“Never say never”
The first time I listened
Skull Disco , it was enclosed with a critical acclaim, but it seemed boring & tedious to me. But, respecting that media consensus, I decide to keep it in my computer instead of deleting it. I continue downloading music from that label & listening to it while I was working or cleaning my house. Now I steel think that is tedious & monotonous, but mainly because of that lack of different sounds (common to all of the artist in the label) I get hooked on it. This music (without megahits) makes you play it just to fill the empty spaces. I respect that “label phylosophy”, similar to an artistic manifesto, selflimited by definition, with clear identity in their
aesthetics that illustrate such a coherent music.
That’s how kettledrums get into the sounds I like to find in a track.
Then, time after, people like
Mosca, L-Vis 1990, xxxy & other leaders from
Night Slugsstart getting famous. UK-Bass started to be considered as a genre. This music is not very innovative at first sight, but the small changes are what make it cooler. I mean: yes, it’s house music, or a son of it at least, but it doesn’t descend from Salome de Bahia. It comes from the first house, the one from the gay clubs in the early 80′s, the one related both with Afrika Bambaata & Detroit techno. So, we add to that house the bass phylosophy & the beat treatment of dubstep, & also synths that remind us to the british raves of the early 90′s (just like the great “
Where were you in 92” from Zomby).
In this music, mainly because it’s so close to house music, the kettledrums enter again, but with an amazing difference. The kettledrums that rule the middle & late 90′s house were very simple, using basic rythms that seem to be taken from an amateur beach party. On the other hand, the beats used in UK-Bass have much deeper tribal roots. For example, the Mosca
remix for Four Tet is pure caribbean batucada.
Egyptrixx? Pure africanism, claimed from the covers & even from the band name.
Changing the continent, we have DJ /Rupture, Matt Shadetek & co. It was obvious that these people love the deeply rooted sounds from all around the world. DJ /Rupture is always surprising us by ubloading tracks in
his blog that belong to the most old-fashioned cumbia or to the arabian music. People like
Spoek Mathambo,
Chief Boima or
Rita Indiana are proud members of the
Dutty Artz label, showing us how mambo & cumbia are getting updated with new sounds.
And finally my eyes get completely opened to the kettledrums return with the last remix from
Matt Shadetek. As I said referring to UK-Bass, the rythms are clearly not the same as in the late 90′s, they’re much more primitives, a perfect marriage with the dubstep beats. Really nice track!
Furthermore, and not only in Sound Pellegrino, but also between the people from Night Slugs, two-tones melodies are very common, just like the ones used in the spanish genre called “makina” (if you think this is absurd, just listen to the “
Thai Mystic” from Kingdom). That bleeps like “pi-pi-pipopi”. I mention this because this kind of melodies have the same function (in my oppinion) that the two-tones cowbells used in batucadas.
Just to finish, listen to this
enlace , another evidence of how african kettledrums are involving new electronic genres. I really don’t know where are they from, I supose that african theirselves, who better than they to defend this new tribe electronic music.
When we were sexteen, we sat down in parks to smoke joints & drink beer, while some of us play kettledrums, djembes, darbukas & many other headache instruments. We grew up & we get from the park to the mass batucadas & the late 90′s house music.
Time goes by & we continue growing, and even if could never reject that part of my life, I have to recognize that I prefer to have no-percussive elements when I’m in a park and to keep that primitive sounds away from the dance-clubs, until now.
When we get older, we also get more open-minded in music &, even if it’s hard to recognize, more affected by “fashion”. There’s no sense in walking cross-current just to walk cross-current.
