This tune (or at least, the first verse of this tune) is fucked. The intro sounds like one of those nightmares you have about being raped by a clown in a playpen with a mouth full of play-doh (I'm talking to you, Corpsey) and then Pharoah appears out of a storm-cloud like my Dad wearing all my clothes telling me to get my filthy hands off his wife, with the same booming voice and the same threats of my flesh being burned by the poetical germ grenade.
It really is uncanny. It drifts off a bit after that, like when the Clown starts taking me missionary style on a tranquil golf course with a complete lack of vigour and passion which belies his loud and lusty declarations of wanting to colour his nose in my traumatised anus. Zzzzzzzzzz...
coming soon: a passionate argument to suggest that ''Charlie Boorman: By Any Means Necessary'' is a far more entertaining program than ''The Wire'' ever was, and probably about ten times as important (to Charlie Boorman's porcine spawn).
Happy new year to all of you (that's right, I'm talking to all five of the personalities currently occupying my skull)! My number one new resolution (after cutting down on burning, losing some bone and being nicer to dinner plates) is to make this blog slightly better than utterly awful, but you know how New Years resolutions are!
So, in that spirit, here's a link to a mix that is already linked on a popular website which all five of you already read with a hangdog regularity. It's a mix by Marcel Dettmann, resident DJ of Berlin uber-luber-twofer(atenner)-klub Berghain, and is fucking splendid.
Right click and save HERE to begin your accquisition. Go HERE to read the pre-amble, including an interview with Detmann in which he talks extensively about his interest in planing wood surfaces in order to ''annhilate their grievous imperfections'', and of how his cuff-links talk to him sometimes at night.
Ø - Unien Holvit - Sähkö Recordings Terre Thaemlitz - A Crippled Left Wing Soars With The Right (Steal This Record Remix By DJ Sprinkles) - Mule Electronic Levon Vincent - Invisible Bitchslap - Deconstruct Music Cheeba Starks presents The Toupe Committee - GoGo Bop (A Trip To The Bodega) - Groove On Marvin Dash - B2 - Force Inc. Music Rolando - Where Were You - Delsin The Black Dog - Train By Autobahn (Robert Hood's DJ Remix) - Soma Shackleton - You Bring Me Down (Peverelist Remix) - Skull Disco Shake - Indagoo - Morphine Casino Classix - Ringer - Ifach Common Factor - In To - Planet E Ja & Dg - The Clock (Ben Klock Remix) - Rekids Scuba - From Within (Marcel DettmannRemix) - Hotflush Shed - Another Wedged Chicken - Ostgut Ton Norman Nodge - Man Made - MDR Fix - Dope Computer (Ken Ishii Remix) - Nightvision Unknown - N/A (Function Edit) Louis Guilliaume - Time Relapse - SD Records DJ Assault - Vandalism - Self Released Lab Rat XL - Lab Rat 2 - Clone Marcel Dettmann - Plain - Beatstreet Shackleton - Shortwave - Skull Disco Female - HE. 2 - Downwards G. Family Feat. Nombongo - People With Bullets - Earthrumental Music EQD - Equalized 002 B1 - Equalized
This mix reminds me a lot of Scuba's xlr8r podcast* - the same intermittent sense of techno and dubstep (and other sounds) crumbling in the mix into a nebulous rhythms and textures which sound like both genres at the same time as sounding like neither entirely. Of course, in both mixes, it isn't this disorientating and surprising strain of shapelessness alone which makes them worth listening to. But the quality of (many of) the tunes in these mixes is difficult to separate from this boundary breaking tendency.
Certainly, Dettmann's podcast has caught my slightly technophobic ear because of his constant (though I suppose as smooth and subtle as you'd expect from a techno jock) shifting between rhythms and moods. This measured eclecticism chimes in somewhat with my recent infatuation with DJs who are mixing funky/garage/techno/house/dubstep together, though - this being techno - doesn't seem half as wild or unrestrained, and still relies in the listener's immersion in and acclimatisation to a persistent pulse.
Dubstep (on its more techno-referencing side) has been fusing variation of rhythm with deep immersion for the past few years, and was certainly operating in a similar way when Youngsta and Hatcha were mixing early Mystikz, Skream, Benga, D1 with grime and garage three or four years ago. Perhaps this fusion, rather than a simple foregrounding of sub-bass, is what dubstep has to offer techno producers in the way of inspiration?
I've been listening to Shed'sShedding the Past, an album which has popped up on many 2008 best-of lists, and the rhythmic diversity of Dettmann's podcast (which includes a Shed tune) - not to mention a general mood of extreme moodiness - is in evidence all over it. Take this tune:
Those snares, to me, sound like they're straight out of a jungle tune, and the rhythm is generally quite steppy. I know fuck all about techno (in case you haven't guessed), so this album (along with Dettmann's mix) has been quite eye-opening to me - I wasn't aware that techno could sound like this (supposing this track IS techno?), assuming that there must always be at least the hint of a 4x4 kick to tie things down.
Anyhoo, I think that this hybrid of techno/dubstep (dubstep itself being a hybrid of garage/jungle/techno) could be the place to look for really immersive, hypnotic AND exciting and unpredictable clubbing experiences in 2009, while on the more party-friendly, raw and balls-out exciting side of things it will (hopefully) be all about those blessed DJs who decide to take the best of what past-and-present 136 (and around that) music has to offer and hurl them together in the mix.
*fittingly, given Dettmann's recent remixing of Scuba's ''From Within''.