| #634 |
|
2002 |
Perilous It’s a very short one this week . . . This year has gone a little too swiftly. And the new sound that was supposed to shake things up still hasn’t arrived. Instead the once banished garage rock has returned and in the short space of a few months the small interest the media had in dance music as an oppositional force, has dissipated. Even my own excitement in new music has been diminished over the last twelve months. There have been a few interesting releases and plenty of average records but the indicator of the decline is that the most enjoyable records of the last year have been reissues of rare funk, soul, reggae or late 70s and early 80s no-wave. Outside of that, for the third year in a row the guilty pleasures of the year have come from ‘urban’ r&b – not even indie hip hop. Productions from NERD/Neptunes and once again Timbaland continue to be exciting – Missy Elliott, NERD’s In Search Of, Justin Timberlake and even the new Snoop Dogg single, From The Chuuuch To Tha Palace. Most of the pleasure of these records comes from their ability to sneak oddities through the templates of mass market (and market researched) pop music. Snoop’s track sees the Neptunes take Joey Beltram’s doom-laden mentasm stab – ‘the’ classic sound of 92 rave, and bring down in tempo and mange to inject it with impossible funk. Like the Neptunes use of a bee-like rave scrawl in the back of the mix in Ludacris’ Southern Hospitality (2001), or even Timbaland’s use of acid squelch in Aaliyah’s Try Again (2000), there’s a healthy genre-smashing sound pillaging going on. Not surprisingly then the interest this year (and last year) in versioning pop songs – if pop has been the most interesting place to listen for ideas then this makes perfect sense. Bastard pop, mashups, bootlegs – the craze has started to dissipate as the shock value of most of its tactics has been somewhat reduced. One of the most positive things to come out of this phase has possibly been the blooding of new producers and the rapid adoption of complex computer-based production tools for predominantly pop-driven ends. And as dance music regresses further towards the twin vortexes of authenticity as genre (house, techno) and authenticity as lifestyle (J-Lo claiming she’s still Jenny from the block; and Jurassic 5 wanting to take things back to a ‘golden’ age) , its these new production tools and their spread to home computers in the hands of 14 yr olds that holds the most promise for the next few years. Because it is those 14 yr olds who won’t care who Derrick May or Kraftwerk or Grandmaster Flash or even Dr Dre were, who will be able to shake up something new. So this year, either because I’m lazy tonight, or because there weren’t any, there won’t be a list of top ten records from me for 2002. But certainly the award for ‘most innovative packaging’ goes to Venetian Snares for his 3”cd release on Hymen Records which comes packaged with a working ‘mini-viewfinder’ with a slide wheel of alternative cover art inside it . . . . And Frigid-wise, just two more to go before our little no frills NYE event called Brown. On the 15th it’s a dubwise excursion to celebrate the launch of Madlib’s Trojan mix up and the reissuing of the Wackies back catalogue, and the 22nd with Realistix and Neural. Yellow Peril  Goto
Snarl Texts Index Pages
|