Outsider Artists

I went out and straight up bought two CDs this week. That's unheard of. But they were worth it. I suggest you go do the same.

1. Wasteland - October.
Damn. It's awesome. I wish I could find a jpeg online of the Scud and I-Sound picture from the back to the CD, I-Sound looking seriously and grumpily into the middle distance and Scud with his big shades looking at the camera (also, possibly, grumpily). It's very incongruous to the music.

I virtually threw away my copy of the first Wasteland album ... while the Roots Rock and Ravers EP was really good (and the sort of proto Grime crossed with DHR type noises is totally ahead of its time), Amen Fire is all crackle and whooshing, glitch without the hop. I think there weren't any Amens on there at all (I'm sure they have some explanation of how that wasn't what they were referring too, but come on, we are talking Mr. Ambush here, it wasn't unreasonable to expect). While even then I applauded both artists for clearly not wanting to pigeon-hole themselves into sounds they were getting known for, the music just didn't fly.

October is totally the opposite. Where as Amen Fire washed out any influences it might have been drawing on, October totally takes them and runs with them and in many cases does them one better. Sandwood, the opener, is an absolutely thumping take on grime/dubstep (plus the Dominator sample is a brilliant and really funny touch), Shadowline basically outdoes the Neptunes, Saturation is everything the Sub Dub Illbiant tracks could be (and DON'T roll your eyes at that phrase ... yes a lot of crap got made under that moniker and a certain someone who people like to slam is associated heavily with it, but the combination of heavy dub, instrumental hip-hop, a bit of great jungle and a real dose of tinkering/processing is a rock-solid avenue of sonic exploration that influenced a ton of us younger generation-types [I'm not the only one who bugged out over the first We album]), Emerge and See engages with the best of the Fennesz crowd for wash (what my college professor grudging decided was the only acceptable form of "Pop" music because it was "non-pulse based" ... sigh), and In Your Sleep is simple and has touches of Sea and Cake and a bunch of other melodic stuff that many of us secretly still love.

It is a fantastic album and an awesome example two solid musicians bringing that musicianship to scenes that aren't intimately, 100 percent associated with (maybe you can see why I my heart goes out). My excitement is a bit tinged though because I know that the admiration they clearly have for other sounds/scenes not their own wont be reciprocated. So many of these musics (dancehall, grime, jungle, hip-hop, techno too I guess) are so scene oriented, which is what makes some of them extremely fertile but conversely makes it difficult for people like me, outsiders to whatever, to be taken seriously within those scenes. An example maybe helps: I-Sound (in his mild-mannered record-store clerk alter ego Craig)'s enthusiasm is, I'm sure, what's responsible for Kim's Music in New York basically carrying the countries finest stock of Grime/Dubstep records at $12 a pop instead of $17 direct order from England. Yes, we're talking about half a crate, but that's half a crate more than anywhere else in America (I don't know about Canada ... does Play De Record stock grime, Toronto types?). He's clearly into it... But I have trouble believing that many British grime types are going to hear October... maybe I'm wrong and not giving some deserving producers the benefit of the doubt, and I bet DMZ/Digital Mystikz might be the exception to the rule, but Grime (again, for example) is a young, vibrant, localized scene that seems very good at taking IN musical INFLUENCES and putting out a prolific amount of records, but not at letting outside producers into the fold.

I'm trying to make a subtle point here that's not just about one scene, it's about the perception on the part of people that make music in dance genres about who is an "insider" and who is "outside". DnB has always made a big deal about its "World Wideness/World of Drum and Bass etc.". Now, DnB, having been around for 8 to 10 years longer than Grime, has more exceptions to the rules, but the fact of the matter is that while there are producers all over the world, most who consider themselves in the scene are dying to have their stuff released on British labels that were founded by British DJs that got big in DnB's heyday in Britian, and they are striving to make stuff that sounds sonically indistinguishable to what their idols are making. And who doesn't love idolatry if you're the idol, so DnB gets to claim a worldwide phenomenon while still having control over most of the output. For its secret underground bunker. Which I picture being as being under Trafalgar Square.... controlling the night busses too.

I exaggerate a bit, and like I said, there are many exceptions to the rule (American Ragga jungle today, German 96 era D on Q type stuff, even some of the Brazilian stuff that's coming directly out of Brazil) and boundaries get blurry the more you really push at them, but still, producers and especially label bosses, the bottleneck of any scene, often have a huge investment (rightly so!) in what they're putting out and how they present themselves. And time and time, while the outsider is perhaps given lip service as interesting or original or some such, most labels only want to put out stuff by their peeps, or people who sound sufficiently like their peeps to pass.

My point? I've always been attracted to outsiders who are making music in a particular idiom that they're not a part of. Now, they don't get an automatic by ... I've listened too many CDs of Stock Music at one of my jobs to immediately assume that any outsider understands the intricacies of a scene ... but at the same time, here’s a dubbed out, keyboard friendly, To Rococo Rot collaborator from New York and arguably one of the Godfathers of Breakcore (a scene that inherently doesn't care about musical boundaries and consequently is more accepting to outsiders because there's not outside if the set=infinite ... Breakcore may be the first Open Source genre, not just because everyone's stealing from everyone else for material but on a psycho/social level of who's making the music)*, so here's these two guys (Scud and I-Sound) producing wikkid whatnots because they're so into the sounds from X-squared scenes, will their appreciation be reciprocated? I don't know, but I'd be surprised...

* I mean, where's the locus of Breakcore? You really can't say that like you can with Grime ... Bristol, Manchester or London in England? Berlin or Brussels, or Rennes where Peace Off is from for Europe? USA more than anywhere has no center, New York types, Kid606 and us Tigerbeasties out here in SF, and the great swath of the non-coastal states, the heartland of the America's Blitzowhatnots. Enduser comes from Cincinnati and has a track title to prove it... Cincinnatty Dread...

So, with all that above in mind, Outsiders number two:

2. Dub Trio - Exploring the Dangers of .... ( http://www.dubtrio.com )
Not Black. Not even British. No singer to dub out. Never produced a record in the 70s and therefore need not apply for the Blood and Fire catalogue... Just so damn good.

Really well crafted dub creations that manage to take many experiments of other musical types from the 80s that were incorporating dub into instrumental jams, and then take in a healthy dose of blissrock guitar effects (Stuff I've been sort of discovering what I missed recently listening to a lot of Transient Waves and Aarktica. I'm a sucker for that stuff. Goes back to my Pink Floydish roots)

Then, add to that the fact that they do all of that live in a pretty stunning displace of equipment manipulation. I'm sure they can hold forth in front of a big audience (they just did South by South West and are hooked up for a gig on the Vans Warped Tour New York stop), but the only time I got to seem them was in the intimate setting of Bembe, which has to be one of the nicest venues in New York and perhaps the chillest, the only one that can go for a world vibe and not come across as a single bit cheesy or pretentious (C'mon, they have hammocks? What other bar in the North East do you know of that has hammocks?) It's all the more thrilling when you're sitting right there on top of them and Joe Tom is nearly wacking you in the face with his drum sticks.

So, in a way, the Trio has stripped back of all the things that surround dub that don't actually have to do with the dubbing out of the music (not that many of these things are inherently bad or anything, just they're absent from DT's music). They're stuff is pure, loving craft, and call me a big nerd, but that's what I'm into in spades.

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So there you have it. Two albums worth buying. As albums. I don't say that often.

One album that isn't ... is mine. 'Cause it's free! After telling DJ C that I wanted to do a mix for him back when we were on tour for June of 04, and knowing even then what I wanted it to be like, it took me 9 months (and a couple other mixes in-between then) to do it. But now it's done. Just waiting for it to be posted officially through Mashit, but when it is I'll post the tracklist and the link here and maybe a few thoughts about it here. I'm pretty honkin' proud though. I might also have a live set or two going up in a couple places and will do a bit for echoditto radio (possibly tonight). And then, a few days of regrouping and then on to the mix for Musical Bear, which I promise not to take another 9 months to do....