Saturday, May 06, 2006

Flickr desi dive and beyond...


desi wedding Originally uploaded by ryanoceros.


Flickr: it's a such beautiful thing.

When the blogs and forums ain't doing it for me, I Fickr-dive; just add a tag like 'desi', 'Iraq' or 'hackney' into the search box on the homepage and just fall deep into into new worlds and people's lives. I find places I will probably never visit and see people I will probably never meet, yet experience them both in such vivid technicolour and in such a rich way - unlike the experiences of say reading a thousand empty one-line responses on forums or scanning the fractured image shards displayed search engine results.

The image above has no real connection to this post, beyond the fact that I instantly felt strongly about it while searching for the tag 'desi.' Coming home on the tube last night the carriage went overground just as I clicked on a 1Xtra radio rip of Bikram Singh ft Gunjan "Kawan (Jay Dhabi Reggaeton Remix)". Her vocals exploded into my ears as the sun poured over greater London and I felt a rush, that buzz I hadn't felt in a long time - perhaps since Mala's FWD>> set. Its felt like recently I've spent a long time listening to empty angry grime, second rate token cod-reggae dubstep and soulless dark, halfstep wannabe-Youngsta material - and it's not moving me.

On the point of digidub it's perhaps interesting to revisit Jamie Vex'd prophetic comments last year at grimemusic.com.

"...with dubstep, if it isnt halfstep, isnt minimal, and doesnt have blatant dub referenes, then some say its not true dubstep. How restrictive is that? Real dub is very organic, digital sequencers aren't. It takes alot of understanding and studio technique to go down the dub route. Without that knowledge, you can end up making Digidub. Im not in that."

Jamie OTM. It's not like I don't like real Jamaican dub, but as he says unless you understand how its done right it sounds cheesy. Drum & bass last year was full of hundreds of tracks that threw reggae samples over any beat and they sounded so token. And even if you were to get the sound right, how can cloning something made 30 years ago be better or more original than the original itself? Sure it gets a response on the dancefloor but mostly it's a creative cul-de-sac, unless you can add a fresh, original twist in the way the Mystikz can. To me applying the sonic ideas of 1970s dub to a 2006 dubstep context is a far more promising direction than sampling Lee Perry's back cat.

And as for dark empty halfstep, I guess I feel impulsively right now that I want more vocals in my life - I'm planning a new Keysound Radio: vocals edition. Part of me fears the dubstep pendulum has swung too far towards dark halfstep and is in danger of homogenising the scene. Dubstep does not equal bad clones of Loefah or copies of Youngsta's selection - don't get it twisted. Loe seriously knows what he's doing when it comes to minimalism; his clones don't. And furthermore what's the point of cloning anyway? Do you think Loe built 'Horror Show' by copying other producers? Find your own way.

But returning to desi, or more specifically desiton - the mutation of UK Asian desi with Latin American reggaeton - I posted a link on Dissensus about the Punjabi Hit Squad's pioneering of this sound. Since then I recorded the two stand out tunes last week. They are:

Bikram Singh ft Gunjan "Kawan (Jay Dhabi Reggaeton Remix)"

Alyssia ft Dee (PHS) "Pyar Hogiya (Desiton Remix)"

You can download them both on the same MP3 from those links, just as long as someone out there can tell me where the hell I can buy them from now AsianSounds.com has gone down.

FLICKR-DIVE UPDATE: Seems like the Flickr-dive effect isn't acutally limited to Flickr shots. Check this blog for jaw-drop shots of god knows where, well beyond my world. Afganistan?

17 comments:

grievous angel said...

I'm definitely with you with 99% of your critique. That's one reason why I wanted to do a dubstep version of Ain't No Sunshine -- vocal tune, soul not reggae, not trying to be angry but to be sweet...

But I think digidub is becoming a term of abuse when it should be strictly adjectival. I've grown up with digidub and while it's easy to make average digidub (as with any music), there's some great tunes in there. Check out Pete Murdertone's mix on Jahtari. It's quite an important link in the chain.

Blackdown said...

it's not the breaks that are doing it for me in these tunes, its the vocal inflections and melodies.

Japan - amusingly titled since it's sampled from a Chinese film - has been vocalled i think, by Jammer and a female vocalist. Ask Plastiq for more info.

Blackdown said...

Bitter agenda against London? Pointless use of full stops to start sentences? Hello DubMug!

I am not Kek-w said...

"Desiton"...genius.

dan hancox said...

"Part of me fears the dubstep pendulum has swung too far towards dark halfstep and is in danger of homogenising the scene."

absolutely. which is why the warrior queen vocal on skream's 'me love it' felt soooo right at dmz on saturday. dubstep party music! kinda. more vocals anyway pls... nothing more dull than sparse minimalism if it's not done properly.

Alex Bok Bok said...

the dmz camp are possibly the only ones i trust in dubstep to constanbtly be making fresh new tunes that are genuinely amazing new music. otherwise, theres a good tune here, a good tune there... but you're right MArtin i think the blossoming of the scene since post-Breezeblock has also lead to its expansion and stagnation. I think it's a mentality thing as wel. Too many hippies, too many DNB heads, too many IDM heads. I'm not even going to deny it, hell yeah i'd love to be selfish and keep things exactly the way they were before... but its not really possible as things change. The important thing i think is to remain qiuite strict with what is and isnt part of this scene. As much as this hyper-democratic 'open-source' sort of attitude is nice, i think its the people at the heart of the scene who wil continue doing the right things and moving the whole thing in the right way while the international fanbase stand and watch. Lets not forget who runs tings

Blackdown said...

"...too many DNB heads, too many IDM heads. ...The important thing i think is to remain qiuite strict with what is and isnt part of this scene."

yeah but whenever anyone expresses these kind of sentiments publically all the toys fly out of the pram. it's laughable what people tag as dubstep these days...

dubway said...

"digidub" and "empty halfstep" -> thats exactly what i was talking about last few months. i agree

Blackdown said...

Regarding toys and prams, i have seen such comments several times... if they're qualified i wont throw any toys, if theyre presented as self-evident truths without proper explanation then im going to take issue with them. On Dissensus that time I asked you for a proper discussion on your issue with electronica and you declined...

If anything is to be done about any of the things you see to be a problem, you need to have thought through what you have to say, and lead a developed, intelligent discussion on the issues at hand, not just throw out an angry comment and let them burn at someone


Well steady-the-fuck-on Elegato I dont think that was entirely justified. i think i have a right to chose which of my battles to fight in public and which not to, whether you think you have a god given right to have each and every one of your questions answered on Dissensus.

And given I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing in depth about the various garage mutations I dont think you can accuse me of not forming a "developed, intelligent discussion."

Blackdown said...

this is not a public forum dubmugga, please dont post here if you're going to be rude - you're not welcome.

Alex Bok Bok said...

whats wrong with london's key players deciding what direction THEIR OWN CREATION takes.
all the international heads need to seckle

Alex Bok Bok said...

another thing, people need to stp making waste comparisons to drum and bass like they got hiccups ygm. that was then, this is n ow, get over it, 'history' isnt going to 'repeat itself'

Blackdown said...

Dear LethalFizzle,

I never really wanted to 'invent' a name for myself, as it seems a little contrived, but for my productions in the end, it seemed important.

Everyone in garage is obsessed with their 'ends,' a firm tribal commitment to the tribe they belong to. When chosing a production name, I therefore decided to chose this name as it suggested a group/time/sound/place i once, a long time ago, was attached to while coincidentally using the words 'black' and 'down' - which seemed to reference neatly some of the music i liked ie underground music and inner city music of black origin.

So, why did you chose to parody Lethal Bizzle's name?

Blackdown said...

i think she's married though bro ;)

The Incredible Kid said...

Yeah, what the hell did happen to asian sounds? I always assumed their were 100 websites just like them. I've always been a big supporter of punjab2000.co.uk but asian sounds had a much wider scope and carried a lot of things I could never find on punjab2000. I'm still looking for a proper replacement.

The Incredible Kid

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