REPHLEX GRIME
Sat. April 24, 2004Categories: Abstract Dynamics
Well, it’s not Grime in the sense that Luka – or maybe even Alex P******s – understands it, but Rephlex’s new Grime compilation is really rather excellent.
There’s not a great deal of common ground between this sound (as popularized on the post-Roll Deep Rinse and at Forward) and the Wiley/ Dizzee end of Grime/ Eski. It’s partly a question of geography – the ‘Grime’ on display here is a South, rather than an East, London t’ing’; partly about the role of the MC – whereas eski is MC-orientated (vocals are a virtual presence even on its instrumental tracks), the MC is nowhere to be heard here. In contrast with Dizzee or Wiley’s graffiti-dense riot of slanguage, Grime is neutron bomb-depopulated, scoured clean of verbal hurly burly, more Canary Wharf than Billingsgate fish market.
OK, hands up. K-punk has previously sneered at what it called ‘Croydon Techno’. Yet the three artists who contribute to this album – MarkOne, Plasticman and Slaughter Mob – succeed in making Croydon Techno a highly appetising proposition. The LP’s cover – plain grey, emblazoned with the single word ‘Grime’ – threatens to bear out my previous worries about this sound being ‘concrete-grey, asphalt-dull, subway anonymous.’ In fact, Grime has the silver impersonality and sleekness of stainless steel.
The most obvious precursor is not techno, but techstep. It’s as if the producers have rewound back past garage to the point at which jungle’s last crucial phase shift fatally calcified. Techstep always flirted with stasis: it had devolved all of jungle’s pulp effervescence into a viscous gloop of bass, attenuated beats and austere SF menace, which at its best had a delicious poise, a fascinatingly compulsive tension, but at its worst produced pure ennui. Grime has returned to the swamp of inertia into which techstep finally declined, dredging up the No-U-turn cyborg and relubricating its titanic joints.
It’s a massive improvement on dubstep, which, although it deployed similar components – sparse breakbeats, SFX, oozing acid bass, sampled vocal refrains – achieved the curious feat of sounding both empty and lacking in space. Whereas dubstep tended to loiter without much palpable intent, Grime has an implacable Terminator-focus, a stalker’s unwavering sense of purpose.
MarkOne sets the tone with the ominous, insinuating ‘Stargate 92’, which could almost be Tango and Ratty on serotonin-uptake-inhibitors instead of E. Plasticman’s ‘Pump up the Jam’ resuscitates the corpse of Technotronic’s barely-remembered hip-house hit of the same name, resituating the cheery hook into a desolated anhedonic plateau, like the remains of a garish poster left on the walls of a post-apocalyptic city; his ‘Camel Aide’, meanwhile, sheathes a cyborg endoskeleton in a synthetic skin weaved in the 4th World, conjuring a mournful mirage reminiscent of Jon Hassell. Slaughter Mob augment the bleep, break and bass formula with dancehall chat and hokey sound FX (creaking doors, owl hoots).
The album is the soundtrack for a British film that will never be made but ought to be, a Uk-punk version of Blade Runner or Total Recall, a world of vizored menace, adrenal urgency and android passion.
it is worth pointing out that this isn’t really a croydon thing. . .
mark one is from manchester
slaughter mob are from north london
plasticman is from forest hill (ok thats basically croydon)
and when they played the launch party at the end on friday nite, they all played with mcs
there is two very very good virus syndicate (mark one and crew) mc tracks which you can download from the website. . .
check out http://www.virussyndicate.co.uk
got to ‘virus riddims’
click on the two coloured buttons in the bottom left hand side of the screen
tracks are called ‘ready for it’ and ‘contagious rhymin’
interestin to hear manchester mc’s merkin london mc’s on ‘contag rhymin’
Thanks for the info, Steve….
‘Croydon’ perhaps the spiritual heartland of this music (in the way that not all Detroit Techno is literally produced in Detroit)
Still think the point about mcs holds though; even if they play with them, they’re not integral to the music in the way that they are to eski…
maybe the ‘croydon’ word is important in denoting ‘not london’ (am reminded of the role of eg. coventry with jungle etc.). . .maybe the affect of an urbanism of minor cities or suburbia, as opposed to the inner city.
on the other hand this sound is still very east london. . .it is dj slimzee who has really pushed this post ‘Pulse X’ 8bar techie grime from very early (watch for the new Bingo compilation mixed by Slim in the next month or so. . .very cold)
clearly the function of the mc in this is back to mc as host, as opposed to artist. . .in other words, tends not to appear on vinyl. . .
but is it dance music?
i think – no mc’s means the music has to get more exciting – thats all really.
the people doing it consider themselves grime rather than dubstep or anything like that.
thats also what makes it exciting – anything can happen from now on in ..
infact markone might very well be remixing wiley soon ..
the mc’s a the night on friday were hot too.
the bug was hot also
But Mark — is it good?
Croydon — leaving aside the fact that I live in tghe ultimate nexus of alternate realities, which is Sheffield — Croydon is just a HUGE icon in my mind. Has been since 97 at least. It’s a VERY strange place. Ballardian doesn’t say the half of it.
“the people doing it consider themselves grime rather than dubstep or anything like that. ”
actually that is plainly not true. . .slt mob have never considered themselves to be making grime and have always considered themselves purveyors of dubstep
mark one’s output has been roughly split between grime(hardgraft), dubstep(tribesman) and more breaky stuff(raindance)
Even plasticman considers himself to make grime and dubstep
rephlex’s press releases seem to use grime/sublow and dubstep interchangably. . .probably a good idea
ok, then they consider themselves to be part of the grime massive – apart from slt who are the only pick of the 3 who consider themselves to be from dubstep – but grime is the name they chose to call the album overall.
suprisingly talking to markone he mentioned he didn’t like dubstep!
marcus
Is it dance music?
Yes unquestionably.
Is it good?
Yeh, it’s fucken great!
marcus
grime is undoubtedly a better name for a genre of music isn’t it
its better than dubstep or sublow i think
which make me thing of horses and undersea pipes. 🙂
markone said he didn’t like dubstep music rather than just the genre tho – which i found quite baffling but at the end of the day the musics the important thing.
i haven’t heard the thing so i’ve got nothing to say about it. i was listening to NASTys show tonight though and it does make me angry and sad and confused that they haven’t attracted serious interest. thats a pretty serious inditement of the music industry in this country. when you’ve got kano, ghetto, hyper and sharky in one room doing their thing for free without a thousand record companies tearing each other throats out to get their signitures. i more or less started a blog to say how amazing nasty crew are.
i think you should hang on cos i heard off someone who is repromoting girls luv boys and i also heard they are attracting some bigger interest .
you are right they are well good – their producer is well good too .
i think you’ll hear a lot of interest around one member of NASTY quite soon.
i’ve been listening to Heat FM tonight. so much anger. so much mad, insane dubs. dubs that use “radio crackles”, dubs with killer ukg-funk melodies (skepta?), other with stop-start riddims.
just when you think you’ve caught up with the edge of the underground… it’s gone again.
I’m uncertain about K-Punk’s dubstep=bad/rephlex-grime=good equation. As far as I can tell most of the “Croydon sound” stuff from the last couple of years has been quite a few notches below the original dubstep equation set out on those c. 2000 tracks by El-B, Horsepower etc.
If this comp. signals a resurgence in quality then perhaps the better way to look at it would be that the last two years or so have been a difficult period for the producers involved.
I’ll have to hear the comp to know, obv.
(meanwhile the new Horsepower album sounds horrifically drab; the only one that really caught my attention sounded like a knock-off Wookie’s “Far East”)
I’m uncertain about K-Punk’s dubstep=bad/rephlex-grime=good equation. As far as I can tell most of the “Croydon sound” stuff from the last couple of years has been quite a few notches below the original dubstep equation set out on those c. 2000 tracks by El-B, Horsepower etc. Or maybe that was when it was called “nu dark swing” and hence was good?
If this comp. signals a resurgence in quality then perhaps the better way to look at it would be that the last two years or so have been a difficult transitional period for the sound as a whole; a necessary period of awkwardness before a new fully-formed incarnation emerged.
I’ll have to hear the comp to know, obv.
(meanwhile upon cursory listen the new Horsepower album sounds horrifically drab; the only one that really caught my attention sounded like a knock-off Wookie’s “Far East”. Even the *artwork* spells doom)
Dont sleep on Benga either…
2d and demoey…yep just like sleng teng, big it up etc
its only over when those jazz chords start to appear…
i dont think people have forgotten nasty at all
but you know how majors work. . .they tend to pick them off one at a time
can’t wait for a kano album
i don’t think it’s really the majors who are interested in the mc’s its the larger independents like xl – i think the majors are hesitant cos they didn’t get their investment back in the last rush for garage – ie more fire etc ..
and anyway it’s not as if rephlex are a fkin major – they’re 3 blokes in a front room
“As far as I can tell most of the “Croydon sound” stuff from the last couple of years has been quite a few notches below the original dubstep equation set out on those c. 2000 ”
admittedly El-B is/was a dubstep genius, but i’d argue that there are many new dubstep riddims that have pushed the envelope…
Horsepower v Goldspot “Sholay”
Horsepower “Highland Spring/Classic Delux pt 2”
Kode 9 “Subkontinent/Subkon/Sign of the Dub/Spit”
Digital Mystiks “Give Jah the Glory/Pathwayz/Chainbah”
Loefah “Jungle/Jazz”
Phuturistix “Thelonius Punk”
DJ Distance “Nomad”
Search and Destroy “Candyfloss”
Plasticman “Shallow Grave (original/Skreamz remix)”
i want to see eps, mixtapes, compilations, coming out on a more mainstream level, dunno about albums, they’re a bit shit really. i don’t want to hear a dee album but i still love him. i want to hear a ruff squad instrumental ep and a nasty mixtpae. thats sort of thing.
i know what maritn clarkes saying, nasty is old in a way and theres pure upandcomings on heat and temptaion/crewscontrol etc, but it would be sad if they missed their moment cos they still got a lot to offer. specially shark, stomrin, ghetto and kano.
there was a NASTY mixCD, last year.
there should be more mixtapes this summer though, everyone’s on them now since Target set the standard.
the croydon nexus makes some great “phuture” dancehall/soca type riddims too…noone really seems to rate that..staggerring 2/2/3 patterns at 140 bpm
everyone on the blog who has seen the rephlex tour in the US raves bout plastiq/mk one but then seems to second guess themselves “should I be liking this?”
and while I’m pissing in pockets: kode 9 massive respect!
yeah people are second guessing themselves cos they’re scared of being black sheeps in the hipster herd.
kode9 and digital mystics are some next level shit – taught dread riddims and little “pulling the ground from under the feet” tricks that hassan al sabbah would be proud of .
terrah danjahs on that too future dancehall scoca stuff as well .
the stuff is more predator (alien with signifying dreads) than terminator i think 🙂
Really feeling Terror Danjah at the moment – he’s coming with some fresh style, I just get the feeling he’s rinsing himself out using the same samples.
The problem with Jammer is, we’re likely to never hear anything good from him again; since he split from Nasty crew, he’s fallen out with Lewi White, his engineer. Not many of you will be aware that Jammmer never actually made any of those tracks – the proof is in the pudding… His only release since splitting from NASTY was Weedman, with which he collaborated with Wiley on, and, incidentally sounds like a Wiley rip – due to it being engineered at Wiley’s studio rather than Lewi White’s.
NASTY are fantastic, though they lack Album potential due to lack of lyrical prowess. I think Kano can cut it, but the rest ?? Not for me. The next big MC to watch on the East scene is Shizzle…. Very Big.
“yeah people are second guessing themselves cos they’re scared of being black sheeps in the hipster herd.”
One of the problems with the blogsphere, is that while it is a distributed network on one side, on the other it is often no more than an extension of the body [of thought] of simon reynolds. many bloggers appear cautious to commit to something that the master may suddenly turn around and demolish.
artifact – jammers got a new one coming out in the next few weeks. saw an ad forit on the independance site.
reynolds suprised himself at the rephlex vs kompact thing in nyc i think whern he enjoyed markone and plasticman.
Unfortunately MMS – that too is a track which was engineered by Lewi White, just taken a while to come out !
I think it’s great that Mark One and Plasticman are getting some recognition.
Plasticman has been prolific ever since releasing Venom on Slimzee’s label, “Slimzos”. His original of Hard Graft was the best track i’d heard for ages.
Artifact’s well informed. Lewi and Jammer were mates when i interviewed them both at the end of Feb…
PS i find it so funny people talking about “hipsters” and garage offshoots in the same breath. garage was hated for so long…
Maybe people would be less hard on dubstep if everything wasn’t pushed with the same level of enthusiasm. With grime (just as hit and miss, but a larger scene in terms of producers) you only tend to hear about the good tracks, but, when you read breathless rave after breathless rave about some dubstep track and then check it out only to discover that it’s more dirgey breakbeat tedium, it becomes a lot harder to sustain the energy necessary to keep searching for the good stuff.
While lovingly compiled and packaged (a ‘No Wave New York’ for the FWD scene) the Rephlex Grime comp suffers from a lack of MC-ing.
There are no hard and fast distinctions between the FWD and the other Grime lot (as rep by Nasty/Roll Deep etc), and some of the best tracks of the MC scene have come about through (what I’d see as a) collaboration between the two scenes: “Popadomz” and “War Wid”. But, and here a criticism of the comp, those scenes ARE distinct and to demolish the difference as the rhetoric of the sleevenotes attempts is problematic. Not least because the MC scene is a cultural ghetto…
As riddims the Rephlex Grime tracks are super, and I for one find their exquisite production values a salve for some of the ear-ringing playstation productions. However the “emptying-out” of Garage means that there isn’t enough energy for the instrumentals to stand on their own.
i think the productions on the lp are stronger than the usual riddims because they have to be due to the choice t have no mc’s, they’re fuller and more detailed – it’s weird that you are saying they explicitly need mcing when previous genres of electronic rhythmic music haven’t. The thing i like about the genre at the moment is it looks like anything can happen at the moment and there are so many different styles being done.
no new wave- hehe – we had the new dance sound of detroit compilation on 10 records in mind as it goes.
artifact -if that’s true about jammer i hope he enrolls on a sound engineering course soon.
to Marcus
>it’s weird that you are saying they explicitly need mcing when previous genres of electronic rhythmic music haven’t
techno made a virtue of wordlessness. it seemed as though it’s glaciality embodied a refusal of speech. but what with all the cheese expunged from the FWD sound (not even any rasta samples! though the technotronic lift is cool!), and the standard grime instrumental being crushingly sparse, it feels like the music NEEDS MCs. Its as if, over the past few years they’ve invaded garage because there is space for them on the sonic canvas.
–
Haters, and those criticising the “Reynolds” influence on the blogs ought to be aware that I have just as much an allegiance to the excellent gentleman mms (and by extention Rephlex). Also the FWD possee is very well represented online. Just look at the names on this thread (Steve Hyperdub, Martin Clark, Marcus). Politix innit.
oh dear dear… well, it’s funny that luka nailed it when he said some way, somehow simon has a knack at being right. i’ve argued with him a few times about things (in a friendly, talking about stuff, not an ilm snipefest kinda way) so it’s got sod all to do with timidness or sycophancy, if many other people echo his views it’s because they agree with them… it’s not a great big conspiracy or anything. for example i see myself as being very much between two stools w/ grime/fwd business, plus it’s possible to like both, pick the best of each. i’m pretty sure simon’s written abt mark one and i know her certainly liked slimzee’s mix for deuce mag a while ago, so i don’t think he was that surprised, really.
they’ve invaded grime cos they’ve got something important and breathtaking to say, very directly.
But there is still space for refusal – let the shadows and the light set in and the imagination uncoil – i think .
for the record, regardless of how good or not the rephlex compilation is, they should be had under ther trades decriptions act for the title. i shudder to think of people buying this (especially in foreign, non-london markets wheregrime is tough to get or even know much about) and considering it to be the definitive grime comp. at worst it’s not very well considered, at worst it’s a calculatedly misleading move, like releasing cylob records under the name robbie williams, or the bug as sean paul so they’ll sell.
(then again anyone buying robbie records deserves a bit of cylob)
stelfox- it’s the name the artists eventually agreed on – there is also a us hip hop comp out there called “grimey” too.
that’s not the definitive hip hop comp is it ?
this is the problem with names, genres etc – it’s like trying to look like part of the scenery when a search light is shining on you.
also i can see the problem with people trying to emulate reynolds style and getting frustrated when they can’t do it well – when they don’t realise their strengths lie elsewhere –
it’s a similar problem with music, most artists are their own worst enemies in that they can’t tell when they are wasting energy, the fact that blogs are usually only edited by the writer means sometimes this becomes clear.
thats not to diss reynolds tho, or anyone else that does this, there are alot of top writers out there.
>But there is still space for refusal – let the shadows and the light set in and the imagination uncoil – i think.
It’s a good project mate. I think you’ve done a lovely job with it.
>trying to emulate reynolds style
I’m sure no one does this! Possibly they bite his influences. Me, I’m always up front about it when it’s applicable (guffaw, nearly always), it’s funnier to be like that. Poor Jess gets his knickers in a right twist at times! However, hand on heart, on this particular issue I’d be difficult to budge…..
i obviously am just a butterflylike hipster who slavishly follows every reynoldsian dictat, everyone here whos met me will confirm that
but it doesn’t always work in just one direction.
luke_ you’re one of the many great exceptions.
matt_ all this is about really is we like the music alot and we want other people to like it as well so it can get bigger and carry on.
regarding the grime/blogger nexus. . .
a picture of the top of luke’s head is featured somewhere on the gallery of the rinse fm website
and there is a full frontal of prof. stelfox who the rinse admin carelessly mistakes for mick hucknall {is that spelt rite?}
Who are we referring to exactly with this talk of Reynoldsite hipsterati? I’m wary of such accusations without examples offered.
this is what i said:
“also i can see the problem with people trying to emulate reynolds style and getting frustrated when they can’t do it well – when they don’t realise their strengths lie elsewhere ”
no hidden messages, or hunts for perpetrators.
I strongly disagree with Matt Woebot — I think the trax on the Rephlex comp are MORE than capable of standing on their own and don’t require MCing —- their appeal is their austerity —- as I said, I think techstep is the closest parallel —
and there ARE rasta samples, on the Slaughter Mob tunes —-
I think it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Luka would like some of the trax on the Rephlex LP; they’re not dissimilar to some of the tunes on the Ruff Squad tape he gave me.
I find it funny that us social outcasts/ losers/ failures are also – mysteriously – ‘hipsters’. 🙂
As for ppl blindly following SR, doesn’t this post – pro something Simon isn’t on record as liking – prove the contrary?
I find it funny that us social outcasts/ losers/ failures are also – mysteriously – ‘hipsters’. 🙂
firstly don’t be so hard on yourself.
social outcasts is enough 🙂
and secondly – personally when i was talking about hipsters i was referring to the people on new york who went to play for the rephlex vs(!?) kompakt gig – who i guess saw the much higher profile dizzie rascal just a few weeks before.
it must have been tricky to match up plasticman and markone with both dizzie and rephlex ..
lastly the rasta samples and the singing are the slaughter mob mcs i think..
49
The question is….how the hell did Mark manage to get a copy of the Rephlex compilation when even the nice folk at Spinadisc on Berwick St don’t know when it’s coming out? Or was the wrong place to go? It’s hard enough being useless without going to the wrong shops as well.
By the way, there’s a really amateurish discussion on infinite thought about girls, weblogs and grime if anyone would care to participate….based on something that random stranger Simon Reynolds said…
The question is: where did Mark get the Rephlex comp from? Even the nice folk at Spinadisc on Berwick St didn’t know when it was coming out. Or was that not the place to get it? It’s hard enough being useless without going to the wrong shops as well….
btw, there’s an amateurish discussion about weblogs, girls and grime over at infinite thought, which is based on something that the-not-very-famous-at-all Simon Reynolds said….
Oh fucking hell…yer, the discussion will now be ‘why girls shouldn’t fuck about with computers cos they’ll only go and send weird versions of the same message three hundred times, ruin the continuity of threads and generally get in the way’. Infinite apologies.
Tee hee.
>where did Mark get the Rephlex comp from?
he’s on the gravy train 😉
oh my god the embarrassment! hahaha, thanks for that steve it’s sort of half made my day… in a cheeky fukkaz sort of way… don’t they know who i am!?
no. who are you?
On what was said earlier about the Grime album not representing the true essence of it’s sound – The MC’s…..
I just heard that Plasticman is working with D Double E, Wiley and Riko on his solo album ????
Is this true ?? Sounds phat, can anyone fill us in on any truth within this rumour ??
well i shall try and find out for you.
that sound is a cross over sound,, it’s not pure dubstep, markone has the virus syndicate and is possibly remixing wiley too – so y’knw.
i just think it’s best to fire it all now, all of it.
Yeh I heard a rumour that Wiley wants to put Plasticman’s Hard Graft onto the Roll Deep album – a mate of mine who knows him told me this a while back ?
Apparently it will be a full vocal mix of the original ?
Tell me more about Mark One + Wiley – that’s a new one on me !!
I just heard that Plasticman is working with D Double E, Wiley and Riko on his solo album ????
i asked him about this today and he said there is a strong possibility of it happening which is good!
Plasticman seems to be keeping his foot firmly in the real grime scene quite well – I heard DJ Maximum play Industrial Graft on his De Ja Vu show the other night – He’s the resident DJ at Eskimo Dance
So true about the Horsepower album. I was WELL disapointed. It’s just a little bit bland but this is only my opinion.
relly n truely its about crazy tich demon n kano but da best producers r 411 followed by skepta n wiley buty i think manz shud take notice of some of the talent in ipswich such as manz like shadowblock n hecticsquad
Their is absolutely NO WAY that I’m backing up on this stuff as someone up top suggested. I still think I may have drooled on Marcus’ hand for bringing Mark and Plastic with the Rephlex gang to San Francisco. I would have ’em back tomorrow. Tough music. Next time=SOON.
“still think I may have drooled on Marcus’ hand for bringing Mark and Plastic with the Rephlex gang to San Francisco.”
not unless some bizarre quantum dynamics was going on mate as I was at home, probably watching the telly 🙂
marcus (interchangable rephlex composite)
Hmmm…so cool this thing.
not unless some bizarre quantum dynamics was going on mate as I was at home, probably watching the telly 🙂
marcus (interchangable rephlex composite)
I was also told Chris is the son of Egyptian heirarchy and Mark is a huge fan of Psychic TV and Kajagoogoo.
Sorry Marcus:)
I know who I meant to say.