Nuum spectrum disorders

Posted by homoludo on February 27th, 2009 filed in Hardcore continuum, history, theory, writing

 I posted last January 08 that a blogging bitch fight was about to begin. What was being contested was the use/aplicability of the hard core continuum model. The fight never really kicked off and I felt foolish and petty and assumed everybody else was more mature. Now, to my gossipy delight, it turns out they’re not, they were just biding their time and it has begun, with these(1, 2) posts from K punk and this and this and this from Simon Reynolds and these from Splintering bone ash and this and this from Kode 9 and this from Dan Hancox at fact(ok I’ll stop, oh no I wont’) this from uncarved. Beyond the schoolyard fun of rushing to view the ‘fight! fight!’. There is good thinking and writing going on about current bass/dance music.

Reynolds and K punk are being a bit silly and bulldoggy attacking wonky. The hcc is a good and useful model but, it gets less interesting when used as a stick to beat things that don’t fall into it(also models aren’t real).  Claiming things aren’t as good as they once were is not that interesting.

How good or bad wonk, funky or bassline are and to what extent they fit in the hcc is an angels on pin heads issue and is a nostalgia mode in itself.

Mr splintering bone ash is the one nailing it best – What is lacking is not as he points out a

‘failure of modernist will.’

and his observations on the modernist need for innovation are on point.

Also, he points out that ‘breakbeat can only be absorbed once’

Following this samplers, time stretching etc are only new once.

Other reasons the first wave was so hardcore were; E use being new(it was a big deal), Dj’ing (as a mass entertainment), the fall of the Berlin wall and the party that followed, the huge numbers on the dole(15% in Ireland in 93 – that’s a lot of people available to rave, ), Top of the pops and massive tabloid interest,  a well developed anti Thatcher counter culture(lots of whom fled to Ireland) leading to free parties and rave being a politics, which punks etc took up. Also there were LOTS of house parties( this should not be underestimated, and I’m beginning efforts to resurrect this culture, what else to do in a recess? Stay tuned).

These were events and peoples responses to them, it was  not willed.

That’s what strange about Reynold’s and Ficher’s positions, for writers steeped in materialism they seem to be ahistorical and vitalist about this.  What is more interesting than what fits or does not fit in the hcc, is to look for what is different now and if you don’t know, you’re not looking in the right places.

It’s so different it makes my head hurt(in a good way) and it’s still the best fun I know.