Non-sequitur

UK peeps, seen this ad on telly recently? I hate it. HATE IT.

Putting to one side the awful green-tinted drabness and unimaginative script ("Harrison!") for a moment, the main problem I have with this advert is that I have no clue what it is about.

I mean, obviously the advertiser is Specsavers; the ad works at least insofar as it's a creative device for shoehorning as much branding into 30 seconds as possible. But why? Why is the shouty man so determined that 'Harrison!' get rid of Specsavers' advertising? What is this nameless corporation he's heading up? I would get it if they looked like a rival opticians - visual cues such as eye charts or white lab coats, while not that imaginitive, would at least give some context - but they look like a bunch of tax accountants in Next suits.

Maybe the green-tinted drabness, the catalogue office furniture, the dough-faced complexions and Next suits are all supposed to lead us obliquely to infer that this is a corporation that hates eyes. Certainly when watching it the question, 'what have my eyes done to deserve this?' crossed my mind. Perhaps that's the deeper meaning within this total non-sequitur of an ad.

Another question: oughtn't the client who signed this off go to Specsavers themselves...?

The Kennel Club is like the KKK. Really, PETA?

Okayyyyy, so now the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, are comparing the American Kennel Club to the KKK because ‘they both believe that pure bloodlines are superior’.

This shows that not only are they an organisation who actively seek out and embrace controversy, (i.e. approach with massive doses of salt) but also that they have no problem exploiting women to push their agenda, which by their own logic makes them what? Pimps? And now they’ve co-opted eugenics as a platform for their message. Just because they come down on the ‘eugenics is bad’ side of the debate, that doesn’t mean it’s not sick of them to leverage it. That’s like saying you hate rape because it leads to more abortions, or something.

With each word I devote to writing about PETAs shameful tactics of self-promotion, a little bit more of me dies. Before I expire completely let’s reassure ourselves that we’re not taking crazy pills, and take a look at how ridiculous their assertions that dog breeding is as bad as the racial purity ideologies of the KKK really are:



1. Dogs are not people. This one is obvious but I feel that it bears repeating because this is where PETA keep missing the point, in my opinion. Dogs are not people; animals are not people, they don’t have the same problems as people so stop anthropomorphising them like they cry themselves to sleep at night because Bambi’s mum got shot. Harpooning endangered species is not cool, but if I want to eat a steak then I can without remorse. A lion can have a steak whenever it wants; are Lions assholes? No, they are animals (with great haircuts I might add).


2. The purer the bloodline, the more stupid the breed. I know that that is kind of PETA’s point but dogs don’t know they’re stupid, neither do stupid people - that’s why they’re stupid. You know who’s stupid? The KKK. You know why? Because they are inbred. The KKK want to control racial propagation but they are too stupid to recognise that you can’t mess with nature. The very fact that the KKK exists at all is a great example of natural selection at work. In a couple more generations they’ll be dribbling in trailer parks on the outskirts of towns, with too many fingers and heads that are too big for their silly hats.


3. Dog breeders want to control the genetics of a breed. Not because they believe in the supremacy of that breed, or because they believe that only pure breed dogs should have executive power and civil rights, but because they want to show off their pretty dogs to each other.


4. The KKK lynches black people, the AKC doesn’t.


URL to article on Don't Panic's site here: http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/politics/kennel-club-the-next-kkk

The Essential Metalheadz

Quite possibly the best drum and bass label there has ever been. Founded in 1993 by Goldie, Doc Scott, Storm and the much-missed Kemistry, Metalheadz has come to be known as the most pioneering label in drum and bass.

The seminal Metalheadz Sunday Sessions at London's Blue Note have become the stuff of scene legend and their Platinum Breaks compilations helped to win over those who assumed all drum and bass sounded like lorries reversing by showcasing a side of the music that was not only sophisticated and intricate but also representative of the creativity and innovation found amongst the UK's most talented producers.

The mighty imprint is 15 years old this month and is celebrating by releasing a compilation of some of the label's finest moments on 15 Years of Metalheadz. Kmag is in turn celebrating by picking our own finest moments from Metalheadz and inviting you lot to do the same in the comments section below. Here we go...

1. Adam F – Metropolis
This came out in 1996, people, 1996! Can you imagine, knowing what you know now, what it would have been like to hear this for the first time back then?? The drums are executed with a kind of psychopathic precision and just like Fritz Lang's film, Adam F's Metropolis is foreboding, futuristic and spooky.



2. Alex Reece – Pulp Fiction
I have two words: Bass Line. Understated and simple, laid-back, grown-up, and a bit dark... This is the little black dress, the Tom Ford, the Audi of drum and bass tunes. Its minimalist arrangement makes it timeless, I can't imagine this ever sounding dated. A true classic.



3. Doc Scott – Swarm
Pure dark side drum and bass. How did such a big tune manage to evade any mention on Google other than links to mp3s? And why has it got only just over a thousand views on YouTube? Talk about being underground. If someone asked me what the difference between jungle and drum and bass was, I wouldn't be able to tell them but I'd probably play them this.



4. D Kay and Lee – Wax'd
Wax'd shows the more mellow, slightly warmer and melodic side to Metalheadz. This smoother sound of drum and bass has become a signature style in Headz ambassador, DJ Lee's sets, and tempers the moody intensity of some of the stable's other releases.

5. Optical – To Shape The Future
Glitchy and minimalist, To Shape The Future delivered on its name by becoming pretty much the catalyst for the whole neurofunk movement, and should be given massive credit for being so directional. Not only that but I heard that because of complaining neighbours when Optical was writing it he had to judge the level of the bass by feeling the vibration of the speakers while they were turned down low. That must have been HARD. Big skill.



6. Rufige Cru – Terminator
'Whistle crew make some noise!!' Oh my god, this was before even my time but it is so, so sick. Reminds me of being 13 and listening to tape packs in my bedroom. Seminal and pioneering, Terminator was among the first new wave of jungle tunes to come out of hardcore and paved the way for the Metalheadz legacy.



7. Dillinja – Angels Fell
Harks back to a time before the genre became ever more fragmented, when it was okay to do stripped back drums instead of the 2-step template that limits so much of dnb output today; a time when forums didn't erupt in acne-popping apoplexy if someone so much as removed a snare. The good news is that we're seeing a shift in trend back towards this kind of fluid production; not sure anyone will ever be able to do bass quite like Dillinja though.



8. Ed Rush – The Raven
Dirty as a dustbin full of torn bum holes. The paranoid and tense The Raven was arguably the genesis of the idea for the fantastic Locust - which came a couple of years later - with its grumbly Reece bass line providing the hook and its idiosyncratic hi-hats. As dark and sinister as any Edgar Allen Poe story. Not so much 'nevermore', as 'more!'



9. Noisia – The Bells
Right, back to the future now with one of the most recent releases. In The Bells we see a return to the label's experimental form with Noisia's interesting precise, minimal sound. This tune makes the list for having balls and for being a very positive statement of intent for Metalheadz as it enters its 16th year.



10. John B – Up All Night
This tune was probably the first time we were ever introduced to the term 'trance and bass'. Some people weren't sure at first but the foresight of Metalheadz A&R has long since been vindicated by the fact that seven years on it is hailed as one of the hugest dance floor dnb tunes from that era and John B is now one of drum and bass's most commercially successful artists. The atmospherics, pitched-up vocals and piano riffs referenced early nineties rave, while the dirty Reece bass line kept the tune rooted in the contemporary. Big and brilliant.



URL to original article on Knowledge's site here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/features/848

Blu Mar Ten - Natural History

Blu Mar Ten's album, Natural History, was released yesterday. It's very good, I suggest you go buy yourself a copy. You might also want to read the interview I did with the guys here:

None of the usual fluffy rehearsed interview rubbish for the Blu Mar Ten guys. Five minutes after sitting down with them, we're debating the existence of art for art's sake and the role of audience in giving it validity. Not your usual, 'how did you guys get into drum and bass' conversation.

But Blu Mar Ten are not the usual. Keeping up with them is tricky, the trio have a way of finishing each other's sentences and pre-empting each others' points, which betrays not only the amount of time they've been together but the amount of time they spend together.

Each has carved out their own defined role to create a group dynamic that, judging by longevity and consistent quality of output, obviously works. I'll be honest, it's weird. I know married couples who don't get on as well as these three do. And I'm actually a bit jealous; I wanna be in their gang.

We kick off the interview by talking about their wildly differing collective and individual motivations to keep making music together – a subject apparently no nearer being understood or reconciled despite being under their constant scrutiny.

"If you ask us the question 'why do we do it?', for me it's about showing off. Whereas he just enjoys the process," says Chris, nodding in Michael's direction.

Does he mind being answered for?

"Well, I'll see what he says and whether I disagree with it," says Michael.

"If we never released another record Michael wouldn't care," Chris goes on, "but for me [music] doesn't exist until there's an audience for it."

"I guess somehow it's enough for me to just write music and have it there," agrees Michael.

"Chris always has the bigger picture," adds Leo. "He's the strategist, he's the leader."

So what role does Leo play then?

"He's somewhere between me and Michael," says Chris. "He enjoys the process and all of that but he does like seeing his record in the shops as well."

"I'd agree with that", says Leo. "I went to the cinema last night and I heard one of our tracks being played in the lobby. That's a nice sort of validation, but even if there was no such validation, the idea of just playing around with sounds is endlessly attractive."

The idea that these three just 'play around with sounds' is as inaccurate as it is attractive. Probably closer to the truth is they agonise over every aspect of the production process; as Chris puts it, this album has cost him one girlfriend, a social life and lost sleep. But the time dedicated to this perfectionism is just what has made their latest album, Natural History, so bloody excellent.

That's not to say that they are rigid in their approach to writing; completely the opposite in fact. For them the key seems to be to surrender control over the music just as they seem to have surrendered themselves to it.

"We were talking about The Grid, the production forum on Dogsonacid.com, and I was complaining about how there's so much of a desire to control and master every aspect of the music they're trying to write on there", says Chris.

"And we were talking about the way we write music which is very... not exactly zen like but you have to allow yourself to surrender enough control to let interesting things happen, recognise when you need to grab it and guide it, and then stop and let it do its thing. Probably very much like raising kids I imagine."

"That's something a lot of people would agree with though, that good tunes write themselves," adds Leo.

"Yes, but you've got this whole subculture of people who are desperately trying to control it."

"But if you look at the greatest songs," continues Leo, "the essence of them came about by opening up to a kind of random behaviour."

Working in this way must require a great balance of intuition and experience in order to know when to put the brakes on. At those points I wondered, do they have their audience in mind and does that steer the direction in which they guide the track?

"There's a degree of that," says Chris. "We've genre hopped a hell of a lot, but recently everything we've written is drum and bass and Natural History is our first all drum and bass album. All the sketches we've been working on for the past two weeks don't sound like drum and bass, and we're finding ourselves having to crowbar ideas, which maybe three years ago we would have put in a down-tempo or house track, into this drum and bass template, it's really valuable to be able to take that template and stretch it."



"Drum and bass is nothing but a tempo, that's the only unifying thing," Chris says. "When you start talking about whether it's liquid or neuro, I switch off at that point. I think once you start acknowledging that level of difference, you're into this very obsessive, male, geek territory which is all about categorising. Does one club night every 12 months with 20 guys off the web really make a sub-genre? Instead we should just say 'drum and bass is that speed and beyond that the genre is completely elastic'."

Having to stretch non-drum and bass ideas to fit within a drum and bass framework can produce much more interesting stuff but in doing this, and by leaving the creative process open to serendipity as much as they do, are the three ever conscious of trends and whether they are referencing them enough to appear current?

"We are conscious of trends even if only insofar as we decide to buck them," says Chris.

"We talk about that a lot", adds Leo. "It can focus your attention on certain things. Like the whole abstract, less beats driven instrumental type trend versus the smacked out Pendulum sound of a couple of years ago. That's quite a fundamental trend difference in the last few years; there's definitely a movement that's dubstep-like and fairly ambient, almost drumless at times. And that makes you think about things differently because it's not like we're out to copy everyone all of the time."

"To some extent you could link that with the whole MP3 movement," says Michael. "Because there seems to have been some kind of shift away from being dictated to about what's going to sell. For a long time the dance floor oriented tracks were the ones that were successful so that what was everyone aped. But now people seem to have lost faith in the ability to sell music through the usual channels so they just get on with making what they want and it's somehow freed them up.

"The kind of music we make does require attention. You can't just flick it on and immediately get it. I think it's because drum and bass music is quite indirect anyway," continues Michael.

I remember talking to the director Ross Casswell on the set of the video for Believe Me about how he came up with the idea for the film. He said he found that drum and bass tunes never seemed to get anywhere, they were more like a journey that never reaches its destination, and that's what he wanted to reflect in the video – giving no explanation or payoff. Does removing drum and bass from the context of the club make it less coherent, and a bit aimless? Does that matter?

"This idea that it's dance music is a bit strange," says Chris. "I don't know what the statistics would be but I'd be willing to bet that 90% of drum and bass is listened to outside of a club – on computers, in cars, in bedrooms... What proportion does it have to work and be heard in a club to be classed as dance music?"

"There's no elevator pitch for drum and bass!" adds Leo.

"But one of the things I always liked about it was that there was a surrendering of the ego and there was this understanding that there was lots going on at the same time and what you were doing was making small, attenuated changes within something that was much bigger," Chris says.

"And each one of your attenuated changes didn't mean that much in isolation but taken as a whole, all those tiny changes to an idea, all marches forward in unison, so from track to track it all might sound the same but within a year or five years' time, that idea sounds very different because it's grown organically."

True to type, as Chris describes the bigger picture Leo adds his mediator's levelling diplomacy: "Morally I find that a very attractive idea because it's inclusive".


URL to orginal article on Kowledge's site here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/features/764