is drum and bass fucking boring?
Anyone who keeps an eye on popular beat combos has heard that hyper speed, yet strangely easy listening, genre they now call drum and bass. As a totally biased and subjective observer I will attempt to answer the question: is drum and bass fucking boring?
For a start I'd like to make a distinction between different varieties: I love darkside drum and bass, purveyed by the likes of Ed Rush and Optical (who played a fucking storming set at NY Sushi this year), Usual Suspects and various others on Renegade Hardware label, among others, as it's quite a lot like heavy metal, which, since Rage Against The Machine, has been tuneless and grinding.
No, the variety of drum and bass I intend to thoroughly put the boot into is that weedy genre known as "jazzy" drum and bass: Roni Size has a goatee, the most literally chin stroking acid jazz type facial hair style, and his music is bloody dull. Yeah we all know Railing and Brown Paper Bag were ace, but frankly does anyone really like anything else on the album? All the Guardian reviewers and Mercury Bullshit Corporate Whore Music Prize Awards judges tripped over their tongues trying to prove how hip and down with the kids they were by saying they liked it, but in reality it's a pile of wank.
I don't mean to be controversial by saying this (yeah right- Ed) (I am the Ed!- Tobias) (Shut up you cock- Scizophrenic Ed) but all that "we put two synthesised jazz chords on our record so we're up there with Miles Davis" drum and bass is trashy rubbish. I've only heard one good jazzy drum and bass tune: DJ Ron Quintet by DJ Ron. He's got the worst name in pop music, but this is a top notch tune, featuring flutes, fusion guitar, bass guitar, nasty sub bass, and various instruments I don't even recognise. It sounds like Billy Cobham produced by Ed Rush. I'm not sure if he sampled all the instruments or got session musicians in, but I really don't care.
With this one honourable exception, and perhaps Brown Paper Bag, I would like to conclude that "jazzy" drum and bass sucks a fat one.
Out like Roni,
Tobias Flinch
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