbroken" is closer to 2-step than most bassline is actually". And even most other bassline is at least tenuously reminiscent of 2-step.

You're probably correct that there are common (or at least similar) reasons for you disliking this and 2-step. Presumably you disliked speed garage as well then? Given 2-step is my favourite single sub-genre of dance i'm unlikely to change your mind, but some of the things I like that haven't been mentioned:

The contrast between the stiff sternness of the opening cello-bass and pizzicato combo over those hyper-straight house percussion (which always slightly ahead of the groove, like it's driving everything forward with a whip crack) and the fluffiness of the high-pitched vocals. If the latter make the record camp, it's "camp" in the traditional sense of taking itself very seriously - Jodie isn't sniggering at herself, and the groove isn't sniggering at her either. With other pop music we might dismiss as excessively camp, the main problem is that the song has a built-in awareness and acknowledgment of its own ridiculousness and/or inconsequentiality.

The superlative squelchiness of the main bassline, which gets higher and higher, until by halfway through it sounds high and trebly itself to match the vocal.

The mournful sweep of the strings in the chorus, which set off a great dirty/classy tension in the track (how good do these strings sound in the breakdown??)

i wouldn't expect anyone to get something out of this without already appreciating 2 Step, unless they were too young for that (but would still have some awareness)

i like the new T2 possible more than this one. high-pitched vocals seem v common in this scene but don't know if they really dominate, which is good. male-female interplay on 'What's It Gonna Be' also a plus.

Vocal mix of Pulse X:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/670407519dd418/

oh, oh, fashion school

btw, mincing a hook, passing it off as the main course and then revealing it as dessert = genius idea

Don't really like this track, unfortunately.

Boo hoo.

The cover of "Heartbroken" with a male smooth RnB singer doing the vocal is
really great, maybe better than the original. The kind of whiny tone of the female singer reminds of the singing on Latin freestyle 80s tracks, same kind of sound/manner/delivery imho

xpost, sorry to disappoint you?

Drew, this female vocal is way worse than most of the 80s freestyle stuff (which was mostly GREAT, and often powerful and deep - Liz Torres? come on!), but there were a couple things in the early 90s that were similar - can't remember the titles because I have repressed them (although I remember one song which rhymed "heart" with "heart"). One analogy would be INOJ which is of course way better (maybe not quite as piercing).

i agree with you drew, it certainly reminds me of the 80s freestyle stuff (i didn't realise until you mentioned it!). and come on now SC, debbie deb was hardly a powerful/deep vocalist was she?

it's the simple cartoonlike feel to the song that brings it to mind, though i don't know any other songs in this genre (is it 4x4? bassline?), could anyone recommend similar bright catchy tracks to check out?

Do you really think that any of Debbie Deb's vocal performances are anywhere near the irritation factor of the "Heartbroken" vocal??

It's odd too, because I loved so much of the helium vocals in earlier garage tracks. This one is just diabolically annoying.

it's cos she's flat.

still love it tho; irritating = tenacious, sometimes, magically

"Heartbroken" makes "When I Hear Music" and "Lookout Weekend" sound like Maria Callas.

I'm still open to liking this track.

have you heard 'What's It Gonna Be' yet? the new T2 has less annoying vocals also.

single of the year, yes!

damn this is fucking hot.

okay 5 mins later this is annoying.

Steve, haven't heard it yet, will listen.

I really don't like the vocals on Heartbroken and was worried I wasn't really going to 'get' any of the big bassline singles but the Addictive feat T2 record is astonishingly good.

what a song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4uy0_ZltXU

correct

some of the things we used at my last lab job were labeled T2 so this song always came in my head when i saw them

the personal late-period nostalgia on this one is so strong and evocative and melancholy