Bass Culture and a Very Tangled Englishness Joe Muggs
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BASS CULTURE AND A VERY TANGLED ENGLISHNESS JOE MUGGS 18 Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved he book BASS MIDS TOPS, regards what he does not Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved Twhich I am producing with the as fitting into any genre but photographer Brian David Stevens, as “mongrel music”. is a story of soundsystem culture The chaotic multicultural and the way it has throng of people that have infiltrated British clubs, radio and congregated around sound the pop charts over the past forty systems in recent years. It's also a story of Englishness decades makes for as – in the sense that Peter Ackroyd baffling, babbling a lingo paints it in Albion: The Origins of as any found anywhere. the English Imagination. I’m not just talking here about the lyricism of the “Englishness,” he says, “is the MCs and singers, though we could and nature of subcultural communication principle of appropriation.” Our should certainly on the written page. language and literature in this view include Roots Manuva’s is a tangled, meandering “line of “Taskmaster burst the bionic zit It's no secret that I have taken issue beauty” stretching from Beowulf to splitter”, Tricky’s “Monopoly in the past with Simon Reynolds' today. It’s an endlessly unfolding improperly kissed”, Wiley’s “There’s formulation of “the hardcore [or story that reflects its roots in an oral no set time I have my tea at” and Tinie sometimes 'ardkore'] continuum”, as tradition and also in the nation's Tempah’s “I’ve got so many clothes I delineated in a number of his blogs constantly keep some at my aunt’s house” – not to - for example: https://dj.dancecult. refreshed hybrid, palimpsestic mention a whole armoury of “squid- net/index.php/dancecult/article/ nature. It's characterised by dlywiddlywoioioi”s, “zoop zoop”s and view/289/268 - in the wake of tricksiness, absurdity, love of “bluku bluku”s – in any history of our his 1998 book Energy Flash. Not wordplay and shaggy dog stories; it language’s baroque adaptations. the theory itself – it remains a tries to evade seriousness at Rather, I mean the conversations, self-evidently valid and valuable every turn, yet is inexorably drawn rants and gibberings that form the glue tracing of forms and functions to the mystical. of any hypersocial scene, in studios, of specific sounds in the orbit of It's the Englishness of Chaucer, raves, pubs, record shops, round multicultural London-centric pirate Sterne, Carroll, Tolkien, but also of kitchen tables, in the backs of radio culture of the 90s and 00s – costermongers, spivs, pub taxis... this is the fabric of the culture but the way it has been treated by anecdotalists and bullshit artists just as much as anything committed to others as a new canon, a definitive through the centuries. vinyl or paper, perhaps more so. That delineation of boundaries, rather time someone used than the particular and personal While Ackroyd was talking first “Lembit” as an insult on dubstepforum syntagmatic slicing through history about literary writers, this has also is as important a memory to me in that it is. Ironically, at times it became been my experience of tracing the emergence of that particular devalued by this very canonisation: modern underground culture, scene as any given shift in bass its more dogmatic adherents made including British soundsystem modulation. And it’s that culture that it the continuum (or “nuum”) rather culture. Skream (aka Oliver Jones, I've always wanted to be part of, to than one among several cultural-aes- a globally famous DJ/musician, understand, to maybe explain... which thetic continuua (say of funk/b-boy, who was integral to the birth of the is easier said than done. Conversations or psychedelic/industrial, or soul/ dubstep genre in Croydon from that roll from party to party to jazz values) that ran through the same the age of 13) once told me that he after-party, and on through weeks and times and places. This could make months and scenes and it intensely frustrating when trying generations, all the to discuss the place of sounds and while being interrupted people who were part of the same by brutally loud bass, history yet were too pop, too jazz, aren't the easiest to too internationalist, too ostentatiously transcribe. I spent refined, not “dark” enough, not most of my Creative “tower block” enough to be certified & Life Writing M.A. as “nuum”, yet were unquestionably in 2006-7 deliberating part of the story. In fact, though, the over whether and how continuum came to life precisely when it could be possible to its edges were loosened, when the capture the sprawling existence of other co-existent lines19 Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved of influence and difference Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved were acknowledged. Place it point was a more generalised alongside, for example, the “underground” – something chapters in Lloyd Bradley’s we defined at the time as: Sounds Like London or DJ “Not underground in the sense Semtex's Hip Hop Raised of obscurity, or extremity, or Me focusing on the same drugginess; it can entail any of time and same music but those things, but it can equally placing it specifically exist in mass movements, family in a wider black music weddings, at the top of the pop or specifically hip hop charts. It's occult social history, lineage and emphasising the underground in the almost entirely different qualities, and the this time, though, I was starting literal sense of something that multifarious, multivalent aliveness of to have the chance to publish people live and move and what's actually being described comes more and more lengthy verbatim exist within, in which, slightly alight on the page. Appreciation of Q&As, thanks to some indulgent hidden from view, our culture each continuum is only invigorated by editors (props to Tom Lea, Chal is transmitted: not national understanding of those which feed into Ravens, Lauren Martin, Ryan culture or racial culture or class it. Keeling) and my own indulgence culture (although, again, all It was my own discussions around this of commissioning myself at these certainly come into it), but very issue of continuum vs continuua Boiler Room and theartsdesk. yours and mine, the sort where around the end of the 2000s and start com. Particularly important was you can look around the people of the 2010s – in forums, conferences, a two hour, 10,000+ word ramble you’re with and go 'yep, these articles, reviews and blog comment round the history of Bristol's are my people'.” And something sections, not to mention studios, raves, electronica and dubstep history, but about the consistency of Brian's pubs, record shops etc etc – that in part also all manner of other minutiae, photos on that site, alongside the led me to the format for BASS MIDS digressions and jokes, with Nick voices of the interviewed, gave TOPS. I wanted to do something that “Ekoplekz” Edwards – himself a consistency to the Q&As that captured an unfolding thread through a historian and documenter of by simple facts of presentation history, but which acknowledged scenes, via the Gutterbreakz made them feel like part of its own arbitrariness. Something blog. It made me realise that the a greater whole. Then I saw that placed the participants in the conversation could be the thing: Brian's photos of Notting Hill culture front and centre, but without that the jokes, misunderstandings Soundsystems being set up in pretending that my editorialising was and ephemera were as important in the morning – just the speaker somehow neutral or non-existent. telling the story as the actual story stacks, without the crowds you're Something personal but not too milestones (albums, raves, cultural accustomed to seeing them proprietary. I love a good music oral I had also started working surrounded by, isolated as pure history, but the best ones, like Please periodically with Brian David architectural statements of sound Kill Me (by Legs McNeil and Gillian Stevens on publishing such lengthy and power – and finally the idea McCain on the emergence of punk interviews on my own website, begun to coalesce, which became in the US), Yes Yes Y'all (on the first the now defunct veryverymuch. BASS MIDS TOPS. So much of years of hip hop, by Jim Fricke), I com, along with his own portraits the underground music that was Swear I Was There (on the Sex Pistols' of the subjects. Our focus at this most important to Manchester Free Trade Hall show me, and had been and its creative aftermath by David through my life, Nolan - Independent Music Press, was predicated 2006), and Once in a Lifetime (by Jane on bass. So as we Bussman, on acid house in Britain - joined cultural dots Virgin Books, 1998) seem to focus on through decades, a specific historical moment, rather the simplicity and than the longer-duration evolution directness of the I'd become fixated on. The constant bassline became interspersion of fragmented quotes the heartbeat that works in that context, but it wasn't powered the project. the format I was looking for. During 20 Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved Brian David Stephens © All Rights Reserved rave sound, at The absorbent and flexible Warehouse in Leeds vernacular, one within which and FON Studios Saxon pith is still resisting in Sheffield. And domination by haughty Latinised this entanglement is structures a thousand years there way more so on, and where of course the for the interviewees. languages of every generation Cooly G's dad and of immigrants since continue to uncles ran reggae writhe and interact just beneath sound systems the surface of our everyday in Brixton, and conversation and culture.