TEN YEARS OF NOTHING

Theres something quite sad about the Warp 20 year anniversary. Not the fact that old fans pay a small fortune for a basically pointless box set, after all it’s clearly meant only for fans and I’m sure it’s giving them pretty much what they want. I have never been much of a Warp fan myself, I’ve never really understood what was supposed to be so amazing about the label even in its prime. A lot of people seemed to think that there was a golden age where you could buy just about every release on Warp and it would be amazing and groundbreaking, but I’ve never felt that way, their output came off rather uneven to me. Perhaps in the bleep era Warp was that great, but I wasn’t really aware of them back then, and the cult following only really began when they startet the whole IDM/album-techno thing.

Anyway, not being a fan I will not be listening to, let alone buy, that box set, but it is interesting to compare it with the releases celebrating the 10 year anniversary in 1999. First you might notice the cover design. The 1999-records had some modernist architechture/brutalism-thing going on – not executed all that great, but the idea was appropriate. The new box, on the other hand, looks like it could be a recent Pink Floyd compilation. Of course that kind of pseudo-scientific cod surrealism have always been a part of the Warp aesthetic, but the fact that it’s chosen to represent the entire Warp history is quite dispiriting. Still, the content is even more significant: With the 10 year anniversary records they not only made what is probably the ultimate bleep compilation, basically containing all their amazing early singles, they even released a great compilation of early house and techno from artist that came before Warp, a gesture that seemed so much more interesting and brave than just giving the countless newly converted Aphex/Autechre/Squarepusher-fans a pile of stuff they allready knew and loved. Ten years later, and half of the anniversary box is a compilation chosen by Warp co-founder Steve Beckett and “the fans”. And the other half is repeating the "idea" of the least interesting third of the 10 year anniversary – the tired trick of dressing a bunch of old tracks up in new remixes.

Well, obviously they couldn’t release another compilation of old bleep singles, but that’s actually the whole point of why the anniversary thing is so sad: In the last ten years Warp have not made any contribution to music even remotely as groundbreaking as their part in the bleep era. Or the IDM era for that matter. Because, rellay, even though there’s some good records here and there, when was the last time any of them had any actual impact on anything? That would probably be Boards of Canadas Music Has the Right to Children, which did indeed start a whole lot of things, but that was 1998!! Even if there have been the odd great warp record during the last ten years, that period do indeed seem utterly impoverished compared to the ten years that went before. And it’s bloody ten years. Ten years of almost nothing. Let’s not even mention the indie records.

In this way, the Warp anniversary somehow seems to represent how insignificant the noughties have been in comparison with the nineties. Now Warp never really got into the great stuff that actrually did happen in the noughties, unlike Planet MU they never tried to be a part of grime or dubstep or breakcore, so of course the Warp version of the decade is much more dull than it actually was in itself, but still, in the nineties there was huge amounts of incredible stuff going on that Warp didn’t participate in either, and they still managed to release a whole bunch of groundbreaking records. It often seemed like the nineties – especially the first half – simply had infinite levels operating at the same time. Looking back at the last ten years of Warp you realize that that was not the case at all during this decade. To come up with something new and original was the exception, not the norm. This is what really saddens me, and it kinda work on a personal level too: The thing is, when I heard about the 20 years of Warp, I suddenly realized that I remembered the last time Warp had an anniversary – and it seemed like yesterday!!!

Part of the problem here is obviously that you’re bound to feel old with such a realisation. Ten years passed and you hardly noticed, and all those things you wanted to do never happened. But equally sad is the reason the years seemed to pass so fast and leave so little: Unlike the nineties, the noughties didn’t offer more truly new stuff than it was possible to keep track on. Developments that could have happened simultaniously and in a few months in the early nineties followed each other in orderly succession in the noughties, and took years each - like the 2step-grime-dubstep-lineage. You could keep up with the new releases and feel that indeed things were happening, not realizing that you spent years following developments that would have happened in a flash earlier. For someone brought up on the nineties evolutionary speed, the noughties felt like an instant, because the musical evolution it offered would have happened in an instant in the privious decade.

BREAKCORE GEMS

So, in one and a half year I've only been able to put five things up here. Pretty long things I suppose, but still, it's not really impressive. I just don't have the right amount of motivation, or time, it seems. But then, it might also be the kind of things I've written so far. I really like to do those long complicated think pieces, just going ahead and come up with everything I have to say about something, go all the way until I think the piece is done, but it just takes such a long time the way I work, there's always going to be much more than I think when I begin. So perhaps it's time to try a little variation. If there is going to be more activity here, I have to make some more concentrated and planned pieces that don't get out of hand. In other words, some Woebot-style going-through-a-pile-of-thematically-related-records might do the trick. Compared to the heavy exegeses I've done so far it might seem like a cop out – especially when it's obviously not going to be as authoritatively done as with Woebot – but on the other hand, it's something I've really wanted to do for a while, and hopefully it'll allow me to do some fast and effective action writing, as well as shed a little light on some records that truly deserve it. Well, it's worth a try I think. So, here goes.

Maybe there's a few places in my pieces about dubstep and mainstyle-gabber where it looks like I'm kinda badmouthing breakcore. And, to some degree, I am. Breakcore is bloody problematic to me in a lot of ways. Despite the fact that it developed out of the more-or-less experimental hardcore scene that I've loved for so long, and despite the fact that I was totally into it in the beginning and bought lots of records, and even though I still love and regularly listen to a lot of said records, it was pretty obvious for me right from the start that this stuff wasn't going to have a – let alone be the – future. For a start, the name is a dead giveaway, so sadly uninspired that it's almost directly proclaiming a lack of ambition – this music is just a combination, and a rather obvious one at that. It's hardcore with breakbeats, innit. Jungle meeting gabber. It had to happen, and of course a combination of two of the greatest forms of rave ever has to deliver some good stuff, but the point is that just adding up stuff doesn't automatically advance the used elements in themselves. Breakcore didn't develop neither jungle nor gabber any further. At best it managed to revitalize them slightly, but mostly by placing them in a new context.

Of course, it might not have been 100% doomed from the start. Dupstep, despite having an equally lame name, and also starting as a kind of obvious combination (something like instrumental grime+2step+tech step), eventually ended up with it's own powerful innovations, taking a giant leap forward. It just didn't happen with breakcore, and for some reason it never felt like it actually could. But why? I guess it has something to do with the core audience and the producers, mostly coming from styles already infected with either anti-rave crossover aesthetics or an ironic mash up approach. Two of the most crucial elements making up the breakcore scene is probably lapsed IDM-nerds, lured into breakbeats by drill'n'bass rather than jungle/'ardcore, and former Digital Hardcore-disciples with much more of a noise/punk approach than a rave one. That would be a huge part of the American segment I'd say – digital hardcore was surprisingly big in the US, maybe just as big as any kind of genuine rave music (of which I'm not counting house), and the same goes for breakcore too I suppose.

Anyway, the point is that a large fraction of those making breakcore were kinda doing post-rave mix-it-all-up music right from the start, working with self conscious deconstruction, references and parody rather than developing the musics genetic material from within. Too large a fraction for breakcore to ever free itself from the gravitational pull of the past, the knowledge of history, and engage a sufficiently amount of new blood. Unlike dubstep, which, no matter what people like K-Punk or Reynolds want to believe, certainly have a large audience – and probably a growing roster of new producers as well – that are not scholars of 'nuum history. This is the reason why, despite all the great music, breakcore never convinced me the way dubstep did, and why it probably never could have developed into a really fertile rave scene. To get the full meaning of breakcore, you had to know too much, there's no starting from zero. Which is finally, to some degree, getting us to the point of this piece: Because even though the majority of breakcore is made up of either: 1) extremely hard and noisy jungle overloaded with ragga samples, 2) drill'n'bass beefed up and rhythmically anchored by massive gabber bass drum density, 3) silly plunderphonic party music, 4) post DHR-noisefests with punishing amen shrapnel, 5) sluggish industrial goth-core or 6) a combination of any or all of the above, breakcore was also an extremely versatile genre. The producers came from a huge variety of backgrounds, and it all became part of the sound, which could be anything from absolutely serious noise/art-experimentalism to feel good party music.

As much as breakcore lack a truly independent, collective movement, and never managed to create a new, unique and defining sound separating it from its sources, it also has a much higher maverick ratio than perhaps any other electronic music of the last twenty years. Precisely by not being a scenious movement, breakcore had plenty of room for geniuses, or at least producers creating their very own odd take on things. This is where the great breakcore innovations are to be found, and of course, none of them initiated a movement, they were all specialized signature curiosities, personal micro-innovations that could hardly be followed by anyone else without plagiarising them. As a result, there's a big treasure chest of wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable breakcore to be excavated, and while the genre have few defining classics (let alone anthems), there's plenty of amazing obscurities, as well as stuff that's just so bloody original that it can’t help to fascinate. So here we go, a collection of 15 more or less unsung breakcore gems:

Patric Catani: Hitler 2000 (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
Perhaps the greatest artist on DHR, and definitely the one who made the best records released by the label. Alec Empire is probably as good as Catani overall, but his best records remain the albums he did for Mille Plateaux, even if he also made some good ones for his own label as well. While Empires Destroyer is one of the few truly trailblazing breakcore records, opening the amen-punk route followed by far too many, it's nowhere as great as this, which shows how inventive, funny, destructive and sometimes even downright groovy breakcore can be. Some people talk about Shizou as the pinnacle of DHR; I've got absolutely no idea why. To me he seems pretty anonymous and stereotypical. Others mention Christoph de Babalon, but even though his highly praised If You're Into It, I'm Out of It-album IS pretty good, it's also slightly overrated, a bit uneven quality-wise, while probably a bit too even in mood and atmosphere. Hitler 2000 is quite the opposite, sticking in all sorts of weird, twisted directions, from the baroquely contortive to the nightmarishly beautiful, and most of it not sounding like anything else in breakcore, though maybe at times slightly foreshadowing later developments. With it's superb balance of earshredding noise and mangled grooves, Hitler 2000 was in many ways the next big leap forward in breakcore, since 1997s foundational records like Panaceas Low Profile Darkness, DJ Scuds early eps and Alec Empires aforementioned Destroyer, while simultaneously remaining a unique, inimitable entity. It kind of map out the scenes potential, you could say, and consequently, in a lot of ways, the journey begins here. Mind you, Catanis trashy fictitious computer game soundtrack The Horrible Plans of Flex Busterman might actually be his greatest achievement for DHR, but that's not really breakcore, and unfortunately not something anyone really followed.

No-Tek 5 – Urban Break Corps (No-Tek)
A brilliant obscurity from the transitional phase in french hardcore, where the cutting edge switched from manic speedcore to twisted breakcore. Apparently, No-Tek is both a label and a producer, and responsible for some of the greatest of that french speciality, psychedelic gabber. This four track EP, which is actually kind of a mini-compilation involving Psai-Zone, Axl and “Znobr the Break Fucker” as well, is in a much more loose and grungy territory. It's still driven gabber bass drums as hard and heavy as big blocks of concrete, but they’ve become strangely rolling and syncopated and countered by rattling breakbeats, creating the overall impression of rusty and ramshackle machinery pushing ahead despite being close to a breakdown.

Cavage09 – Sans Dessus Dessous (Cavage)
Mostly known for organizing raves in the Paris catacombs and sewers, which is obviously enough to give them eternal cult status, the Cavage label was also a central cog in the french breakcore scene, mirroring the developments made by experimental-hardcore-institution Praxis, which made a shift from industrially sounding four-to-the-floor mayhem to industrially sounding splatter breakbeats around the time Cavage started. Cavage became the french part of the whole milieu surrounding Praxis - including labels like Ambush and Deadly Systems, the c8-website and the Datacide-magazine -, and released a string of compilations centered around prime mover and label mastermind Saoulaterre, aka Boris Domalain, also working as Gorki Plubakter and DXMédia (and often on the same record), and accompanied by a floating roster of artists like Nurgle de Trolls, Gamaboy and Praxis stalwarts like Dan Hekate and Nomex. In this way, the Cavage records are not so much traditional compilation albums as they're the latest adventures of Boris and friends, and the style change according to his current whims and whoever is otherwise participating. The most recent Cavage record, number 14, is absolutely brilliant, but couldn't really be called breakcore by any stretch of the definition. Rather, it's deeply psychedelic avant garde hardcore, simultaneously beautiful, noisy, sorrowful and disorienting/terrifying, and definitely worth tracking down. For their breakcore output however, they were probably never better or more unique than on Cavage09, where all traces of traditional breakcore clichés are practically gone There is one single lame cliché on the album, in the form of a short and utterly generic noise track, but the rest is a bizarre and captivating mix of twisted french hip hop, drifting psychedelic soundscapes and slowly-disintegrating-yet-deeply-groovy breakbeats, not to mention even more odd elements like stuttering guitar riffs and oldie show tune-samples. This might sound like it's one of those annoying everything-goes-no-genres-binding-us-we-can-and-will-fuse-everything-we-please records, but what's so amazing is that it actually isn't. The weird mix of styles and ideas never sounds like forced eclecticism, it's all just coming together in a way that seems obvious and right and so much it's own strange thing – physically searing and totally ravey while at the same time permeated with a strange sense of loss and sadness – that you hardly even notice that it's actually a combination of pretty awkward elements.

Electromeca: Riddim (Casse Tête)
The most successful french breakcore label is probably Peace Off, specializing in archetypical breakcore styles from a huge cluster of international leaders in the field, like Sickboy and Doormouse. Electromeca could be described as something like Peace Offs secret weapon, their one true claim to innovative fame and on a completely different level from what's otherwise on the label – a bit like Req on Skint, you could say. It often seems like Electromeca is the breakcore producers breakcore producer, recognised within the scene as something extraordinary, but still somewhat unknown outside it. His trademark is the incredibly heavy, crunchy rhythms, treacherously chopped start-stop-syncopations that are nevertheless infectiously funky and groovy where most breakcore is linear and frenetic. The Batteling Doll Beats-ep on Peace Off is arguably the definitive Electromeca record, showcasing his style at its most pure and effective, but this one hits harder, so intricately brutalized that it's almost disintegrating, and yet it still delivers an irresistible dancefloor impact.

Inushini: Inushini (Ohm 52)
It's not easy to dig up information about this guy. There's a myspace-page, but as usual that isn't much help. He seems to be german, and given a split LP with Society Suckers, perhaps from Chemnitz/Karl Marx Stadt as well, or at least from the former East Germany. It would certainly make sense considering the music, which is easily the most bleak, grainy, gritty, grimy, low res-sample rate damaged breakcore you're ever going to hear. The sound of a world turned into one big polluted, frozen, industrial dump, an absolute forsaken wasteland of dead sounds and sonic dirt. In a way, it's breakcores very own hauntology. A few of the tracks are aggressive noise+amen attacks with a clear DHR influence, like bursts of desperation in an otherwise worn out world, but mostly, this is a record of atmospheric and understated breakcore, often saturated with an almost unbearable, ghostly, heartbreaking sadness. An obvious comparison could be Christoph de Babalons highly praised If You're Into It, I'm Out of It-album, but Inushini is actually better and more powerful.

LFO Demon/ FFF: Clash of the Titans (Sprengstoff)
Probably the most successful rave-anthemic breakcore producer around, and definitely the most versatile, LFO Demon only tangentially belong to the genre. His secret weapon is an utterly honest and heartfelt love for the Mokum school of cheesy happy gabber, and this record even contain a track – which is obviously totally great – called “Mokum Riddim”. His best tracks are true anthems because they're free from any hint of irony or mockery, he simply makes euphoric hardcore rave so irresistibly catchy that you think you're back in '92, not because the music sounds like a retro construction a la Zombys back-to-'92-album, but exactly because it doesn't. What LFO Demon resurrect is the future buzz itself, through a music that is clearly contemporary. It's only the feeling it ignites that isn't. The three tracks on LFO Demons half of this split EP – the other half is pretty good but also much more ordinary ragga-breakcore – are all among his most anthemic tracks, combining breakbeats, ragga samples and incredibly catchy gabber, and are probably the closest he have ever been to something that can be adequately identified as breakcore – even though that still isn't all that close, maybe it's more a kind of raggabber, as I've once seen it described. In any case, it's just one side of his polymorphous talent, stretching from psychedelic experimental hardcore to gloomy and achingly beautiful electronica. I really should make an entire post about him some time.

Ove-Naxx: Ove-Chan Dancehall (Adaadat)
Japanese gameboy-breakcore, rhythmically pretty similar to the typical Venetian Snare-ish beat-butchery, viciously thrashing forward while constantly stumbling over its own feet. What makes it special, though, is the exquisite sense of melodic playfulness and the highly inventive arrangements patching together all sorts of twisted dynamics and mad build ups. It's the kind of thing that could very well have been totally annoying, but somehow Ove-Naxx manage to make it thoroughly enjoyable with just the right amount of cartoonish charm. Also worth mentioning is his ability to actually use the bleepy arcade sounds in new and sprawling ways, as an inspiration in the original sense of the word, rather than as a signifier of a particular era and sound. Is Ove-Naxx what some people call clownstep? If so, I'm all for clownstep.

Slepcy: And Again (Ambush)
This polish duo took the most abstract avant-noise end of breakcore – the early Ambush/Praxis-axis as well as the more extreme parts of DHR– to the logical conclusion, eventually creating something that was as close to musique concrete as to jungle. It's also sonic violence of epic, almost wagnerian proportions, like monumental cathedrals made of sonic scrap metal and nerve gas. Certainly an example of breakcore in thrall to the noise scenes quest for self-indulgent extremism, but it nevertheless manage to turn completely atonal and hostile abstraction into something truly thrilling and strangely spellbinding. Slepcys greatest achievement is probably the peculiar electronica-ish LP We Are the Newest Battle Models, only containing superficial vestiges of breakcore, but this one is arguably their most crucial, simply because it defines the outer limits of this specific strain of breakcore – how far it can be taken as well as to how good it can be done.

Overcast: 3PM ETERNAL (Bloody Fist)
We mainly think of Bloody Fist as crusaders of the most distorted and ruthless speedcore gabber imaginable, probably a notion primarily based on the success of the early Nasenbluten stuff. As it happens, the label always had room for fast, noisy breakbeats, and a lot of their records actually contain a kind of proto-breakcore, as well as full blown breakcore later on. 3PM ETERNAL was one of the last Bloody Fist releases before the label closed in 2004, the magnum opus of label owner and Nasenbluten member Mark Newlands, and clearly a labour of love – to the degree that “love” is a word that can be used in any relation to Bloody Fist at all. Despite being a declared lo-fi Amiga primitivist, Newlands is also a highly skilled DJ in the traditional b boy-sense – cutting up records, scratching and building his tracks as raw sample collages. That approach is pretty much the starting point for this records, which only contain a few remnants of the terrorcore mayhem usually associated with Bloody Fist. The result is a kind of breakcore, based as it is on punishing breakbeats and industrial noise, but it's not really like any other breakcore out there – it's more like the breakcore answer to, or mutilation of, the whole Ninja Tune/Mo Wax/Depth Charge journey-by-DJ aesthetic. Not mashup like all that tiresome Kid606/Shitmat/Jason Forrest-pomo-idiocy, this is this thing done right: massive breaks, ugly samples and gritty gloomcore coming together to form a style so consistent that it seems almost obvious, while still being unique to Newlands.

Shiver Electronics: Soultrade (Widerstand)
Doomy breakcore fused with 8 bit atmospheres and horror movie samples, in many ways silly like old school gabber, but also very evocative, almost epic. Like Overcast, Shiver Electronics have forged a very personal style that seems so right that you'd think it was part of a long tradition, yet there isn't really anyone else doing anything quite like it.

Karl Marx Stadt: 2001 – 2004 (Lux Nigra)
The brainchild of Christian Gierden, who is probably best known as half of the Society Suckers, a pretty great, if much more ordinary, breakcore duo, whose Not the SUCKERS Again-ep contain some of the most irresistibly catchy tracks the genre have ever produced. As Karl Marx Stadt he's trying out all sorts of strange ideas, and while the first KMS-ep 1997-2001 was an uneven hodgepodge of mostly IDM-influenced hybrid styles, this one is pretty focused on a unique vision, with the exception of the closing “All I Wanna Do”, which is a standard lazy mash up that tries too hard to be funny, and “Nsk 1 Shareoom”, which is truly beautiful, music box-twinkling electronica. The rest is opulent breakcore where massive choir- and orchestra-samples creates a cod-symphonic yet absolutely exhilarating apocalyptic vibe, further twisted by nutty 8 bit melodies and a hyperactive approach to composition that cram the tracks with details and ideas, yet somehow keeps its balance so it never seems cluttered or showy like the typical dril'n'bass-derived breakcore-programming.

Venetian Snares: Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (Planet MU)
This can hardly be called an obscure gem, Venetian Snares is, after all, something like the biggest breakcore figurehead around, and this is probably one of his most celebrated releases. However, it really has to be here – this is where he completely transcends his own formulas and makes something that truly stands alone. Mostly, his output have been so enormous, and so influential on the rest of the breakcore scene, that it's somehow drowning out itself, but this one defines it's own territory in a way that's more or less unrepeatable – that is, you might try to do something similar, but it would just make you look like a pathetic copycat. Of course, it's utterly contrived and overblown, with its mock avant garde stylings and hungarian melancholia and sad poems, but unashamed contrivedness have always been a big part of what makes Venetian Snares interesting, so it's all the better that he goes all the way here, and eventually makes some kind of framework for his power drill-breakbeats, gives them a point besides their own hardness and complexity.

Hecate: Negative World Status (Zhark London)
Once Hecate seemed to be something like the queen of goth-dustrial breakcore, and Venetian Snares' closest rival, but I don't really know how much that is the case any more. At some point I lost interest as she got too stuck in pseudo-occult horror movie theatrics and eventually even black metal wreckage, but I still cherish her early stuff, which actually managed to make the usual darker-than-thou overdrive truly scary. The clunky, butchered breaks have been drained of even the slightest vestige of funk or groove, but that's all part of the point here – like Inushini and Slepcy, this is breakcore as 21st century industrial through and through, a brutal, disintegrating soundscape rather than rave music.

Panacea: Chartbreaka (Position Chrome)
After creating one of the main breakcore blueprints with the industrial mayhem of Low Profile Darkness, Panacea went on to produce a heap of minmal-doomy and macho-metallic techstep, slightly thrilling in it's attempt to build the hardest, most single minded punishing headbanger-sound around, but obviously also very tiring in the long run. Eventually he started to cheer up, adding more silly and ravey elements while pledging allegiance to the original british 'ardcore together with DJ Scud. The culmination of that development was probably this triple 12” and its sister release Underground Superstardom, both kind of borderline records between rave-tastic breakcore and contemporary monster riffing drum'n'bass. It's tasteless and cheesy to the extreme, all bulid ups, mentasm hoovers and gothic pomp, and the main breakcore community certainly didn't like it at all. To these ears, though, it's simply some of the most exhilarating music this scene have ever come up with, not to mention the best Panacea have done since the first album.

Istari Lasterfahrer: "Breakcore" The Death of a Genre
A playful internal critique from one of the scenes most prolific producers, apparently realizing that the style is degenerating and becoming a parody of itself – hence this parody of its most tired mashup-ragga clichés. Lasterfahrer have always been oscillating between straightforward breakcore – like his masterpiece Do You Think, which somehow managed to find the perfect path between abstract hypersyncopation and the invigorating thrust of old school ragga jungle – and records that challenge the form through a more twisted, unorthodox approach. This one is a prime example of the latter, full of wit, charm and silly melodies, quirkily syncopated breaks and bright plastic sounds. On “Fuck with My Crew” the ruff ragga vocals are pitched up to near-helium hysteria, so they're losing the usual menacing machismo while simultaneously becoming sexless, alien and creepy. I don't think this record is meant to be the last word in breakcore, but perhaps it should be. Lasterfahrer mostly makes dubstep now, I think.

THIRD MOVEMENT

Back in the Frankfurt Trax-piece I mentioned the Third Movement-sound as the first time someone really got around Marc Acardipanes unique feel and technique, but actually this style deserves to be described further than that. While I think the dubstep/grime/bassline-axis to some degree can be seen as a contemporary heir to the original spirit of rave, this hardcore mutation is another strain of new rave music that is – or at least was, when it was at it's scenious inventive peak a few years ago – every bit as forward thinking and future buzzing as the most groundbreaking grime and dubstep. It came as a complete surprise to me, I had pretty much stopped following the scattered gabber/hardcore-movements, feeling they had more or less used up all potential. Most of it, as far as I could hear, was either pointless speedcore monotony or watered down nth-generation happy gabber – as with most of the original Thunderdome-family of Dutch producers. Sure, it could also be something like the Hellfish/DJ Producer-style of freaky filter gabber, which actually did seem like a big leap forward when it came to my attention through the Planet MU-compilation. Clearly I had been missing out, but somehow it didn't make me investigate the thing much further. The compilation was such a great summing up of that particular style that it didn't really seem like there was much to add. While being an obvious and valid mutation in the gabber-continuum, the Hellefish/Producer-style also came of as an anomaly, a weird burst of creativity some strange place in between pure dancefloor functionalism and the more experimental strains of avant gabber.

There was, and there still is, I think, a small rave-scene based on the Hellfish filter/cut up-sound, but it was not really a part of the gabber mainstream, and what's so amazing about the Third Movement-development is that it now is the gabber mainstream, rather than a cultish fraction. It was this fact that made it such a big surprise to me, because it was exactly the gabber mainstream that I'd given up on a long time ago, choosing to follow the weird twists and permutations of the experimental hardcore field in stead, and eventually ending up with breakcore, like most of that movement did. And then, out of the blue, I discovered that those Dutchmen that I'd completely abandoned had gone and made the next big leap forward in hardcore rave. A more straightforward hardcore-devoted friend played me some of the new stuff in 2001/2002 – from the new breed of Thunderdome-records even – and I was totally blown away. If anything can be used as a textbook example of the power of scenious development or of a continental hardcore continuum, this is it. Unnoticed by mainstream dance- and electronica-media – to say nothing of music media as a whole – the faithful gabber-believers just did their own thing and won. Stumbling upon such a vibrant, inventive and convincing scene was a bit like discovering jungle when that broke through. Here was a scene that had been left to it's own devices and living in darkness for years, developing something completely new and unheard, almost unrecognisable when compared to the original style. The big difference, though, is that this new style didn’t break through, it never became noticed outside it's own ghetto, not even by electronic music journalists, whereas jungle was news even to people who didn't care about rave, or even hardly about music at all. In this respect it's much like grime and dubstep, then, but the comparison with jungle is still useful for purely stylistic reasons.

To be completely honest, it's certainly not all “mainstyle”-gabber that can claim to be as faraway a mutation from the original gabber as jungle was from breakbeat 'ardcore (”mainstyle”, eventually, is one of the few somewhat recurring tags that seems like an attempt to give this style it's own name – usually it's just called “hardcore”, which of course isn't really helping to set it apart as something new and unique). The truly groundbreaking developments are not necessarily present on all the tracks, not consciously understood by the scene as the defining element setting it apart as a whole new thing, as with jungles chopped up and excitingly rearranged – as opposed to just looped – breakbeats. With mainstyle there's a lot of tracks that are industrially dark and noisy in a very monotonous and one dimensional way, simply making the hardness of the sound the whole point, and on the other hand there are many tracks that are rather trancey, bordering on straight hardstyle. But in between we have the real deal, balancing both extremes and defined by it's incredible creative bass drum engineering. Actually, it's the polymorphous kicks in themselves that are the real deal, and in principle they can be used in the trancey as well as the industrial minimalist stuff, it's just that at lot of the time they aren't, and then those styles are actually not that exciting. It’s when the bassdrum architecture is the whole driving force that this style peaks as some of the greatest rave music ever, as viscerally catchy and mindbendingly inventive as the best jungle. All varietys of the style, though, seems to be considered acceptable parts of the overall movement, many of the main producers work with the whole spectrum from noisy monotony to cheesy anthems, often on the same record (the primary mainstyle outlet seems to be four track eps, bless them), so perhaps it's a little hyperbolic to claim that this stuff is overall as great as jungle – or even the original gabber for that matter – the brilliance-to-crap-ratio is not quite as impressive. But it doesn't change how overwhelmingly brilliant the best stuff actually is.

As with jungle, the great leap made by the best mainstyle-tracks is rhythmic. It's about liberating a hitherto simple structure and allowing it to blossom into constantly morphing, multidimensional grooves. Jungle took 'ardcores usually rather straightforwardly looped breaks and chopped them to atoms, building new structures as amazingly complex as they were irresistibly catchy, saturated with insane start-stop trickery and endlessly stimulating syncopations. With mainstyle, it's the relentlessly pounding four-to-the-floor kick drums that are being transformed and turned into a dynamic, hyperkinetic force. The sound of each kick is beefed up so it's closer to a metallic bass than a drum, so thick and massive that it practically has a physical presence, like a big block of sonic concrete. The occasional use in traditional gabber of double time kicks or small kick rolls at the end of a bar, to add a little variation and extra energy, is here a constant – and constantly self-transforming – element, creating a rhythmic flow that is simultaneously explosive, monstrously massive and mercilessly precise. The stomping monotony is punctuated by unexpected jumps, twists and turns, one moment warping in all directions, the next surging forward with immense power, enfolding all sorts of broken syncopations within the metronomic stampede. And the drum sounds, having reached such a density that they're practically synth tones, are often pitched up and down so they're used as tuned percussion, introducing a melodic element in what was once monochrome simplicity. As with jungle, linear rhythmic energy is turned into multi-tiered beat science. In both cases, the end result – when the process have really worked – is that the drums have become the melody, or rather, the main creative force in the music, what makes it exciting and irresistible.

A lot of these things can be said about the Hellfish/Producer-sound too, of course, and if anything there's probably a much bigger focus on wild beat trickery with them. The crucial difference lies in the remaining factors, and the overall purpose they give the music. Hellfish and Producer seem somehow self-consciously left field, whipping up a hyperactive sensory overload that in many ways owes as much to old school hip hop turntablism (apparently the unsurpassable horizon of more or less all good British dance music) as it does to gabber. The mainstyle producers, on the other hand, slow things down to create a much more stable groove, where the rhythmic tricks and gambols serve the overall linear thrust. That's what makes so much of this music a heir to “We Have Arrived” and the more ravey end of PCP/Acardipane-doomcore generally. Often it's simply like doomcore reunited with the original (proto)-gabber brutality from “We Have Arrived”, revitalized with modern equipment. Or, the other way round, it's the most anthemic, cod-symphonic and, in a way, trance-like end of gabber – the K.N.O.R./Ruffneck-axis as well as a lot of the stuff on Mokum – that have developed it's own dark side, becoming more “serious” or respectable by pledging allegiance to Acardipanes apocalyptic vision. If this music is considering itself “deep” or “heavy”, to the degree that it cares about such things at all, it's because of this darkness rather than the beat-complexity, which is probably seen much more as a functional invention, a simple means to charge up the rave-capacity rather than a goal in itself – not the essence or art that the stuff is all about. Which might be part of the explanation why the beat science here have never become the same kind of staple, defining factor as with jungle, but also why it seems to have reached a broader kind of popularity than with Hellfish/Producer – it's never really allowed to spiral off into complexity-and-abstraction-for-the-sake-of-it, the technique is always subservient to that monstrous locked-on-target force that Marc Acardipane defined so long ago with “We Have Arrived”.

The most melodic and anthemic of this stuff, where the pompous, mentasm damaged synth riffs blare as triumphantly euphoric as in eurotrance or hardstyle, is obviously totally cheesy, but so is the doomcore variety as well, in it's own way, overindulging in gothic pomp, sampled choirs and horror movie dialogue. And it's great. Actually, both kinds of mainstyle-cheesiness can come up with the best of what this scene has to offer, it's more often here you'll find the really far out beats, whereas the more serious, arty and minimal end of it have a tendency to avoid the most excitingly exaggerated possibilities. It's totally scenious in this way, there's practically no mavericks or self proclaimed “deep artists” here, and there's absolutely no hint of jazz or soul tastefulness – but then, I guess that is pretty unlikely within the gabber continuum anyway. Arguably, some of the producers specializing in the more industrial-noisy end of things might think of themselves as the experimental front line, taking the new hardcore to a deeper and more serious level, but I can't think of a single one who have made a real name for himself that way, there doesn't seem to be any “geniuses” celebrated as artistic leaders by the scene, or as honourable exceptions by the mainstream music media (again – pretty unlikely with anything coming from gabber). There's yet no LTJ Bukems or Goldies of mainstyle, which is probably a sign of health.

Even the biggest names doesn't really stand that much apart from the whole. They're usually offering good solid quality, but not necessarily the best or most exciting tracks. The Third Movement label is of course something like the very foundation of the style, having released countless records, many of them pioneering or outright defining the sound. Their Demolition series of compilations is an obvious place to start for those who want a fast introduction to the style. They are, however, also very mixed bags, quality-wise. There's cheesy anthems, metallic monotony and strikes of incredibly thrilling scenious brilliance, and while most of it seems to be good stuff, it's not necessarily one big cavalcade of classics – there's many fillers as well, and there's absolutely no guarantee that the best mainstyle-tracks will be included. The same goes for the very prolific DJ Promo (a name every bit as irritating as DJ Producer), founder and champion of Third Movement, and often seen as more or less the man behind the scenes success, as well as playing the major role in inventing the style. His records contain lumpen, cheesy “hits” – all titanic tranceriffs and his signature shouty, self-aggrandizing rap-like vocals – as well as brilliant abstract tracks, taking mad metallic percussion and rhythmic contortions to surprisingly catchy extremes. Yet, it's hard to think of any of his music as being truly in a league of its own: If he's kind of representing the scene, it's because of his tireless work as DJ, label-owner and prolific producer, as well as the fact that he was one of the first and most pronounced to develop the elements defining the style, and not because he have made a string of universally known, indisputable timeless classics, or because his tracks are generally the best the scene has to offer.

In true scenious style, you'll find the best mainstyle records more or less by pure luck, checking out the bulk of new releases regularly, now and then stumbling upon something that'll just happen to be incredibly great, some of the very best stuff you've ever heard, in any style. And there's really no way you can systematize these discoveries, unless you're practically dedicating your life to it – i.e. being a full time DJ. I'd be the first to admit that I'm no real authority on what is truly the greatest mainstyle records, I've never dug that deep into the piles of stuff available, never really tried to check everything coming out, and I'm not claiming that my few personal favourites are necessarily the very pinnacles of the style. I've certainly missed plenty of masterpieces, and I'm sure mainstyle-scholars could play me lots of unsung tracks that would be at least as great as the ones I've found. The best advise, as it's usually the case with scenious music, is to find your own classics, create your own cannon. But that said, I'd like to end this with a couple of my personal discoveries; records that were probably conceived as effective DJ fodder, and certainly aren't well known in the same way as stuff by DJ Promo or other Third Movement mainstays like Catscan or Rude Awakening. Yet it's records that I rate higher than any other mainstyle I've ever heard.

Interestingly, my two favourites are actually not dutch. The Depudee is german, and takes the style to the cheesy extreme. Tons of aggressive rap samples, cheap fanfare-like hardstyle riffs and even cheaper rave dynamics wonderfully overdone – on a record like Move Around the tracks practically consist of nothing but breakdowns and build ups, breakdowns within breakdowns, breakdowns within build ups, build ups within breakdowns etc. ad infinitum. As cheap as it is, it's also incredibly inventive and invigorating, wallowing in the lowest common denominators while at the same time supercharging them through insane, constantly morphing bass drum architecture, using them with such creativity and sparkling conviction that it reminds me of nothing as much as the early Prodigy. Yet better still is Chaosbringer, one of the few examples (that I know of) of the big french hardcore scene going into mainstyle territory. Here we're talking doomcore-derived darkness of the most exaggerated, pseudo-symphonic kind, beefed up by the same massive rave dynamics as with The Depudee. The tracks build and build, creating immense tension and explosive release, surging forward like a giant army of towering demon-robots, and always made further powerful by bass drums as hard and heavy as reinforced concrete, yet elastic and intractable like run amok rubber balls.

To me, if to no one else, Chaosbringers Dividing the Red Sea-ep really feels like a kind of pinnacle, all the best aspects of ravey (i.e. non-avant) hardcore/gabber rolled into one: Droning mentasm doomcore, cheap samples and catchy synth riffs, rampaging mainstyle bass drums, even a tearing break beat in one track. The only thing missing is computer game silliness and raw amiga samples, but then the result would probably be, and sound, far too forced. What makes it so ultimate here is that it doesn't seem even remotely like something deliberately made to be ultimate, not a conscious effort to collect all the best ideas, but rather an obvious evolutionary outcome, a natural accumulation of stuff that works, hyper-engineered to a new level of devastating power, everything coming together smoothly. Still, dig deep into the wealth of mainstyle, and you might find your own pinnacles. The time when this scene was peaking and seemed totally new and revolutionary is some years behind by now, so perhaps in a few years time people will begin mining it. Maybe I should get a lead and start now.

THE CITY HAUNTING ITSELF – DISTANCE AND BURIAL

With all the great ep- and 12”-action around, you could almost forget that 2007 was a great year for dubstep albums. Despite the rave roots, dubstep have already produced several brilliant albums, and have showed itself much better equipped for working with that format than, say, jungle ever did. There were at least three dubstep albums from 2007 showing this, if we can call Burials Untrue a dubstep album at all, and maybe we can’t, but then, what we call it is actually not my point this time. The second one is Pinchs Underwater Dancehall, or rather the instrumental version. The use of guest vocalists is exactly the kind of thing that suggests that a rave genre is not really able to grasp the album format on its own terms, but the instrumentals were mostly great examples of introverted micro-step, and despite being released even later than Untrue, the album got quite a lot of coverage towards the end of 2007. Most people with just the slightest interest in the genre should have heard about it. Unfortunately, that's not the case with the last one, which came out very early (it was originally supposed to be released in 2006, I think), and seems to have been more or less overlooked by everyone. There have been practically no discussion of Distances My Demons, no opinions about it, and that’s really a shame.

Released over half a year apart, no one tried to compare Untrue with My Demons, and that’s also a shame, because even if Underwater Dancehall is a good album, it’s the other two that are the real deal, 2007s defining musical outposts, and it’s quite interesting to compare the different ways they’re dealing with what is, to some degree, the same core material: “atmospheric dubstep” saturated with the unreality, sadness and hopelessness lurking deep down in the shadows of the postmodern mind. I suppose one of the reasons My Demons’ not being acknowledged is because of the almost ostentatious sci fi-darkness, a very obvious urban dread of the kind that is often seen as a po-faced claim to authenticity in music that considers itself “serious”. Where that kind of cartoony grimness is usually accepted in cheesy rave, because it's not music that's supposed to take itself too seriously anyway, it's rejected as pretentious and self important when it looks like it's meant to be “deeper”, as in this case. Distance, however, is one of the rare artists that manage to work with the cheap and obvious and make it yield a weird, alluring “deepness” of it's own.

The Mover of Frontal Sickness is probably the greatest example of this. In Simon Reynolds review of Planet MUs 200-compilation he writes: “Dubstep’s downside? That would be the remorseless fixation on turgid tempos and sombre moods, an ominousness as unrelieved as it’s corny. Living in the city ain’t that bleak, boys!” This sounds very much like a description of Marc Acardipanes “darkness” to me, but Acardipane is apparently OK because he's making cheesy rave for the masses. Yet a lot of his stuff isn't really that ravey or cheesy, and especially Frontal Sickness seem very self-consciously “deep” to me. To some degree, My Demons could be a contemporary heir to Frontal Sickness, both records inhabit a strange grey area that is too subtle and “musical” for the functional rave scenes they belong to, yet also too cartoonishly exaggerated in their gloom to be taken serious as arty “listening music”. And both are really fascinating and exciting exactly because of this, even if My Demons is clearly no match for the league-of-it's-own greatness that is Frontal Sickness.

When comparing Distance and Burial we'll come upon another interesting example of someone caught in this grey area between cheap teen functionalism and serious art music. As some may recall, Burial is often heralded as a kind of post-rave Joy Division, and if Burial is Joy Division, then you could ask what Distance is. Some would probably point out that this question is taking the analogy too far – Burial is compared with Joy Division because of the quality and emotional impact, not because dubstep as a whole is comparable with post punk and Distance therefore also must be compared with someone from that era. I think the question makes a lot of sense and have an obvious and quite interesting answer, though: Distance is the post-rave Cure. Where Joy Division is still considered endlessly deep and important, their gloom and introspective misery never seen as self-important navel gazing, The Cure have not been remotely as canonized. Admittedly, they have a solid base of supporters, even among traditional rock critics, but it's mostly down to the later records where they discovered positive pop and generally became emotionally versatile rather than one-dimensionally depressive, and you can still see their early records routinely rejected as pathetic teenage self-pity. OK, maybe I'm mostly thinking of Reynolds' suspiciously effortless dismissal of them in Rip It Up – “Smith's forlornly withdrawn vocals, the listless beat and the grey haze guitars made for some of the most neurasthenic rock music ever committed to vinyl” – but you definitely never see The Cure getting the same universal praise as Joy Division. If anything, their depressiveness is perceived as a somewhat immature trait, whereas it's considered the very essence of Joy Divisions deepness and vision. But isn't this simply because Joy Division were better, their death drive genuine where The Cures was just a cheap pose? Well, as probably one of the only people in this world who are ready to admit that I actually think The Cure, at their best, were better than Joy Division ever was, I obviously think not.

The main difference was that Joy Division managed to give the impression of a darkness that was deeper and more true, and here I'm not just thinking about Curtis suicide, their entire sound and image was so tastefully, intellectually serious, that it just came off as much more “important” and timeless than The Cures obvious and graphic style, with its blurred images and faces of pale, sickly boys. Not to mention the front men – Curtis sonorous droning sounding much more authoritative and tormented, whereas Robert Smith have always sounded like a mopy teenager wallowing in his own existential bellyache. The point, however, is that beyond these surface elements, there doesn't seem to be any reason Smiths sickness is less genuine than Curtis gloom. Or, rather, Curtis doesn't really come off as less pompous or overwrought than Smith. The surface elements are very distinct, though, there's almost a comic book quality to The Cure, the way they express their darkness through straightforward, unsubtle pictures, where Joy Division is all arty black and white photography (it makes perfect sense that Corben should make a film about them) and dignified theatre. And of comics and theatre, we all know which is considered an important art form.

It's the same with Burial and Distance, at one level at least. Distance is very straightforward in his dystopic urban darkness, and My Demons is an album that almost have “dark and doomy” written on it with big black letters. The labyrinthine urban dreadscape on the cover is actually pretty much doing exactly that. And yet, there's also a very surreal, mysterious aspect to that cover, just like the music it's capturing so brilliantly. The gloom and darkness may be loudly declared, but underneath, the music is much more ambiguous, subtly moving and dreamlike. So while it's executed differently, the core material is not that far from Burials – in both cases there's a feeling of unreality at the centre of the music, a drift of obscure and ghostly emotions. Maybe you could say that Distance and Burial are approaching each other from opposite directions: Burial take what was once human emotions and remove them completely from their flesh and blood context, makes them copy-pasted fragments haunting the ether, caught in loops like compulsive thought patterns, decaying and mutating into shapes where the hitherto familiar becomes painfully broken and alien. What remains of our hopes and dreams are now these deteriorating synthetic forms, forever lost to us and following their own path, as if the only way the rave euphoria could survive was by escaping into this unknown viral electro-magnecology. With Distance, the thoroughly alien is the starting point– like looking directly inside mysterious future machines, probing their private mental world, and thereby creating an emotional response in listeners trying to grasp what is essentially beyond human emotional reach.

Distance is not using the embarrassing cliché of the Pinnochio-cyborg longing to be human, the forms inhabiting My Demons are unapologetically synthetic and inhuman on their own terms. And even though the music seems haunted and sorrowful and doomy, it's also coming off strangely detached, with an uncertainty to whether it's just our best attempt at interpreting the alien emotions before us – they seem like sorrow and paranoia, but that might just be our own minds playing tricks for lack of something to compare it with –, or whether the sadness and gloom is simply our own reaction to the lost and empty world before us. There is no humans on the cover of My Demons, and the music is exactly like the dreams of a depopulated city. Where Burial creates a world of electromagnetic ghosts circling above the drowned metropolis, Distance goes down to the desolate street level, streets haunted not by ghosts or angels, but by synthetic minds encapsulated in forgotten surveillance networks and the robot offspring left to stalk the empty spaces – streets haunted by the city itself as one big zombie organism of decaying concrete, glass and wires.

So, to get back on track, can My Demons be described as a contemporary Faith to Untrues Closer? Or is Seventeen Seconds perhaps a more appropriate comparison? It's a relevant question, because even though Distance and Burial seem to mirror The Cure and Joy Division in their different approaches to a shared core of post rave loss and disintegrated dark futurism, the analogy doesn't fit quite as well when it comes to the actual sound of their music. Burials fuzzy, blurred, crackling production isn't the least like Joy Divisions bare boned, hard edged thump, which is actually, if anything, much more reminiscent of Distance – and more so than anything by The Cure as well. Sure, there's a sharp simplicity to Seventeen Seconds that's not completely at odds with Distance, but most of all it has a kind of brittle, prickly transparency that's also quite different from My Demons' slow paced use of space and gravity. Faith is a more fitting comparison, being the Cure album with the most thoroughly drowned, somnambulist introversion. But then, if this is closer to the Distance sound, then it's because it's also the Cure-album closest to Joy Division.

Things get more complicated if we look at Faiths successor and The Cures masterpiece, Pornography, because the sound of that record is far from the tight structures of Distance, and actually much closer to Burial – quite unlike the cold, death obsessed sickness of the lyrics, which is as far from Burials bittersweet dreams as it's pretty much possible. Despite the overall simplicity and mechanical thrust of Pornographys song structures, the production is often deeply psychedelic, a maze of hallucinatory delay and reverb. With drifting fragments of para-arabic melody and Smiths voice transformed, disembodied and echo-drenched to sound like a self-devouring hive mind, Pornography is a blurred, crackling, decaying sound world of thoughts slowly dissolving and drifting away, very much like it's the case with Burial. The greatest technical difference between the two is probably in the rhythms, where The Cure utilise a deliberate stiff and thrashing hardness, resembling nothing as much as techstep. Only on “Siamese Twins” and to a lesser degree “Cold” do things get rhythmically fascinating – here the contrived un-funkiness is so exaggerated that it becomes crooked and stumbling, a lopsided anti-groove not completely different to Burials asymmetric twitching, though the heavy angularity of grime is probably a better comparison.

In the end, both Burial and Distance have something that is totally their own, something that will not be recognised if we demand to see them through the lens of the rock cannon, no matter how flattering a comparison with Joy Division is meant, or how accurate it may be in describing some aspects of what's going on. I think the most crucial thing about Burial is the ambiguity, the way the sadness and hopelessness somehow also contain a comforting warmth and awestruck, mystic wonder. It's music with such a tangle of shades that it never reaches a clear meaning, and as such it's much more alienating and disorienting than Joy Division or The Cure ever were, with their convinced, one-sided gloom and depression worn clearly on their sleeves. And Distance, well, with him as well things are not as obvious as they seem, even if he indeed flaunt the darkness in a manner just as coarse as the post punk misery goats. The crux of My Demons is the restraint; even the hard riffing tracks constantly seem to hold something back, avoiding impact or friction in a way that is almost gentle. And never in a way that suggest repressed emotions or imminent eruptions, the restraint always come off as somehow right, obviously fitting the strange unfolding sound world. Which is actually the most futuristic and fascinating thing about this music, where it become quintesentially synthetic, machinic and alien, and what completely separates it from the human desperation burning beneath the cold surfaces of The Cure and Joy Division.

There's a dreamlike, otherworldly elegance to My Demons, it creates minds eye visions of incomprehensible giant robots performing hushed slow motion ballets in empty, nocturnal cities, with fluid tiptoe movements in unreal contrast to their hulking proportions. This is not as much a world where the nightmare predictions of The Cure and Joy Division have come true, as it's the new world to follow, a world where history – or at least human history – really have ended, and what have taken over is not for us, not of us. And that world is very much at the heart of Burial as well, even if he seems to suggest that it's not just a world to come, but also a world that is somehow already here, coexisting with our perceived reality. As such, these great dubstep records are not contemporary equivalents of Joy Division and The Cure, but rather their heirs, or distant mutant descendants, taking the post modern sickness not just to the logical conclusion, but beyond.

IMPERIAL MARCHES OF SOUTH LONDON

I really think that the dubstep scene deserves to transcend its status as an underground “post-rave” cult and become a bigger cultural force, something that “ordinary” people actually know about, even if they don’t like it at all, just like the original strands of rave, techno and jungle. It just isn’t quite there, though, and I fear it’s because the days where anything was “there” are simply over, and all future strands of rave will have to survive as cultish scenes. Rave music will never be news like it was from the breakthrough of acid house and all the way up to the peak of jungle, because back then a lot of people – as well as the media – were caught by the very “newness” of it all, and it all seemed like a connected organism, the buzz of jungle was still somehow a continuation of the original shock and surprise when rave made its first impact and seemed like the next big thing, the new punk, or rock even. Sadly that didn’t continue for long, and in stead the countless factions became something only the devoted cared to follow. To most people, techno/rave nowadays is simply the arena trance sound, and that’s what people will go for if their rave just have to do the work, and not necessarily break new ground or challenge them.

In the light of this, I think it’s quite impressive how far dubstep actually have come, and how successful it is, not just with getting a big and more-or-less global audience, but sonically as well. And this is even more impressive when you consider how dubstep is being scorned by right thinking dance music theorists of all persuasions, accusing it of just about everything that can explain what’s “wrong” with it – that is: why they don’t feel it, or so it seems to me. To some, there’s all sort of reasons why it isn’t really a true form of rave music: It’s too self conscious, too theoretical, too derivative, too middle class, too many students in the audience, not lowbrow enough etc. etc. On the other hand, a lot of people are criticising it for the exact opposite reasons, pretty much like breakbeat hardcore was seen before it was redeemed: Too lowbrow, too primitive, too single-minded, too repetitive, too many meatheads in the audience, not deep enough etc. Take the infamous “wobblers”, the successful but formulaic dancefloor fodder routinely slagged of by dance connoisseurs. With all other kinds of DJ driven rave music, there seem to be a general agreement that it’s vital to have tons of records recycling and reworking the most effective ideas, being the gene pool for the slow scenius mutations as well as raw material for DJs to build with. With the wobblers, though, everybody is whining that they’re killing the scenes original innovative approach, dumbing it down so dubstep nights just feature a bunch of hard riffing anthems.

Not having been to many dubstep nights, I’ve no idea to what degree this is true. Maybe there is a lot of lame wobblers being played in succession, and I’m sure that’s something I’d find tiring in the long run. But then, I’d find a whole night of gabber or jungle anthems tiring, even though it’s some of my favourite forms of music. The point is that the anthemic approach is a crucial part of any vigorous rave music; it’ll excite those down with the core programme, and eventually result in some amazing long term innovations as well as some truly groundbreaking classics now and then, enjoyable for everyone else too. Unless you’re a dubstep DJ, you’re not supposed to buy all the wobblers, and unless you’re a hardcore devotee, you’re not supposed to love whole nights of them either. Basically, the wobble is the latest of a long tradition of genre defining innovations – the 303 squelch, the mentasm stab, the morse code riff, the chopped amen – immediately catchy and successful, initiating loads of copycats that’ll eventually come up with new variations and mutations. What the wobble resemble most of all right now, to my ears at least, is the amen break right before polymorphous beatcontortions and effect drenched cutting and splicing became standard with the peak of jungle. Back then, the majority of amen tracks simply had the sped up, slightly distorted break running throughout, without much dynamic or structural detail. And honestly, many of those tracks seem slightly dated and monotonous now, just like the majority of wobblers (or the majority of those I’ve heard, at least), while the tracks that anticipated the invention and complexity of fully formed jungle now stand out as the milestones of the “dark” hardcore era.


So maybe one day, hopefully not too far away (because if it’s too far away dubstep could simply petrify prematurely in the current shape), there’ll be a golden age where incredibly creative and exhilarating wobblers will be churned out in mindboggling numbers. I haven’t heard many tracks heralding such a new golden age yet, though, so it might never happen, but now and then there’s a wobble that’s just undeniably great and makes you think that there really ought to be tons of tunes build on that. Generally, the more melodically baroque and ornamentally freaked out the better. Not the mega-compressed one-note pseudo metal riffing, descended from the worst of techstep, but the ridiculously exaggerated twists and turns and firework-like explosiveness of the Prodigy/Hyper-on Experience/ragga jungle lineage. Not "Spongebob" and those headbangers, they might be ridiculously exaggerated, but they also seem unimaginative and inhibited, not really grabbing your attention or musical pleasure centres. The best wobblers ought to be in the great rave tradition of dancefloor carnival rides, and my favourite of 2007 in that respect is Bass Clefs irresistible “Cannot Be Straightened”, with its twisted horns, rattling percussion and insane bouncy-yet-stumbling bassline, like a giant rubber robot freaking out on a trampoline. Actually, the track has two brilliant basslines; first it’s a super catchy wobble-riff, then halfway it morphs into a constantly mutating rampage, giving the track even more mad energy. It’s like suddenly stumbling upon some far distant descendant of jump up jungle, if that genre had reached mutational escape velocity ten years ago, rather than a dead end.

“Cannot Be Straightened” appears on the album A Smile is a Curve that Straightens Most Things, which I haven’t heard, as well as on the Opera-ep, which includes two other excellent tracks: “Opera”, a fast and precise arcade-wobbler (to coin a sub-style) and “Don’t ask me to forgive you”, which is simultaneously playful and lightly melancholic. None of it sounds quite like much else in dubstep, and Opera is a good example of one of the safest signs that a rave scene is in good health: There is a growing amount of excellent EPs, contrary to just white label 12”s, and often the individual records has a nice variety of tracks – some “anthems”, some moody “ballads”, some slightly experimental ones, and some in between. This is what made 2007 a really good dubstep year to my ears. The overwhelming feeling when realising just how many releases were coming out, and that so many of them actually were so brilliant that you had to choose which ones not to buy. In other words, I’m not sharing the general belief among scenesters that dubstep is getting stale and you’ll have to dig deep to find a few gems among piles of generic DJ fodder. Not that those piles aren’t there, but the gems are aplenty and all over the shop as well, and I honestly haven’t had that feeling from a rave genre since the mid nineties (I missed 2step you see, even though I’ll have to admit that, listening back to it now, I doubt I’d have felt particular impressed if I had noticed it then. Yeah, it’s clearly where grime and dubstep came from, but that doesn’t automatically make it good in itself, does it? It’s not that it’s bad as such, but I can’t really see why it’s supposed to be such a big deal – far too self-sophisticated and club-smart for my taste. But I’m digressing here, I’ll return to the topic some other time).

What’s really interesting about Bass Clef is that even though his style is very original and “different” from (what is usually thought of as) the dubstep norm, he still clearly belong to the genre. This is another indication that dubstep thrives as a rave scene: It allow the existence of slightly off-centre mavericks that doesn’t follow the rules completely, but still manage to make their own unique contributions to the overall movement, rather than being a kind of internal opposition to it. Other examples of this could be grime-tinged hybrids like Emalkay and Kromestar, Planet MU-electronica-steppers like Milanese and Boxcutter, the growing input from non-british producers who have come to the sound through different routes and with very different backgrounds, and of course Burials sorrowful dream-step.

Outside England, Germany have become a force to be reckoned with. Some claim this is because of the cross over potential of the minimal scene, but actually, it seems more like it’s the big German breakcore scene that have moved fully into dubstep territory. Three of the main breakcore labels, Kool.pop, Sprengstoff and Sozialisticher Plattenbau, all put out dubstep in 2007. Innasekts Structure/Core on Sprengstoff was a great 12” – the first track majestically gliding and melodic, the second coldly abrasive and noxious –, while Mackjiggahs On the Corner on Kool.pop was one of the most fully formed dubstep eps of 2007, managing to make dreamy/gloomy atmospheres, bouncy rhythms and straightforward tunefulness work together surprisingly well.

Not only Germany contributed to the international currents, even small countries like Denmark have entered. The danish label Kraken (brilliant deep-sea-mysterious name for a dubstep label!) put out one of my favourite tunes of 2007, Wolf Mans “Eyes of the Demon”, indeed sounding like the foreboding slow-motion invocation of an immense, abyss dwelling monster. The flip, Obeahs “Copenhagen Massive”, is slightly similar, but it also falls a bit too much into the most dangerous trap dubstep have set up for itself, the affected “authenticity” of digital dub pastiche. A similar problem appears on several tracks on the only french dubstep record I’ve heard, the compilation ep Dubstep Hors Series 3, where we’re once again treated to some horribly predictable melodica sounds. This is where I really think dubstep can fail: It’s supposed to be electronic music, and all sorts of weird and twisted sounds are available to the producers. Still they choose such lame clichés again and again. Why? Well, because there’s a stupid feeling of dub authenticity to them, I’m afraid, and unfortunately there’s still a lot of producers who think they have to make their sound really “dubby”, or show some loyalty to the dub traditions, even though all the things that make dubstep exciting are those that separates it from any kind of “true” dub. I really think the best thing dubstep could do for itself would be to change the name and remove any direct reference to “dub”. I suggest substep in stead. All that said, the french ep did contain one of my favourite tracks of 2007, Cavates pompously brutal “Kobold”. It’s not really a wobbler, and its slow moody darkness is shamelessly pushing all the most obvious cyber-goth buttons, but that’s actually exactly what makes it so great.

Within dubstep, this stategy reached perfection with Vex’ds seminal track “Thunder”, and it clearly show the techstep roots – the good techstep roots, that is – in the monstrous bombast of Torque-era No U-turn. But further, it also goes all the way back to belgian hardcore (and ultimately to EBM and electro), the awesome invading-war-machines-slaughtering-humanity-stomp reminding me most of all of “James Brown is Dead” – a punishing robo-fascist drill that is also a gushing rapture, a celebration. This aspect of dubstep is pretty much overlooked, and places it in a completely different rave lineage than just the usual (and rather reductive) “continuum”. Right from the start, rave music have had this deep fascination with heavy totalitarian symphonics, and it have always been used euphorically, an immortal source of morbid jouissance where the aura of machine-army-invincibility creates a weird, demonic pleasure.

In this way, dubstep becomes a part of a long tradition of fascist imagery and para-mythology as a thrilling fantasy of dark power and primeval death drives – the reason endless documentaries on Hitler and the Nazis are continously churned out, the reason most power electronics have any kind of audience at all, and the reason everybody knows that the Empire is the real thrill in Star Wars. Dubstep-darkness is mostly on the Star Wars-level – cartoony and superficial –, and the comparison fits, because of all John Williams’ Star Wars music, the best piece is of course "The Imperial March", and that piece do indeed sound a lot like the most over-the-top dark and bombastic dubstep. It’s like there’s a whole sub-genre of processional marches, the grim pomp and circumstance of an imagined totalitarian empire ruling a future post-apocalyptic London. At its best it creates an exhilarating fascist euphoria that is not pathetically morbid like so much post-industrial noise, or ego-boosting like metal, but rather something like a self-effacing power trip, a gleeful celebration of the future cyber-despots as humanitys pure and rightful oppressors.

2007s best representative of this sound was Afterdark, releasing two brilliant EP’s that seemed to work with “Thunder”s regimented grind-stomp and noxious riffing more or less as a full genre in itself. I’ve no idea if they sold well – they certainly felt like deliberate attempts to supercharge an already in-demand sound – but they didn’t get any critical attention whatsoever. I can’t recall anyone talking about Afterdark anywhere, and yet those two practically unknown EP’s were among the highlights of 2007, reinforcing the impression of the dubstep scene as an organism out of control, churning out heaps of critically unrecognised scenious brilliance. Especially Infiltrate is a killer, two of the three tracks being potential doomstep-anthems, complete with soaring horror riffs, cheap sci-fi movie monologue and immense bombast. It’s the kind of thing that is generally seen as kitschy attempts to be serious and dangerous, and in a lot of ways it’s exactly what it is. But just like with the original darkside ‘ardcore, the cartoony quality is often a redeeming factor. This stuff is obviously not as dark and evil as it thinks, but it’s thrilling as pulpy sci fi: Total Recall to Burials Blade Runner, you could say. The tracks on the second Afterdark EP, Tags and Throw-Ups Vol. 3, aren’t quite as anthemic, more the kind of solidly built, hard-edged floor-fodder that is simultaneously generic and invigorating, and an indispensable ingredient in any healthy rave scene. Dubstep have a lot of that stuff, thriving on labels like Tempa and especially Boka, as well as the Dub Police/Caspa/Rusco-axis I guess – but I haven’t followed that one much actually. Theres just too much to keep track on.

Some critics bemoan the lack of rhythmic drive and groove in this pompstep, calling the crawling, listless plod regressive. Well, I agree that dubstep was much more rhythmically interesting in the beginning, when it still wasn’t altogether separated from grime and still contained highly unnatural, alien and bodytwisting syncopations, but even though I miss that aspect and hope it’ll make a return, I’d say that to think it disqualifies dubstep as rave is missing the point completely. Rave isn’t only about beats, it’s also about riffs, their sound and shape, and with this kind of dubstep it’s all about the hammering, fanfare-like riffs. Actually, it’s probably the first kind of rave that focus on this aspect entirely, and where beats are, if not actually absent, then practically irrelevant. I think that is a very exciting development, and it’s certainly as euphoria-inducing as many other strands of rave, even if it isn’t fuelled by a racing groove, and as such it’s a new and fascinating example of the odd shapes rave can take.

While the slow, lifeless anti-rhythms are pretty much unique to dubstep, the pseudo-symphonic processional marches are not. It’s an aspect that have always been a part of grime, and recently it have become more and more pronounced, especially on the instrumental records. At the same time, it actually seems like the only area where grime and dubstep still overlap, and where you get records that occupy some strange twilight zone in between. Take Kromestar; he’s mostly seen as a part of dubstep, but his 2007 mini-LP Iron Soul seemed much closer to current grime, with its clean, cheap-sounding production, triumphant plastic-orchestral riffs, and total of lack of towering bass-blubber. An exhilarating example of the pseudo-symphonic fascist euphoria found in so much dubstep, and yet the rhythms are much more strange, clattering and invigorating, much closer to grime. From the slightly 2steppy opener and B1s Nyman/Glass pseudo-minimalist strings, to the hysteric fanfares dominating the rest, Iron Soul could be a bloody masterpiece if it wasn’t for another thing it – unfortunately – shares with most grime, namely the ridiculous single-mindedness of the individual tracks. Most of them just oscillates between two basic riff-patterns all the way through, without any further developments or details.

A somehow similar sound, but approached in a much more varied and unpredictable fashion, is found on Jokers Kapsize ep, a great example of how inventive instrumental grime still can be. It’s like the next evolutionary step following previous grimestrumental mini-masterpieces like Davinches Dirty Canvas-series and Terror Danjahs Industry Standart Trilogy, records occupying the strange zone between dubsteps gloomy atmospheres and grimes futuristic stutter-funk, glued together by the synthetic fanfare-riffs shared by both. Kapsize and Iron Soul hint at what could be the most powerful way to forge a new and fertile electronic dance sound – combining day-glo catchiness with sci-fi doom and an immense physical impact, while simultaneously ditching the most annoying and regressive elements of each style; the attempts at hip hop or dub authenticity. In this way, and even though neither truly belong to the genre, Kapsize and Iron Soul emphasize that 2007 was a great, great year for dubstep, and as such actually also a year – one of the first in a long time – that made me optimistic about electronic music. If that optimism is grounded in anything, well, maybe 2008 will tell.

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Oh, and bassline? Maybe I’ll also get some kind of grip on what I think about that in 2008 – right now I’ve not really seen the light (a bit like with 2step, as mentioned above), but more on that later, probably.

AUF DER BAHN ZUM SIRIUS – RIP KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN

Before I ever came around to deciding whether Stockhausen was the greatest living composer, he was no longer among the living. In a lot of ways he’s the kind of guy you’re really gonna miss in the world of music, also when, like me, you’re not as such trying to keep up with his output any more. It was just nice to know that he was out there, occasionally hearing about some new far out project like the helicopter quartet or the 24 hour “Klang”. He seemed like the last of the ancient giants, the composers determined on making art for the sake of it, without feeling any need to excuse that programme, going ever forward into the unknown without any rediscovering of lush romantic orchestration or simple harmony or any of those cheap post modern tricks. I loved his seriousness, the way he truly felt that what he did was important and adventurous. He seemed like the ultimate “mad scientist” of music, with his cosmic concepts and obsessive technical pedantry, forever engulfed in strange machines and esoteric research. There’s a wonderful picture of him on the back cover of Sirius, sitting by a kind of mixing board overflowing with cords and wires, looking fully lost in art and sound, and yet also highly alert, like he was working with radioactive substances or piloting a spaceship. It’s the ur-image of the machine musician, the mother of all techno geeks surrounded by drum machines and synths and effect boxes, entangled in wires. It completely sold me on Stockhausen when I first saw it, convinced me that I just had to get into this music sooner or later, even if it sounded like utter nonsense to me back then. Stockhausen was such a great and powerful character that it’s sometimes being suggested – a bit like with John Cage recently – that he was much more interesting exactly as such; as a theorist and a colourful eccentric rather than as a composer. Well, I loved Stockhausen the self-important mad scientist, but did I actually like his music? Did I eventually “get” it? I think so, to some degree at least, but it’s certainly a process that I’m far from finished with. Which is also why I never fully knew if he was the greatest living composer, even though I had no doubt that he was among the most fascinating and influential of the 20th century. I’ve come a long way since I first borrowed Sirius from my local music library, shortly after I’d gotten into “electronic music” (which to me, at that point, simply meant Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis and a few other related names with “hits” in the Synthesizer Greatest-tradition), and my uncle told me Stockhausen was one of the most crucial names in electronic music. Obviously I couldn’t see any connection with Jarre/Vangelis, and I even felt slightly emperors-new-clothes-suspicious. It’s one of the only times in my life where I’ve encountered music that seemed so strange and alien to me that I’d no idea how to approach it. I found it extremely indistinct and aimless, and my first reaction was not to take it seriously. Yet, it planted some weird seed in me, something that I couldn’t just shrug off, but had to keep coming back to, slowly letting it grow with time. And now, it’s not as much alien as it’s just kind of really strange, and it doesn’t seem all that intangible any more. I’ve actually become familiar with it, and I enjoy a lot of it without much consideration.

The first Stockhausen record I bought was Kurzwellen. It’ll never be one of my favourites, still sounding too uniform and one-dimensional for a record lasting almost two hours (the length is doubled as it has two different versions of the piece – something that’s hardly necessary), but I’d never sell it and it feels good to have it, it’s something that becomes a little bit more inviting and rewarding each time you hear it. And there’s a lot of Stockhausen records like that, too harshly abstract to be really loveable, yet also so fascinating that you keep going back to them. There’s a few doing nothing for me – like Momente or Prozession – and then some that are straightforwardly amazing and wonderful, like Stimmung or Sternklang, and of course there’s the cannonised works that are exactly the groundbreaking modern classics that they’re said to be, but maybe not that much more, like Gruppen, Hymnen or Gesang der Jünglinge, containing no lingering mysteries, just solid, powerful modernism.

The thing about Stockhausen that seems most mistaken and out of proportion to me is his status as a kind of electronic godfather. It’s something he didn’t quite know what to think of himself, I guess, at one time criticising techno artists for their repetitiveness, at another simply answering “yes” when asked by the german magazine De:Bug if he invented techno. The time he spent working with electronics of any real consequence was pretty much a small phase in a long career mostly dedicated to more traditional instrumental writing, from the serial determinism of his early chamber pieces, over the “intuitive” works based on improvised ensemble play, to his later preoccupation with opera and choir. And even though I definitely think Hymnen, Kontakte and Gesang der Jünglinge are among the best examples of the post war avant garde going electronic, I’m actually more interested in Stockhausen as a “traditional” composer, more fascinated by the works where he’s creating unearthly soundworlds with more or less earthly instruments. Or voices, as in Stimmung, which is my favourite of his, and one of those rare pieces where you’re just mesmerized, holding back your breath as not to disturb the otherworldly beauty.

His real greatness, to my ears, is exactly in this area where he’s a sort of a bordeline case within the traditional classical world, almost too far gone and esoteric to belong to it at all. Even someone like Penderecki seem rather old fashioned and retrospective by comparison, his extreme noisescapes related to the expressionistic outpourings of the late romantic school, whereas with a great deal of Stockhausen, it’s like there isn’t really any ties with any tradition. Things like Gruppen and the early chamber pieces obviously belong to the modern lineage, and his electronic pieces are clearly a part of the early electronic avant garde, but after that, he not only didn’t sound like anything else, he didn’t even sound like he had come from anything else. This is even the case with something like the monumental opera cycle Licht, or at least the parts I’ve heard, which are hardly recognizable as opera in any conventional sense. The only part of it I know in depth is Donnerstag, an overpowering work containing some truly strange and mysterious music (sometimes sounding like ethereal space jazz), as well as some parts that are actually rather silly, as you’d often find with the later Stockhausen. Equally idiosyncratic are the solo pieces for clarinet – Harlekin, Traum-Formel etc. –, you’d think that with something as specific as that it would at least sound a little related to some existing sound world, but it’s actually some of his most odd and enigmatic creations, thoroughly alien and deeply intimate at the same time.

It feels like there’s a lot of things that ought to be said about Stockhausen, but somehow I can’t quite find a firm shape or a clear focus for them, they seem to hover just outside my thoughts reach, still amorphous and nebulous. Much like his music, actually, or my perception of it anyway. And it is pretty late already, almost a moth since he died now, high time I get this finished. I guess everybody else is more or less through with the obituaries by now, and he is slowly returning to the mostly unobserved box he occupied in our mental archives just before he died. I think Licht, even if it’s eventually performed in its entirety, will remain too closely specified and too connected with particular performers, to ever become even remotely as inexhaustible and penetrating as Wagners Ring – the most obvious comparison –, and that’s probably the case for most of Stockhausens music. It’s so grown together with him that it seems unlikely that it will continue to catch peoples attention on its own, and that’s such a shame, because our evaluation of him really ought to be an ongoing process. In a lot of ways I think we still need to catch up with him.