Comments on Obsolete: Worst music of 2012.

I know. The great thing about hardcore and jungle...

2013-01-04T16:35:41.407+00:00

I know. The great thing about hardcore and jungle in general looking back now is how many artists made their tracks with such basic samplers and equipment. It's not an exaggeration to suggest that you can get a free app for your phone that'll do pretty much what you had to pay £1,200 for or more back then. That amateurish, not quite knowing what they were doing or whether it worked aesthetic you get especially from early jungle is part of its charm.

When I listen to dubstep from 2004-06 it already sounds seminal; I didn't know about it at the time as I only really discovered the genre properly in 07 so I can't claim to have been there from the beginning, but to me the early DMZ catalogue, the foundational stuff from Skream and Benga and all the rest of it feels incredibly special. It has soul, it has weight, it has movement, it's inspired by the past while also looking forward. Then you listen to Skrillex or any of the other "brostep" producers that have followed in his wake and it's as though they've heard something completely different, not the weight or feel but just the surface noise. It's like all the recent remakes of old 70s/80s horror: they've ignored the atmosphere of those films, their social comment, and just focused on the gore. It's completely and utterly shallow.

Oh, The Licence is a bit of a shame, isn't it?...

2013-01-04T14:08:46.540+00:00

Oh, The Licence is a bit of a shame, isn't it? Where did the jungly messiness go? He seems to have produced it to a weirdly polished hyperdefinition. That in turn takes the edge off things like the stretched vocals, and almost makes it mandatory to add sawtoothy wubs, if only to reclaim some of the original atmosphere.

Digital Mystikz were in fact one of the last artis...

2013-01-03T23:30:12.276+00:00

Digital Mystikz were in fact one of the last artists John Peel championed prior to his passing, and they played on one of the shows paying tribute to him. You're right though, the last three do sound like they're from a separate genre because they might as well be; Sweet Shop was the last track to be played by DJs fairly across the board. Spongebob is the key though: there were aggressive tracks that went all out with the mid-range prior to it (see Vex'd especially), but it effectively popularised the concept and led first to Caspa and Rusko doing much the same but with diminishing returns, then Doctor P and Flux Pavilion and now through to the likes of xKore. And the genre as a whole lies bleeding.

Incidentally, if you think the Skrillex remix of La Roux is bad, and when it drops it makes me laugh and then want to cry, you should check the Doctor P Remix of Krome and Time's The Licence. Defiling two genres at the same time.

Thanks for your summary: knowledgeable and interes...

2013-01-03T20:27:15.975+00:00

Thanks for your summary: knowledgeable and interesting as ever, certainly to someone coming from completely outside that scene (when I am dead and opened, you shall find "Peel" and "Free Trade Hall" engraved upon my heart.)

The videos sound to me like they're from a completely different genre from, oh, probably Doctor P onwards: certainly the Skrillex effect on La Roux, and the chorus lift wub-wub on The Good Natured seem like mere nods of acknowledgement to the previous sound, rather than any kind of commitment to it. That's a shame in itself.

Personally, I find Nicki Minaj "entertaining in passing". Her bizarre videos all seem a bit like the machinations of a well-meaning neon-clad sex robot who's seen short clips from Billie Piper's "Because We Want To" and thought that the modern-day equivalent is exactly what 2012 needs. But as I tend to avoid Radio 1 and commercial radio, then I've had limited contact with her outside of the fact that she's at least a fairly gutsy artist fighting some of the attitudes within her often execrable genre. If on the other hand I, like you, had seen her and Rihanna gradually co-opting what were once genuinely likeable, or even loveable, beats, then I'd probably hate her as much as you do.

Music - by which we both presumably mean the sum total of most commercially available genres, biased towards what's reasonable for your average punter to encounter - seems this past year to once again have been simultaneously consolidating and fragmenting: Gangnam Style and the like are a big shadowy body, eclipsing a long, long tail of all the tiny and more interesting artists. I suppose what I'm saying is that we should both try to cheer up, as there's good stuff to be discovered in that tail yet. But you probably know this already.