As the title states; music and boredom - this is my life at the moment.
I am someone who is in-golfed within music from my day to day life; weather it be making it, listening to it, promoting it, talking about it (you get the idea). It becomes hard to take yourself away from that life.
Most of my friends are musical in one respect or another; they all DJ's, in bands, singers, song writers, club night/event promoters or label owners, one could say its my life (even if I don't want it to be).
I have been on a journey in the past few months to get away from that, I haven't started to write a tune in months; not turned on the Ipod or clicked on a youtube link in weeks and yet; no matter when I hear music in passing somewhere, I associate it with boredom.
My question/thought is that; can you have a hobby, which is your passion, some-what career and is something you find it hard to not be involved in, in your day to day life?
2012 has seen a huge shift in what is working in the clubs from the end of the past year the boiling point of UK dance music went from Tearout, aggressive Dubstep, Electro and Drum and Bass to low end bass lines scaped around the 130ish mark;
I guess you could say that House music has boomed again.
But this isn't cheese vocals coupled with the most radio-friendly backing track; its something more sinister - something more underground and dark.
As we step into 2012 we present the 24th Century EP from South London based Pistonsbeneath who has been quietly crafting his sound, locked away in the studio for almost 2 years. Elusive as a producer for quite some time with only a handful of DJs receiving his dubs, Jon has been influenced by the South London scene from its early days and remains an avid vinyl collector across all genres, clearly providing him with a great many influences. Now we unveil his debut, running seven tracks long, this is truly a journey into the Pistonsbeneath sound…
The intro of Present Knowledge begins the journey with suspenseful stabs and coupled with a brooding bassline creates a rugged halfstepper. Dreamy ethereal FX, shuddering bass and subtle off beat underlying percussive elements in the second track brings a surefire banger, designed to cause the Mind to Resonate!!
Blue Jaunte combines a rolling tribal drum break with a mysterious, almost oriental cyber punk atmosphere which spawn a pulsating sub bass monster ready to rattle systems…
The shuffle and click of Luminous Body‘s intro transforms into a surging wave of deep bass and sparkling outer space FX that pushes this track forwards. Moving into the track from which the EP takes its name, Psychic 24th Century begins with a stabbing robotic drone and drops down into an eerie trembling roller.
Unspeakable creeps out from a haunting intro and vocal stab and evolves into a low-end stomper with mechanical bass sounds colliding in the 2nd drop. Seven Years has a supernatural discord in its atmosphere as well as truly nasty growling, snarling scraping bass and reinforces Pistons’ sonically mutated bass at its core bringing the EP to a close…
JustAnotherAlias is an alias of Dubstep producer Legend4ry;
exploring music in its most conceptional form, focusing in fusing life between the old and the new bringing eclectic blend of organic and electronic music.
"An Introduction" is an EP spawned from a failed attempt of writing an album for February Album Writing Month (http://fawm.org/ ) - while the album never got complete some of the tracks were still worked on to the point where it only seemed logical to use these as an introduction of JustAnotherAlias onto the world.
With use of the audio pool of sounds free to use via the Creative Commons license; this EP is vocalized by some of the best vocalists you've probably never heard of before.
GKO is a South East London resident with a highly unique sound.
Mixing Dub, Reggae and G-Funk (with inspirations more broad than that) he brings exciting music to a genre which has seen better days when it comes to originality.
Steve Goodman AKA Kode9 is one of my favourite artists within the world of bass music; he is the mastermind behind the prolific label that is Hyperdub and has a Ph.D in Philosophy.
Kode9 is also the author of "Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear" a study of how sound is being used in other forms than music.so as you can see, this guy is one of the brilliant minds of music today. So lets go through the history of him as an artist and why he is my pick for an artist spotlight.
I'm not going to give you the whole history of Kode9 and what hes done for music; if you're even the tiny bit into bass music culture you will know HyperDub's name at least! What I will be doing is showing you my favourite highlights of his earlier career within Dubstep.
Probably the most important thing for Dubstep when it comes to a single release; released at a time where Dubstep wasn't Dubstep; it was finding its feet and finding its name, this small duo (first being Grime) released on Rephlex (owned by the legendary Aphex Twin) featured some of the biggest names we know today; when they didn't carry the clout that they do; Grime2 features tracks from Kode9, Loefah and Digitalmystikz and I'm sure the latter two need no introduction.
This release made people wanting more, put these artists in the spotlight in the underground dance music world and helped shape the foundations of one of the biggest movements in dance music today.
The first release of Hyperdub and an interesting one; taken inspiration from the vocalists Daddi Gee Aka Spacepace's favourite song Prince - Sign 'O' the Times they made a stipped down - yardy cover on the track; its a powerful and a thought provoking track.
The tempa website describes the mix cd in this way, this is better than I could!
Dubstep allstars Vol.03, mixed by Kode9 and hosted by The Spaceape, is the dubstep mix CD re-imagined.
Armed with a mic and the same 10" dubplate weapons, but approaching from a completely different trajectory, this is a creation greater than the sum of its parts. Observe how the line gets twisted out of all recognition.
First there's the slection, a crucial element in any DJs arsenal. This defines the range of emotional spaces likely to be encountered along the way. For this mix, Kode9 drew from his London surroundings, taking South London dubstep and East London grime and heading into uncharted waste ground.
The majority of the material is unreleased; fresh and upfront, it's carefully selected for its strength and potential. The effect of this is twofold. It ensures the listener is receiving the very latest sounds, the very edge of the expanding dubstep sphere as defined by the collective imagination of a self-sustaining musical community. The second effect is internal: by selecting the best tracks that fit his vision, and not simply big tracks from the most established names, it feeds back creative energy into the very community from which they are drawn by suggesting a production meritocracy
Even though this feature is about Kode9 mainly; I can't do the whole thing without a mention of Burial!
The first album released on the HyperDub imprint, it shocked the whole world and sent the media into a frenzy; if you don't know Burial is one of the biggest controversies in music these days as he hasn't ever shown his face in public; despite being nominated for the career-making award The Mercury Prize; Burial didn't even turn up to perform on the night (which all artists are invited to do); loads of people have said (industry experts) if he turned up, he would of won but the first album (self titled) is before all this happened.
Burial - Burial is deep; dark and emotional music; laced with huge drums and bass, chopped and screwed vocals to portray a message as well as collaborative work with Spaceape (Kode9's MC).
A short 5 months after the almost-perfect album from Burial, Hyperdub releases its second full LP with the head honcho's very own mystical work with MC Spaceape which is Memories Of The Future.
It took me a while to "get" this album, it went over my head; I was still listening to Burial at the time and wasn't quite understanding what the album was trying to say or do. Listening back while writing this article (first time in around a year) I can't help but hold it close to my heart; its a wonderfully produced album with more depth than any Electronic album I have heard before! I know a lot of older Dubstep fans who appreciate this album and love it with all their hearts but I feel its not very timeless, if you was there at the time and felt this emerging scene starting the bubble; this album proved for the second time it can be a genre which produces albums.
And this is where my journey ends, for now! Two more features to come (groundbreaking days and present days)
