Feedback on the drum'n'bass discussion: Is d'n'b getting too hard?? ... Feedback from nunuk: however i agree with you on the fact that this hardcore invention will surely not last forever....it will pass through tons of mutations, as it did for the last 5 years. sometimes it is fun to boost the sound of your hardware with hardcore stuff....we still do that in our office sometimes, buying a few beer and stuff, makin the sound explode!! it belong to a french videogame studio, so no problemo about making some damn noise!! now this techstep scene has become boring and futile for me.....always the same thing, i just don't like it any more. still there are very good albums released every day..... but i will alway prefer the "deepside"...bukem and good looking record, justice, (aka tony bowes) a uk artist who released one of the most effective ambient jungle tracks 4 years ago: AQUISSE. simply the best track for me.....let's name also groups like: INTENSE / MATRIX / NOOKIE / PFM / FLYTRONIX / JMJ & RICHIE / AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA TOO MANY OF THEM Reply from Shambler: Anyway, I agree with what you are saying - the problem with the techstep stuff is not the sound itself, but that everyone is doing it. I've been hearing some tracks recently and thinking "these sound exactly the same as some tracks I heard a few months back". Same with any scene - too much of the same music and it will stagnate. I was interested to hear you like mellow stuff like Bukem and GLR. I've been getting into some of that recently - but it's hard for me to find stuff I really like (I don't like Conrad's vocals so that rules a lot of it out - and I don't like experimental ambient stuff much either). So far I like Drumfunk Hooliganz 1 and 2, John B's mellow stuff, and Tayla - Soul Survivors. However I find there is a large gap between the GLR style d'n'b and the common Ram / BC style d'n'b - like d'n'b these days is either hard or soft but there's very little inbetween... ... Feedback from Ajare: Secondly, that d&b chat, just a few comments. You said that a genre of music becoming popular (ie ultimately commercial) doesn't necessarily kill it, "it depends on what the artists do", but this is exactly what happened to jungle (and what happened to trance last year), ie it got commercial and cheesy, and it going dark was a reaction to this, to try and clear out the bandwagoneers and take it back underground. Of course, they took it a bit too far, which is why only now, 5 years later is it gaining credibility again. Also, I don't totally agree with your main point - ie that its only going to get harder- look at artists like J Majik, Kosheen, Marcus Intallex, they're putting out a lot of more soulful funky stuff without being too noodletastic like the Good Looking stuff , and judging by DJs charts, they seem to be playing this rather than Ram Trilogy, BC etc. Looking at the scene from 4 years back, I can say definately that it was harder and darker back then. Reply from Shambler: ""I don't totally agree with your main point - ie that its only going to get harder- "" Aaaah that was Vondur's main point not mine. I don't think it's going to keep getting harder as these things go in cycles and I don't think an all-hard scene is sustainable. I think you've got a good point there about those artists - bringing the music back into it without being too "light". They're sort of introducing a deeper, more musical feel, as opposed to bringing the ravier feel of a few years ago (although equally that flavour is creeping into some of the harder artists stuff...). ""Looking at the scene from 4 years back, I can say definately that it was harder and darker back then."" I can say definitely that it *wasn't* harder. 4 years ago techstep was in it's infancy, Renegade Hardware / BC Recordings etc etc were barely heard of, the hardest Ram were doing was Valley of the Shadows, and Mickey Finn / Aphrodite style jump-up was the centre of the scene. Sure there might have been more Amen breaks around, and some crews like No U-Turn were doing dark stuff, but the music was less noisy and more "happy" then. Reply from Ajare: ""I can say definitely that it *wasn't* harder. 4 years ago techstep was in it's infancy, Renegade Hardware / BC Recordings etc etc > were barely heard of, the hardest Ram were doing was Valley of the Shadows, and Mickey Finn / Aphrodite style jump-up was the centre of the scene. Sure there might have been more Amen breaks around, and some crews like No U-Turn were doing dark > stuff, but the music was less noisy and more "happy" then."" No, I disagree. OK, there's a distinction between hard and dark which I should have made. It probably wasn't harder, but some of your comments are wrong. Valley of the Shadows was actually 1993, and although Ram/Origin Unknown hadn't done anything collectively around then, Andy C and Simon were producing some very dark stuff indeed - 'Quest' for example. Even the Tru Playa stuff, like 'One' by Swift was dark and could not be described as jump-up. I think the main thing is, back then, d&b was overwhelmingly 'heavy', and nowadays that 'heaviness' manifests itself more in speed and hard beats than volcanic basslines. And Mickey Finn and Aphrodite wrote one of the tunes (yes I know it was jump-up) that defined the 'dark' era- Badass. Some of this may be wrong, it's off my head, I do enjoy a decent debate about good stuff =) Reply from Shambler: Okay I was wrong about VotS... I wouldn't call Quest particularly dark though. The other tracks you mention provide a good comparison though: Stuff by Swift (he 0wnz me =)), has always been pretty hard, but a few years ago he was the obscure side of True Playaz, they were better known for jump-up like SSS or the Fugee's remix. And Badass, well compare that - as an anthem of the time - to, say, BC's The Nine - as an anthem of recent times. The Nine is darker, faster, noiser, and lacks the "phat" samples or "anthemic" structure. Thing is, yes there was enough hard (and/or dark) drum'n'bass around then, but it was the exception rather than the norm. However as you say, although the norm is hard at the moment, more musical jungle is creeping back, and in the cyclical world of music *that* will probably become the norm - which I personally think will be better for the scene. Hmmmm, it's like jungle has gone: Ragga ---> Intelligent ---> Dark ---> Jump Up ---> Techstep ---> ?Musical? With techstep being the current position... Reply from Ajare: ""Thing is, yes there was enough hard (and/or dark) drum'n'bass around then, but it was the exception rather than the norm. However as you say, although the norm is hard at the moment, more musical jungle is creeping back, and in the cyclical world of music *that* will probably become the norm - which I personally think will be better for the scene."" Hmm, I'd still disagree with you here. I've read several interviews with people like SS and Fabio where they've said that it was the prevailing style of the time. It's very true about what you say about music going in cycles, though. ""Hmmmm, it's like jungle has gone: Ragga ---> Intelligent ---> Dark ---> Jump Up ---> Techstep ---> ?Musical?"" Yeah, that's about right, without wanting to get too anally precise. Intelligence overlapped a fair bit - DJ Rap was playing what can be described as Intelligent (Future Sound of Hardcore, Urban Culture, early Alex Reece) at least a year before Bukem came onto the scene. ...