Bury this shit. Once and for all.

Burial is terrible.

I will admit that I got off the wrong foot with him when breakcore producer FFF recommended him a few years back as a hot tippie and I unreasonably assumed that it would be banging mutant breakcore (totally unfair, like any DJ, FFF is into loads of styles, including italodisco). I whacked it on my mp3 player and waited for the break but it never came. Just some slightly dodgy lingering synths and some horrible tortured vocals.

Perhaps if i was completely whacked out on drugs after a massive weekend (like that will ever happen again), I would enjoy it, but then I'd most probably be listening to summat else, thanks very much. Wevy Stonder or Enduser.

Zoviet France - Lief Lulla (1990)



I do however like Zoviet France, who actually came from the same hinterland - or did they? I'm referring to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where I'm pretty sure a friend was at art college with Mr. Burial, although Wikipedia claims he's from London, naturally (London's where it's at right, he said and rolled his eyes). In any case, ZF certainly did the whole mournful drone thing way better a long time ago. I was struck by this today and now this has recontextualised my views on Burial since now I see he is simply a repackaged consumer friendly version of what ZF did properly way back..

And now Burial has brought out some new music after quite a break (I tried to encourage him to take up another hobby but he would not listen), so I thought it might be "fun" to give it a listen. As you'll see I wouldn't really call it fun.

Adam Harper who wrote Infinite Music said at a 'Critical Beats' event in London something almost poetic about Burial being the lingering last backward look at the disintegrating carcass of rave. Harper should shave his head and go squat raving, all them slow beats have mashed up his brain. What he said made me think of Walter Benjamin's Angel of History (he may have explicitly mentioned him I don't remember), which is interesting, coz Benjamin also leaves me cold.

Burial & Four Tet - Moth



Pff I'm listening to this right now, it's so crap!! How can intelligent music journalist types like this shit? Different strokes and that, but all in all, at the end of the day, the emperor has no clothes and this is rubbish, predictable house music and we all know what sort of twangers listen to that.

Burial - NYC (2011)



Um well, what's to like? That fucking twostep snare gets quite annoying doesn't it? It just screams bad party at me. Standing around watching people who can't dance latch onto that fucing tap. Modern life is rubbish.

Burial - Street Halo (2011)



Hmm ... I thought this might get interesting to start with but it's no more than a lame house banger. Those carefully quantized castanets are well annoying, kinda stepping up to replace the snare. Oh and a rubbish vocal drifts in. Even a banging house banger would still be pretty lame to be honest. There's a whole world of music out there and people are listening to that. That bass poop noise is annoying and predictable.

Words now fail me.

Time for some good music.

Venetian Snares - Öngyilkos Vasárnap

Music, Politics, Agency/Critical Beats

Music, Politics, Agency/Critical Beats seminar series

Critical Beats: Sound, Technology, Microgenre, Rhythm
Date: 3 November 2011, Circus 2 at Stratford Circus, 19:30-21:30, general public £3, students £1.
Participants: Lisa Blanning (chair), Adam Harper, Matthew Ingram/Woebot, Mike Paradinas

Music, Politics and Agency in the Digital Age: East London
Date: 16 November 2011, 13:00-17:00, UEL, Stratford Campus, room AE.1.01, free.
Participants: Jeremy Gilbert (chair), Andrew Blake, Richard Bramwell, Steve Goodman (in conversation with Jeremy Gilbert), Derek Walmsley

Critical Beats: Place, Locality and Globalisation
Date: 8 December 2011, Circus 2 at Stratford Circus, 19:30-21:30 free.
Participants: Derek Walmsley (chair), Martin Clark, George Mahood, plus one other

Critical Beats: Innovation and the Past
Date: 23 February 2012, Circus 2 at Stratford Circus, 19:30-21:30, general public £3, students £1.

Music, Politics and Agency in the Digital Age: Gender, Sexuality and Sound
Date: 7 March 2012, 11:00-18:00, UEL, Stratford Campus, room UH.2.69, free.
Participants: Jeremy Gilbert (chair), Bipasha Ahmed, Lisa Blanning, Freya Jarman-Ivens, Tim Lawrence, Helen Reddington

Critical Beats: Sound Systems
Date: 19 April 2012, Circus 2 at Stratford Circus, 19:30-21:30, general public £3, students £1.

Music, Politics and Agency in the Digital Age: Sonic Radicalism
Date: 23 May 2012, 11:00-17:00, UEL, Docklands campus, room EB.1.03, free.
Participants: Jeremy Gilbert (chair) Dhanveer Brar, Adam Harper, Matthew Prichard, Barry Shank, Jason Toynbee

Critical Beats: Dancing and Dance Culture Scenes
Date: 14 June 2012, Circus 2 at Stratford Circus, 19:30-21:30, general public £3, students £1.

Music, Politics and Agency in the Digital Age: Capitalism, Creativity and Music
Date: 27 June 2012, 11:00-17:00, UEL Docklands campus, room EB.G.06, free.
Participants: Tim Lawrence (chair) Mark Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert, Dave Hesmondhalgh, Timothy Taylor

http://culturalstudiesresearch.org/?p=843

you might stop the party

you might stop the party 

god i need to relax.

sam's up there blagging her heart out to the copper saying it's her fault she wanted me to drive and i'm thinking christ i hope they dont find the pills stuffed down my shoe. the breathalyser came back positive - no real surprise there, i'm fucken pissed, can't hardly stand up, nearly fell over when the copper asked me to breathe into it, but the whole fucken point is that the pigs cleared us out the building and told us to fuck off.

i know i'm pissed so i tells 'em and they dont care they're all moody at being up so late past their beddybyes and then they start waving their penis-substitutes about and growling so i says ok ok i'll drive the van but i'm pissed alright and they don't care and then we go fifty metres down the road and this fresh-faced traffic cop pulls me over and tells me he had reason to believe im driving under the influence.

christ he ain't half right there, i'm a pharmaceutical guinea pig - like the t-shirt says, testing in progress. if i'm selling pills i gotta take a couple to be a good advert and if i'm pilling i'll have a drink too. why not? i know my limits. someone shoved a tab down my throat and if i get offered k i'll do it, why not, it's no crime. these stupid wankers are the dangerous ones stopping parties and turfing out all these young aggressive moody drugged up punks with nothing to do except a bit of good old-fashioned english vandalism. i can hear them now doing a bus stop. the cop looks round a little nervous and holds onto his radio for support. sam is really bending his ear, he looks worn out and then i see some hoodies turn the corner up ahead.

tension mounts, neck hairs prickle. someone throws a bottle. the glass smashes beautifully on the rain smeared tarmac. just like we're in the movies. the cop bricks it. properly shits himself. to be honest, i would too, it's all about the numbers. so he's back in his car and his mate's reversing fucking fast and that just gets the boys excited so they're chucking bottles, rocks, anything which lifts and sam's got her arms around me laughing and kissing my neck. phew. we started a mini-riot.

i guess the drink drive charge gets dropped then. what next? the punks drift past us aimlessly and sam chews on her favourite thumb. there's another party but it's in acton and we're in hackney wick and not really in a state to get there. i've had enough rozzers for a week already and sam don't drive. crapper turns up and shoots the shit for a bit. he offers to drive but he's off his head too. he says he's not. but he is. he leans against the car and gabbles happily, the streetlights bathing him in a warm amber glow. maybe these pills are alright. i sell a couple to the bored punters still milling about and then i think why not a bit of music, so we crank up the speakers and play an old headfuk mixtape. that wibbles evryone out and i sit on top of the car, a little bit cold but enjoying the weirdness of this saturday.

someone says mainline are gonna turn back on, but i doubt it, they wouldn't risk their rig after a noise abatement. and if they did, we'd hear them anyway. this whole area is one dead wasteland. i wonder who complained about the noise. maybe the pigs made it up. i came up here in the day once, strange to see all these normal people walking past raved up warehouses and burnt out factories. i guess some of them are still functioning. it's a little bit sad all this decline and fall, but the tekno makes the desolation special. i feel a bit emotional. must be the pills.

they're beautiful in their own way all these roads - carpenters, roach, dace. they'll get developed soon, they have to, hackney is on the up, maybe a railway line will pass though here or yuppie conversions will regenerate the area. and in some ways that's good, it gives new life to a dead zone although i don't see why rich people should just come in and 'civilise' an area when most council housing is falling down.

shit i seem to be getting more lucid again, that ain't good. i gobble a few more grinners and wonder where sam's got to. she comes back with dom, he's in a bit of a state. no surprise there. seems like some cunt's nicked his jacket and dom can't remember where he lost it. he always does this. but then this big skinhead comes over and gives him the jacket back, says he saw him drop it round the corner a minute ago. dom's pretty screwed by this information and it makes me laugh watching the gears in his brain slowly turning. sam's all stoked to see people being nice to each other and she stands there giving me the wink until i get the hint and give the big bastard some gurners. now he's smiling too. everyone's happy except me, im thinking about profit margins although i know the uncomfortable truth is i've boshed too many myself to care. it's gonna be one of those weekends, if only we could get home. i wanna be in my nice warm bed, all cosy and snuggled up to sam.

she's giving me a dirty look now, i hate the way she can see straight through me. could be worse though. dom grumbles off, bouncing off lamp-posts and there's more business to be had, looks like most people can be fucked to try to get to acton. i still can't be arsed, so i lock up the car and pull sam off towards this building i saw a few weeks ago. it's over by the canal and i think it's worth exploring. sure enough, the gate is hanging off its hinges and we saunter in, a little bit afraid because there's not much light, then we find the stairwell and gain our confidence as we climb. we chase each other up whooping and banging on locked metal doors. the door to the roof has a crappy padlock on it, a few kicks and we spill out into the night sky, stars hanging around us and london spreading her legs like a dirty bitch.

there's the telecom towers and tower blocks in camden. over there is probably stratford. sam thinks she sees her uni but im not convinced. she's swinging her arms about and leaning into me, singing into my eyes. we kiss and it feels great. sometimes i think i'm doing all right. we find an airconditioning vent to perch on, shielded from the wind by the lift shaft. we talk about what were gonna do in our new squat. sam has big plans for the living room. she's thinking cushions and drapes, i'm saying it all sounds very nice, but we'll see what the dumpster god provides coz i'm fucked if i'm spending money on it.

then we start talking about benny, he's this guy we know who topped himself a few weeks back. took lots of acid and they found him swinging from a rope in his room. shame really, nice guy, little bit weird, too quiet, but nice, real nice. its fucked us up more than we thought. sam cries a bit, i stroke her hair and think of things to say but don't say them. and then suddenly it's dawn. the sun just popped up and its six thirty already. i love dawn's early light. i'm staring at bleached out concrete babylon, shame we don't have no music up here. so that was it. goodbye 98. start the year as you mean to go on so they say. well, i'm already draining the last of the water on two more gurners. doubledrop is the way forwards.

we are the future.

i stand tall before london and piss onto the road below.

Enter the darkness

Among other things I like heavy drum n bass, dark breakcore and fucked up noise. If you are at a party, stood in front of a big black stack of speakers, surely you want to hear the filthiest, sonically interesting shit the DJ can throw at you.

Panacea - Reality



In 'Running on Empty' Mark Fisher worries that "cultural resources [are] running out in the same way as natural resources are." This statement seems to say more about Fisher's slightly neurotic worldview than anything else (check out his book Capitalist Realism for a hand-wringing realisation that oh no, capitalism is really insidious nowadays ).

Of course it's fashionable to say things are getting worse and perhaps they are politically but music evolves constantly, in a series of cycles and I see no reason to fear that our cultural productivity is drying up. The underground doesn't stop.

It just always needs new blood.

Venetian Snares - Winnipeg Is A Dogshit Dildo



Fisher expands his point with the comment that "The current decade, however, has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration." I think he's confusing the personal and the political here - we all slow down as we age and like any old DJ I tend to loiter on the dancefloor thinking about how much better I'd play. In fact I remember interviewing the programming brains who hooked up with Richard Fearless for Death in Vegas (it was at the Blue Note in Hoxton, so it was indeed that long ago) and him stating something very similar about how he couldn't be bothered to go out anymore becuase he'd always feel he could do it better. I didn't really get him then but now i do. Just getting old, innit.

The only way we can talk about deceleration is in speed, since all this grime / dubstep / whatever the fuck skrillex is making is very very slow. But if you care to look, there's still plenty of stuff going on in the fields of breakcore and speedcore.

This isn't where the money is. And the people making extreme music don't add lyrics saying it's "not about the money" when really it is [yeah that's a sideswipe right there]. They aren't selling out because their music has a certain politics of self-expression to it that any mainstream style simply lacks.

A friend who has a sound system told me at the last party that he really likes the meshing together of breakcore and speedcore, to the point where "you don't know how to dance any more."

Commercialise that! Or this:

Depizgator - Tratataboomterere

Oh the memories

I'm in the process of uploading some party flyers, squat parties and underground club nights. I've made a page for them here.