Most of you who are actively following the dubstep scene will have already have heard this, hell most of you were probably in the chat for all I know. But I thought it was a really, really well mixed set that deserves as much attention as possible.

Its interesting watching Ben get into dub reggae and techno to the depth that he has already established as a dubstep DJ. This is a mix he made for El Gato’s Bruk radio and I really thought it showed an interesting mixture of sensibilities.

If there is one small area that most of the DJs I talk to online seem to agree on it is that good dub techno is a worthy thing. Basic Channel is equally loved and respected by both the Detroit true school acolytes and the farthest out there of minimal European DJs.

Gutterbreakz has long been a source of information about what’s current in the dub techno scene but I don’t think he would have played the Melchior or Villalobos tracks. Maybe the Villalobos, definitely not Luciano and Melchior’s Father.

So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is that its nice to see Ben developing his own style as DJ in this kind of music as in his other area’s of interest. Which almost exactly mirror mine, its just that he’s a much much better DJ than I am at this point.

Ben UFO guesting on Bruk Radio

1. The Aggrovators/Johnny Clarke - Ites Green and Gold Dub
2. The Abysinnians - Declaration of Rights (Heartbeat)
3. Johnny Osbourne - Purify Your Heart (Trojan)
4. Scientist - One Two (Greensleeves)
5. King Tubby - My Mind Dub (Pablo)
6. The Heptones - I Shall Be Released (Island Records)
7. Keith Hudson - Darkest Night (basic replay)
8. Chosen Brothers - Mango Walk (rhythm and sound)

9. Deepchord - Vantage Isle [Spaceecho Dub] (Echospace)
10. Substance and Vainqueur - Reverberate (Scion Versions)
11. Sven Weisemann - Amity (Mojuba)
12. Villalobos - Minimoonstar [Shackleton remix] (Perlon)
13. Shed - Warped Mind (Berghain 02)
14. Claro Intelecto - Rise (Modern Love)
15. Jost and Klemann - CC01 [Detroit] (Dial)
16. Thomas Melchior - The Phantom (Perlon)
17. Portable - Thought In Action (~scape)
18. Brendon Moeller - Pink Noise (Third Ear)
19. Deepchord - Electromagnetic Dowsing [Mike Huckaby mix - Step 1]
20. Bodycode - Document of an African past (Yore)
21. Luciano and Melchior - Father (Cadenza)
22. Patrice Scott - Motions [Sunrise Dub] (Sistrum)
23. Theo Parrish - Falling Up [Carl Craig mix] (Third Ear)
24. Steve Reid and Keiron Hebden - People Be Happy [Audion extended mix] (?)
25. Move D - Honey (Smallville)
26. T++ - Space Pong (?)
27. Monolake - Ice (Imbalance)

28. Black Pocket - Ur A Star [Martyn remix] (Fat City)

And let me just say how exciting I’m finding Sven Weisemann, he seems to be making a uniquely percussive strand of dub techno influenced deep house. The track included on this mix reminds me of prime Mala stuff, only as 4×4 dance music. And it also seems like some of his tracks like Cabana Fever could be mixed nicely with slightly pitched down London funkiness.

If I do have one complaint with some of this dubtech it is that its slightly monotonous rhythmically speaking. It takes a brave and talented producer to expand past the dub process into more Caribbean sounding beats. Obviously Shackleton has been carving his own swathe of influence in this direction and I never would have thought I’d live to see him release music on Perlon.

That was particularly exciting for me, even if his remix of Villalobos is giving many DJs migraines at the moment. I’m certain a lot of people just scratched their heads and flipped the platter over: back into slightly more familiar territory.

I’ve been reading the series of essays on Detroit’s place in the modern techno scene on MNML SSGs with some interest. Pipecock’s essay mirrored some of my own experiences. Derrick May and Theo Parrish are two incredible DJs, they were life altering for me as well. But unfortunately I can’t bring myself to venerate Detroit in the way He does. At least I won’t do so at the cost of ignoring music that doesn’t fit Detroit sensibilities.

Still respect is due to both sides of the debate, or perhaps towards all sides. I remain convinced that this shouldn’t be a polarized black and white or us versus them kind of issue. It was the Belleville Three’s openness to European sounds that created much of early techno surely? Why must I imitate their present conservatism (or to be more specific the conservatism of some of their followers) when it was this radical kind of behavior that made them great initially? Obviously that and the depth of their individual talents. Still House is where my heart remains, there is an openness and permeability to house which remains unaltered after all these years.

And European house producer’s remain vocal about how deep their interest in the early Chicago scene remains. Prosumer practically worships Larry Heard, it would almost be cloying if the affection weren’t so genuinely felt. As a group the house producers associated with the Berghain show as much respect as can be shown without turning it into museum curation. This is living music, over codification will just turn it into what jazz has become. This year’s split between house and techno has worried me for precisely this reason. Yes, Marcel Dettman makes great trippy techno, and yes I like a lot of the stuff out on Ostgut Ton or Innervisions in a house vein.

But the intensely weird trippy music that minimal was, and still is occasionally, seems to be passing away. Dubstep lures away many of the deepest Berlin techno people, and house turns so far inward that 1984 starts to sound fresh again to many people.

I’m starting to miss Fuckpony when it was both Samim and Jay Haze.

And I really miss Booka Shade’s glory days, I still give those tracks to people unfamiliar with this stuff. The borderline between electrohouse and minimal, I guess between the shift in fashions between 2005 and 2006 was an exciting time. It was trashy, it was fun.

Now I listen to London people abuse subwoofers again.

Blackdown has clarified something that was bothering me, even from my tiny sampling of mixes and shows from this scene there seemed to be two different currents of thought. On the one hand you had your people like Apple, Mentor Roska and Geeneus making tunes that were quite out there. On the other you had a kind of vaguely claustrophobic sonic conservatism.

The two are probably best exemplified by DJ Perempay’s sets versus Mentor Roska’s new release Climate Change. Perempay used to be part of the Essentials camp, he DJed grime under the name Bossman. Even back then he was noted for being a very technically skilled DJ, and now that he DJs house nothing has changed. He has a tendency to create very skilled blends but tends to value more traditional sounding house over the newer more broken or grime influenced stuff.

I really enjoy his mixes despite this.

So far his Funkin Favourites is one of the better retrospectives of what the scene was before this year and his Funky House Vol 4 has some glimmerings of a potential experimental edge in the future.

Mentor Roska on the other hand can barely even be said to be making house, this house with a heavy broken beat slant to it if it is house at all. But make no mistake, this is loopy, heavily percussive music, its done away with a lot of the mincing that broken beat has been prone to.

There isn’t a lot of the slow development of a house track either, you get groups of 32 bar loops obviously intended to be chopped like a grime DJ as opposed to a slow blend a la tech house. I’m not sure if this is something that will sell the music to many DJs, going from thinking like a techno DJ to a hip-hop one in a single set can be difficult for many of those too set in their ways.

Its up on Juno Download.

Its fierce, heavily recommended.

The perfect mix of grime and bruk sensibilities.

The other tune that is really doing it for me at the moment (and I’ve no idea how recent it is) is Footloose’s Just Leave feat Simone. The A-Side has Footloose’s trademark funky synths and horns under Simone’s screed against aggro punks fucking up their dance. I’ve been in clubs that could have used this song playing at the door. Too many people think a Saturday night out is time to prove something, too many drunk assholes out there can’t just have fun.

The B-Side on the other hand seems to be actual invitation to violence, with Fingerprint’s massive electro bassline sure to destroy the dance anywhere its played. All those of you waiting for this music to get dark and weird, here’s your time. Personally I can handle a little cheese if it’ll drive away the boring straight boys. But to each his own, I wouldn’t mind seeing a balance emerge between all these different micro-genres inside the scene. If this music can find the same kind of mixture of elements that Slimzee’s set’s had as of 2002-3 things may get very exciting indeed.

Well, what to say, what to say? I’ve been away for some time, and I’m not quite sure how to get things rolling again. Dubstep had left me cold for months, I was broke as you can possibly get and 14 dollars for a single just wasn’t feasible. I decided it was time to curb my addiction to the latest greatest vinyl and start doing a little research into some other areas.

So where have I turned my interest, you may ask?

I’ve been quietly gathering a disco collection, been maintaining an interest in electro-funk and been completely ignoring metal altogether. Weather’s warm, serotonin levels are where they should be, fuck all that noise for the moment. And I’ve been cautiously but increasingly optimistically watching the London funky house scene for signs of life.

Bassline house left me cold, bar a T2 track here or there, so I wasn’t really that optimistic about a scene that was largely a rejection of two of my favorite kinds of music (grime and dubstep) by the people largely responsible for their existence. For a long time house has been the default area for UK Garage defectors to turn to. Wookie made house after his seminal run of 2-step singles and remixes came to a close. Zed Bias made house and broken beat for the majority of this decade. If the people who largely invented dubstep had no use for their baby, who was I to argue?

But when Geeneus and Sara Souljah are done with it, its really time to reassess things. So yeah, Geeneus and Zinc are recording together as Jelly Jams, which is kind of giving me a little cognitive dissonance. Going from what Geeneus was releasing a year or two ago, (anybody remember the track with the grindcore sample?) To what he’s making now, well its quite a step. But Blackdown and Tim Finney seem to agree that Funky is something to watch. And those guys know, most of my knowledge is based around observations they’ve made on message boards.

And funky sounds like something I’d like, house with a soca beat rhythm super-imposed and broken beat influences, sounds great right?

And it is starting to get there. Producers like Apple were starting to make beats that are definitely not “house” late last year and suddenly there’s a load of ex-grime people making funky house East London style. I was basically just waiting for that grime influence to show up, and now it has. Check out this excerpt from DJ Smoovie T’s recent show, courtesy of Tim Finney.

Its a track by Ear Dis called I Feel, and DJ Footloose has remixed it in a slighly grimier style. Which is awesome, sounds like a combination of grime and broken beat, mixing their two strengths to its advantage. DJ Footloose knows his shit, and so does Arms who is half of Ear Dis. I’m praying that more broken beat producers decide to start producing in this style. And more grime people, Donaeo went from providing tracks for Target’s mixes to making his recent hit Devil in A Blue Dress.

And its nice to see some talented people get away from Grime’s perverse little world of MC’s endlessly sending for each other and youngers getting hurt over nothing. After Crazy Titch went to prison I was pretty much done with it. Everything I found interesting about it had changed, the future funk beats were becoming rehashed Dipset shit, and the DJ’s weren’t even fucking around with vinyl anymore. Grime isn’t done, but I’ve been done with it for a long time.

I really have mixed feelings about Dubstep as well, but there’s a lot of talent there. And its nice to see some of that London talent moving out of the up-tempo ghetto and making stuff that can actually be mixed with other house, whether its from the US or mainland Europe. Watching dubstep get split between FWD dread techno and wobbleshite wasn’t fun for me.

I’m really far away from giving minimal tech-house any passes at this point, so seeing dubstep become 140 bpm swung techno wasn’t really overly exciting. Props to 2562 and Martyn, but I just don’t have the energy at this point. I’m in my mid-twenties now and I really can’t handle that tempo for very long periods in the dance, this geezer prefers the 100-130 bpm region. Maybe even a little balearic to start things off?

So anyways, even if some older farts than me have pointed out that funky house is nothing new, its been made constantly by dedicated people for the better part of thirty years now. It is new enough for many people of my generation, house is just about as old as I am. So yeah, I know my Jesse Saunders, my Mr Fingers, Steve Silk Hurley and Frankie Knuckles. But now I’ve begun to know the music that inspired them. The early Philly Soul that got mixed with Salsa influences in Mancuso’s Loft and eventually became disco. I’ve been listening to MFSB, Carol Douglas, The Trammps and McFadden and Whitehead to name just a few records sitting around my room.

So now that I really have a loose feeling for the entirety of the rhythm and blues mutations over the last half century I think I can appreciate music like broken beat for what it is, music that is heavily based in allusion. And now funky house as well. Its not my history, or that of my family. But it is the history of the dominant musical form of the latter half of the 20th century, after all what was rock and roll but bastardized rhythm and blues?

So yes this does feel a bit like a regression away from FWD, always FWD. But these here youngers need an education, don’t they?

And perhaps the only way FWD, is to RWD.

First things first.

Get your ass on over to Paul Autonomic’s blog and check out his killer new mix. He’s playing a lot of the techno/dubstep crossover stuff that Gutta and a select few have been playing recently, including a lot of my favorite recent T++ tracks. This is all very encouraging, dubstep with an actual pulse to it, that doesn’t need to rely on cliched reggae samples or wobble.

And Pole’s just released a new dubstep/reggae mix for Resident Advisor. The two mixes share some tracks, but I feel like Paul’s is far superior.

Still it is very good to see the dub techno guys get in on the action, and for it to be such a big deal. And this is coming just as my interest in the sound was at an all time low.

There is hope yet, my friends, there is always hope.

What else have I been listening to, well lets see.

I’ve been going through one of my semi-annual black metal listening streaks. I’ve been getting into whats referred to as the “suicidal black metal” niche movement.

That’s black metal with a heavy doom influence for those of you that care. These bands have been plumbing the depths of what can be done with guitar drones, affecting textured riffs with heavy reverb.

We’re talking bands with names like Forgotten Tomb, Elysian Blaze, along with previous favorites like Xasthur, and Drudkh. Its all very sad and misanthropic, perfect for this time of year especially in the great white frozen North.

One of the reasons I’m still into metal is that I feel that they have an edge on a lot of electronic music when it comes to texture, the timbre and general feel of their guitar sound. Although there are people like Nathan Fake, Extrawelt and Jesse Somfay that have been importing some of the lessons learned from guitar music into a dance setting.

Xasthur in particular has a kind of neo-psychedelia, shoegazer slant to his raging storm of noise and “inhuman” drums. This is guitar trance music essentially. His recent split release with Striborg is by far one of the best things I’ve heard from the man. And this is coming from sunny California of all places. I bet he wishes he was in Norway, all that sun must be killing his goth ass.

I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find out that Fenriz (of Darkthrone fame) has been DJing dance music for quite a while now. There’s always been something entrancing and intentionally repetitive about their music. He was apparently very into psy-trance in the mid-90s, is a huge Hawtin fan (has a fucking Plastikman tattoo!) and is now a deep house DJ.

Which is just about the opposite of the “grim” black metal image.

So funny.

Speaking of deep house, Nick Craddock’s just made a real nice mix for Sud Electronic. Killer mixing, excellent deep selection.

I’m looking at you Roger in particular, you need this.

Now, you must be wondering, who is the cranky looking entity at the top of the post? Well friends that is Mahakala, a figure venerated in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. His acolytes include the monks of the Gyuto monastery, a group long renowned in ethnic music circles for their ability to sing in the chorded voice. Basically they create drones deep within their throats which resonate at more then just the bass frequency.

They can sing chords, one monk, three notes.

I’ve tried it and it fucking hurts worse than death metal growls.

To get an idea what I’m talking about listen to this.

Its from David Lewiston’s recording for the Explorer Series.

This is by far creepier and more affecting than most metal.

This is a mantra for Mahakala, these monks are up on a mountain intently praying to that scary looking guy. If thats not metal I don’t know what is, I’d be taking notes if I were playing music designed to frighten and awe. Course most metalheads wouldn’t know Buddhism from Adam, they’re too busy trying to look scary and playing faux-satanist.

Suckers.

Enough about metal already, I’ve been listening to plenty of techno, house and disco while writing about the screamy stuff. I’ve decided I really need to start mixing again in earnest and thus don’t feel too bad inflicting my practice sessions on you dear reader.

Check the mix here.

Sebastian Tellier - Sexual Sportswear
Kelley Polar - Rosenband
Cobblestone Jazz - PDB
Elektrochemie - Pleasure Seeker
Rodion - Electric Soca (Crookers Remix)
Guillaume and the Coutu Dumonts - My Main Man (Flying Filter Edit)
Michal Ho - Take Me Away (Jay Haze remix)
Tuff Jam - Need Good Love (Todd Edwards Dub)
Busy Face - Which Saint
October - Homosapiens
Age of Love - Age of Love (New Age Mix)
Bodycode - Body to Body
Jamie Anderson - Time Is Now (Radio Slave Panorama Garage Mix)
Lega - Nutmeg
Luke Hess - Motor Dub
Patchwerk Man - Transensual
PWOG - Ensnared
Aphex Twin - Moss

I realize that for those of you in the know this might raise a few eyebrows. Yes, I know I’ve gone from mixing dubstep and minimal techno to mixing, well, some strange combination of deep house, electro and dub influenced minimal and early trance. Yes, that is the Age of Love, as in one of the first trance tracks proper. And that is Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia in the tracklisting towards the end there, the original trippy (I refuse to say psy) trance artists vaguely affiliated with Psychick TV.

I think minimal has done a lot to get me to listen to early trance with an interested and not entirely hostile ear. And I don’t think that the big mainstream trance was necessarily the endpoint of a lot of that stuff, in fact you can mix a lot of it with Villalobos or Luciano without really clashing aesthetics. I really wish that Coil could have stuck with making track based music, or that they could have influenced some of the Belgian scene way back in the early 90s.

Alas it got too big, too mainstream, too fucking gay (even for me). Now it has a pernicious influence on drum and bass and very little mainstream credibility for all but the bravest DJs. Obviously people like Booka Shade and Stephan Bodzin have flirted with returning to their trancey roots, and there is the whole neo-trance thing with stuff like Minilogue but its not enough. In my experience drones and drums are entrancing, not arpeggiated synth riffs. So for me the Villalobos Shackleton remix is more trancey than anything with a huge arpeggiated saw synth lead.

Minimal is a chance to prove this, people like Bruno Pronsato, or his collaboration in Half Hawai have made deep techno and house influenced music that is in my opinion entrancing.

And the Tuff Jam track is there because I still love UK Garage, and more DJs need to. Melchior is the only minimal artist with a definite UKG influence and in my opinion its not enough. Some of the stuff he released earlier in the decade was fucking stellar. Especially the Lets Go Deep EP, minimal techno with cut up vocals a la Todd Edwards = A++ by me.

I owe Jacob a major thanks for turning me on to that one, as well as lending me his excellent Busy Face tracks. And thanks is due as always to the mighty Gutta aka Patchwerk Man for his awesome new tracks.

Finally a disclaimer, like a lot of my mixes this privileges track selection and time over perfect mixing. If you can’t stand listening to a novice mix in Traktor, with all the problems there of, or a little line noise here and there, don’t waste your time. This has got a lot of my sweat and blood in it, it only makes sense its coming to you half raw.

I was bored last week, watching cable, and I stumbled across the 2006 documentary American Hardcore. Most of you probably haven’t seen it so here’s a short synopsis, it details the history of American Hardcore Punk from 80-86, arguably the bleakest stretch of Reagan’s presidency for many in this country. They had interviews with Henry Rollins, a short talk with Ian MacKaye, just about everyone you would expect. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see an interview with the Bad Brains, which is what would have made the documentary for me. Over the course of things I realized one thing, I hate hardcore, with a passion. In fact I hate 99% of the punk rock I’ve ever heard in my life. I love the people involved in it, loved their politics for the most part, can’t stand the music, not for the life of me. And this is after really, really trying to get into it.

I used to work as a security guard on a third shift and had a lot of free time on my hands, most weekends I’d end up listening to the local college station’s punk and hardcore show out of pure boredom. I had friends who knew the scene inside and out, one friend who even ran a label that put out hardcore 7”s and the like. He could tell you the difference between hardcore in 80 vs. 84 vs. 88 in NYC, Washington DC, where ever. The man had a codification machine for a brain, a million infinitesimal variations between near identical bands never seemed to phase him. Talking to him was much like reading my blog must be for those who don’t much care for dance music. We ended up bonding over a mutual love of Neurosis, proving that if you’re open minded people nearly always can find things in common. But when it comes down right to it, only the fanatics care about the micro-differences between various factions inside a scene proper.

Anyways, I hate punk and love metal. Which is actually a slightly more defensible position than it sounds at first. Back in the stone ages of the early 80s punks hated meathead metal fans, and metalheads hated those faggot punks. It was a kind of tribal warfare which doesn’t make much sense from the modern perspective, considering the two genres having been swapping spit since around roughly what 82 or so? If you can find a copy of Heavy Metal Parking Lot that’ll give you a good idea about the metal fanbase back in those days. It’s basically a short home movie shot in the parking lot of a Judas Priest concert in the late 70s. The film includes a funny scene where a woman they’re interviewing claims that she is going “jump” Rob Halford’s “bones” directly after the show. That always makes me chuckle, seriously who can listen to songs like Eaten Alive and come away with the belief the man is straight? I’ll be at my job and Hell Bent for Leather will come on the radio and for a few moments I’ll feel like I’m on the inside of a colossal joke. I’ve got a lot of admiration for the man.

For me, personally speaking, when I listen to punk all I hear are crude echoes of the glory days of thrash. It’s a methodology thing as well, while Ian Mackaye was screeching about being straight edge, Metallica and Megadeth were writing mini-symphonies about substance abuse. Go listen to the song Straight Edge and then go listen to Master of Puppets or Wake Up Dead. I know which side of that ideological gap I’ll land on every time. Give me pessimism or doomed romanticism over righteous puritanical fury anyday. And in my humble opinion late thrash, particularly bands like Sepultura and Voivod trump any hardcore band for both the clarity and execution of their respective musical visions.

Of course this is all very problematic, considering that modern hardcore has nearly as much metal in its background as most metal bands do. And the primitivist strain of black metal is very punk influenced, especially any of the bands that follow Darkthrone like Ildjarn or Striborg. And metal-core has really thrown my dislike for punk into the winds, considering that a lot of these ostensibly punk bands seem to worship the NWOBHM more than anything. Iron Maiden, bizarrely, is a major influence on Avenged Sevenfold. But all this is mostly a fairly recent development, if anything metal has consumed everything that made punk interesting and improved upon it.

I still think that hardcore has a purpose though, every couple of years a hardcore band will suddenly mutate into something interesting. It happened for Black Dice, it happened for a lot of the dance oriented punk/indie stuff like !!!, it seems to have a purpose. Maybe hardcore has become something like jazz used to be, a place for musicians to grind their chops into a fine point. One of my favorite doom metal bands, the aforementioned Neurosis would never have existed without their hardcore past. Dance music itself can claim some ex-hardcore musicians, Drew Daniel of the Soft Pink Truth seems to have a history with it. His album in 04, “Do You Want New Wave, or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?” is a collection of house and disco covers of punk and hardcore tracks. Which makes me giggle, I’ve got a soft spot for the Dead Kennedy’s as well. And then there is well, Moby, but lets not talk about him. He’ s had his moment in the sun, I wish him the best. The question remains, why do I like one kind of aggressive rock based music and not the other? Why do I like metal at all, considering I have access to the rarified realms of dance music, with all its capacity for experimentation and promise for the future?

Why love metal? Well for one thing I’m angry a lot of the time. I’m not exactly the most stable of people at the best of times and dance mostly interest me when I’m up, feeling positive. For another it gives me visceral pleasure, I enjoy the sound of well played guitars, bass and drums. It isn’t based purely on nostalgia for my teens, this is something that has changed and grown as much as I have since then. One album I’ve listened to many, many times is Dissection’s Storm of the Light’s Bane. It’s a melodic death/black metal album with a heavy thrash influence, along with some of what I’m guessing is influence from Scandinavian folk music. The man who wrote that album went to prison for the murder of a gay man, after he got out he recorded one more album with a different band of the same name. Then he committed suicide in front of a copy of the Satanic bible, obviously not the nicest person. He was someone who would have found me repellent on a personal basis and might have even tried to harm me if given the chance. I love that album, I love music made by some very sick people, but very talented sick people. Metal attracts extremists, romantics, people dedicated to hopeless and twisted causes. In that it fits me.

It also helps that I’ve got an intensely religious background, understand the antipathy for Christianity on a personal level, and have spent a lot of time reading fantasy books as a young adult. It just fits that side of who I am. I’m no fascist, I believe in democracy and individual liberty, but I believe that metal appeals to my internal fascist. Wilhelm Reich was right in the belief that fascism exists within all of us, that attraction to power, the desire to become part of some righteous cause. It’s a part of myself I monitor, and do not allow it to effect my decision making. Finally I love metal because at its best it is a living breathing folk tradition, a form of working class art music. I don’t spend a lot of time defending things, mostly I criticize, but I’m willing to defend this part of this musical genre. And frankly metal’s romanticism, tons of metal is written about a love of nature, of the woods, etc. is much more appealing these days then the nihilistic materialism of modern hip-hop. I loathe the street culture that has infected that music down to its very roots, initially much of hip-hop was a reaction to this same culture. Afrika Bambataa and the Zulu Nation were a gang that became a force for good, for peace. Young Jeezy and Rick Ross are so far from that they don’t even have a right to use the same name.

Now I sound like a grumpy old man, go read Alex Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop or go read his blog at Zentronix. He’s a nice guy, and knows his stuff.

If my last post seems a little loved up, at least by my standards, that was mostly lysergically inspired. Sorry to inflict my subconscious on any of you not prepared for it. I stand by the post of course, its just I felt it needed some context.

Unfortunately, I think things will only proceed to get more emotional and messy from here. Opinions and music will appear in abundance, but it will almost always be mixed in with my thoughts about my life.

I keep this as a public log of my life in music, it helps me to be able to go back and track my progress over the last couple years. I feel like leaving a record of my thought process will help me understand my thoughts and mistakes.

I don’t believe in privacy the way many people do.

In this society it seems to be one of the most cherished and most illusive of commodities. I aim for transparency, if you dislike me, dislike me for what I am. And if you think I’m full of shit, tell me.

I value both open dialogue and criticism.

Now for something completely different.

I’m starting to think that all the time I’ve spent listening to both Breakcore’s crossover into Metal and vice versa have been just an incomplete prelude to the new-ish Dillinger Escape Plan album. Sure there was the Drumcorps thing, Aaron Spectre running his metal collection through the same digital meatgrinder that he previously stuck his Jungle collection through.

And Hecate made a somewhat weak attempt at a black metal album with Brew Hideous. Then there was the first Anaal Nathrakh album with its programmed drums and samples out of horror films.

I believe there have been a few other attempts at splicing the two sounds, seeing as Breakcore seemed to be made up of the explicitly Metalhead contingent of the Drum and Bass international community. And Devin Townsend toured Ozzfest with his own brand of this kind of weirdness.

But this is the first album I’ve heard where the digital additions don’t seem tacked on, or just badly done. This is an insane, and insanely musical mix. The band alternates between metalcore jazzbo spasms and maniacal pop metal. Being somewhat of a wuss I like the pop tunes, seeing as they remind me of a youth misspent listening to Faith No More and their legacy in Nu-Metal.

Check the tracks Black Bubblegum and Dead as History.

The rest of the album is not recommended for those who value tranquility. They apparently have been listening to quite a bit of the more out there IDM-y Venetian Snares stuff, either that or lots and lots of the evil Aphex Twin crap. These two veins of angry white boy music seem to really compliment each other well, as I’ve mused before.

And now that I’ve paid my dues to the darkside, lets talk about some disco. I’ve been, well, incredibly leary about the whole indie disco thing. At this point I don’t have any use for the Rapture or the LCD Soundsystem, that may change but I find their heavy emphasis on the indie element of the sound annoying.

Nasal white boy singers have exhausted my patience, even back when I wrote reviews for a college indie rock magazine.

I like Prins Thomas and Lindstrom, and have spent some time lurking on the DJ History forum. See my link page for more info regarding that.

I really am interested in expanding my sound into what could be a commercially viable sound as a DJ, and the only way I’m willing to do that is to feminize and find vocal tracks. Lots and lots of vocal tracks.

Minneapolis has quite a few indie-ish dance nights and the electro sound seems to still have some strength there. They definitely seem to be having more fun than me, so I’m curious if I couldn’t find some middle ground between my tastes and there’s.

My one and only interview story for the magazine I mentioned was with TV on the Radio, this was well before they were a large touring act, or before they got the front cover on Spin. I saw them play twice at small clubs and the second time Apollo Heights opened for them.

I liked Apollo Heights, bought their CD-R EPs and quickly forgot about them. They did actually just release an album of semi new material. Anyways I enjoyed Prince Language’s remix of their track Disco Lights.

Another DJ whose stuff I’ve been getting into is Hollerboard stalwart, DJ U-Tern. Normally even hanging out there would make me question his aesthetic, I tend to find Hollertronix/Diplo/Vice magazine annoying in the extreme. But He seems to have a good head on his shoulders. He’s done a run of really interesting mixes on his radio show and posted one of his own tracks for download on his blog.

Its a disco cover of Sippin on Some Sizzurp. If that sounds like something that would make you nauseous you’ll not want to click on this link. This is my attempt at broadening my mind and expanding my horizons, if you think I’m on some bullshit I would genuinely like to here from you.

I’d just like to say hello to all my friends, imaginary or not, all over the world. I don’t know what your lives are like, nor whom you love,

But may I wish you the best for the new year.

I’m agnostic, and more than a little gay,

But sometimes I think the imaginary figures of Odin and My Father’s God smile down on me on days like these. And if you’ve suffered through the blizzard of allusion and the cacophony of sounds posted here, I really truly consider you my friend.

Because I can’t even get my friends to listen to this techno bullshit.

What kind of person does it take, really, to follow that cold road that Monolake and T++ have been walking for some time now?

What kind of commitment, what isolation of the spirit?

I hope the drugs are some consolation, but is it enough really?

I’m just a very weird guy, writing for no one in particular, but my money is with the Emptyset.

This is a man committed to a sound, refined through years of practice.

There’s something really satisfying just hearing his first two releases and knowing they exist, know that you just didn’t dream up this fucked up mix of D1 and Loefah and T++. It’s real!

They are so well done, so lovingly made I can only assume that this is a guy desperate to wring the last drop of hope out of this music.

He’s seen what happened to breaks, and to the fucking “I’m hard! Me!” style of Surgeon-esque techno.

He’s seen all of early dubstep’s fucked up potential.

And he’s managed to get a little bit of it all in there, with even a kind of cocky twist to it. The Emptyset would like to welcome you to 2008,

Its a New Cold World out there.

And until Nathan Fake and Xasthur release a 12″ together.

Or Jhonn Balance comes back from the dead to dance with Ricardo Villalobos.

Until all the nice, kind of fucked up beardy guys can really get on down.

This will be as close as I get to my Valhalla.

Until then DJ Hermetic, and the Gay Magick Cru would like to bless you.

Non-denominationly, son of a preacher kind of a way.

Whether you’re a Earth Goddess kind of person, or a Cold Rationalist.

You are loved, here now.

Thanks to all my teachers for getting me this far, Alan Moore is one of the tops. The Barbelith community, you’re crazy, but I love yah.

Especially the posters known as Seth and Grant,

Thelema and the Dao do not need to be at odds.

I’m here, and listening.

To the secular people, especially Tim Finney (mwaaahh!).

Glad to hear you’re alright after the surgery.

Its been so cool to see my imaginary friends do well.

Whether its Ronan, or Phil Sherburne,

Gee maybe I should get a Myspace account?

Or Dissensus’ own Jacob Burns, aka Busy Face, aka Sodium Night Life.

Thanks for all the beats, will try to repay the favor soon.

Peace

Now its cold.

The Midwest looks to be in for a real winter for the first time in a couple years, sure we had a couple of short brutal Februaries but its already hitting the negative temperatures (Fahrenheit) in December this year. Which means I’m not really in the mood for happy music. My listening is far from monochromatic, its not black, black, black all the time. But its definitely getting a little on the grey side.

Been digging out the old painkillers.

Eyehategod, Burzum, a little Xasthur here and there.

Take as needed for pain, right?

That and a bottle of Johnny Walker keeps me warm at night.

For those of you who have wandered by looking for writing about dance music it’ll still be here. I have never pretended to have completely defensible tastes. I listen to nu-metal, psy-trance, ugly fucking Current Value DnB, Meshuggah for gods sake! Anyone who wants to criticize me for the occasional hipper than thou stance needs to keep in mind that you are just looking at the upper crust of who I am.

Sure I like incredibly detailed tech-house a la Villalobos or Luciano.

But to look at me I’m still more nu-metal than New Order.

Some things you just don’t grow out of.

Its trying to reconcile the broad strands of interest together that occasionally gets me in trouble. Sure I love the stuff that Distance is putting out on Chestplate at the moment. Love some of Reso’s stuff (Toasted!), but I’m not sure you should just take my word on it. You got to keep in mind that I’ve arrived at Dubstep and all the little UKG sub-genres threw a pretty circuitous route.

I thought it was interesting, for example, that Scorn’s press releases for his new album on Ad Noiseam all mentioned him being an “isolationist” artist. Its not really a tag that is used for electronic music, there’s isolationist black metal but not much isolationist dubstep.

Its been a long time since Mr. Harris was in a metal band, but the sonic propensities, the trademarks of the maximalist, brutalized sonic template remain. He’s just using dubstep LFO tweaking now instead of distorted guitar crunch. Its well put together, after a couple cursory listens at least. Little soundtrack samples and off key fuzz add a interesting sheen to things.

Tim Finney would hate it, I’m positive.

I’m not sure how he would feel about the Sub Version album though. It came out back in July apparently, I’ve only noticed it recently and found it engaging. This is Jay Haze and Michal Ho collaborating (occasionally with Paul St. Hilaire aka Tikiman) as a dubstep side project. I like their individual outputs separately, especially Jay’s Fuckpony project. But together they get seriously odd, this is so off kilter, so rhythmically different from mainstream dubstep as to be almost incompatible from a mixing standpoint.

They’ve had a track or two included on both of Soul Jazz’s Box of Dub compilations, which is probably the only contact they’ve had with the dubstep scene at large. Nobody gives a shit apparently. Best of luck to them, hope they keep at it.

I have listened to and liked both Pinch’s album and Boxcutter’s new one. They’ve been talked up and down though, no need for my input really.

Just thought it was interesting that two genre’s of music as disparate as grindcore and house could eventually meet someday in British dance music. I’ve got some respect for people who choose a singular sonic template and stick by it throughout changing winds of fashion. And I can also see how dillettantes bring new ideas to old tables.

Its the committment to a sound I’m looking for.

I’ve been enjoying watching DnB being influenced by dubstep. Breakage’s new thing was spectacular minimalism at its best. Minimal dubby jungle, wouldn’t think that it would work but it does. Parson has also been doing things at higher tempos that bear watching. DnB might be like Dubstep’s older brother, a bad influence most of the time, but when its the other way round good things seem to happen.

So where do I cast my lot, sensuality or austerity?

Slinky sexy 2-step, or brawny thuggish drum and bass?

Dubstep?

Minimal dub techno with a dubstep influence?

It might all get a touch too hermetic.

I saw Paco Osuna DJ to a small room on Saturday.

And enjoyed it.

But I think that I’ve stretched my interest in the modern European sound near to breaking. I’m starting to get to the point where I’m noticing the conventions of the loose conglomerate of styles recently referred to as minimal. Its something else than techno or house, after seeing Derrick May and Jesse Saunders DJ I’m certain of that.

The remainders of what used to be called electro-house seem to run through a lot of it, obviously for a lot of people electro-house means something completely different now. I’m told that in the UK the term exclusively applies to Justice and Digitalism and the whole rock rave thing. Which is odd because that music is neither electro nor house. Justice to me sound like Rave against the Machine with a little Daft Punk/Alan Braxe worship thrown in.

But anyways, minimal. It feels like a lot of this music has that European inverted narcissism to it. You know: European musicians loving the music of black American musicians who in turn loved European music. Obviously this doesn’t really apply to some of the good stuff, Henrik Schwarz and the Innervisions style deep house. You can tell they genuinely love a broad swathe of music, from early house to dub to classic rhythm and blues.

Paco didn’t really inspire this, it was just the latest in a series of DJs that didn’t quite touch what I wanted. His DJing was really solid, he incorporated two laptops into the regular twin Technics set up and played one of the better hybrid sets I’ve seen. Great percussion in a lot of it. But a lot of this music seems to have its heart in the old European dance styles: Electro, Italo, early EBM and trance.

Especially some of the Get Physical artists and people like Kiki.

And obviously Cocoon has never gone very far away from trance.

Then you’ve got the colder more cerebral end with M_nus, the Hawtin, guys who were making click and cuts style stuff a couple of years ago.

Or the sound technicians like Sleep Archive.

It all feels a bit empty to me.

It lacks warmth, lacks life.

And I’m one of the coldest, most cerebral people I know.

In the American club context none of this music has the space to breathe that it does in Europe, it felt so artificial to see Paco DJ for a little less than two hours. Then the house lights come up, “thats it people, everybody go home!”

Either my fellow Americans have never heard of the afterparty or I just wasn’t invited. It feels weird telling my friends that I love being stuffed into dark noisy clubs full of mildly pretentious people so that I can dance by myself in the dark.

Sometime its what I need though.

I need something empty and robotic.

And sometimes I need something with a little soul to remind me what I’m missing. I hate being critical of people who have so much more drive and talent than what I am able to muster. It feels like an empty, masturbatory excercise. If I really want to change anything the only option available is the long hard road of learning to do it myself.

For now I’m willing to think to myself in public way.

What am I feeling recently?

Baby Oliver: This Is Prime.

I don’t care if its Morgan Geist, a collaboration, or some follower of the label. This is really top quality stuff, both sides of both releases have their moments. I’ve also been starting to care about dubstep again, instead of just following it out of a sense of loyalty. One recent change is how much I’ve been getting back into Scuba’s productions. I don’t remember exactly why I didn’t pick up any of his stuff after SCUBA 01, but now I’ve gone back and bought the MP3s through Boomkat. I’ve really been enjoying their elegance and simplicity, the functional nature of some of the tracks. The man has a definite ear for melody.

Tracks like Braille Diving have this early 80s Roxy Music feel to them.

Like Avalon in Dub, with caustic noisy basslines. I still don’t like his experiments with guitars in dubstep, but other than that its all solid.

And Hotflush has one of the highest standards in dubstep right now.

Here’s a big surprise, like every other poster on Dissensus I’ve been listening to Burial. Its over-hyped, but I’ve got nothing but love for the guy.

If he exists.

And I was the last half hearted grime fan to get into JME’s Boy Better Know Vol 4. The sound of last summer for a lucky few.  It feels like a perfect midpoint between 2-step, the Kanye Style helium vocals in 2005 grime and the bassline house scene which I’m not nearly enough into to have any comments on.