LECTURE 3 Flashcards
DJ Krome & Mr Time
The Slammer (1993)
What are we hearing?
Elements of The Slammer;
Tempo;
154 beats per minute (quick!)
Structure;
Layers of two-bar loops
Changes made in units of 8 bars.
Synthesizer loops;
Parallel major chords
Morse code pattern
House style vamp
Roland TB-303;
Used ‘acid’ style
Breakbeat;
‘Amen’ break from the Winston’s ‘Amen Brother’
Samples;
‘Ganja man’ vocal sample, Jamaican influence.
‘I Get Wrecked’ by Tim Dog (hip hop)
‘Why Should I Cry? by Nona Hendryx (electro, disco).
Other comical/cartoonish sound effects.
Sub Bass;
UK signature
Ibiza
One of the largest ‘Balearic’ islands off the eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain
History as a refuge from mainland Europe going back to Roman times
Since the
1960s it served as a refuge for political asylum seekers, draft-dodging Americans (Vietnam), religious cults, and later, pop stars looking for a limelight-free party.
In 1960 the islands hotels hosted around 30,000 guests—in 2014 the island had over 700,000 tourist visitors
Ibiza – 1980s
In the 1980s the island was frequented by the ‘elite’ of European pop culture—the masses followed them there.
Outdoor, open-air dance clubs like ‘Pacha’, ‘Amnesia’ and ‘Ku’ (pictured) opened in the 1980s
The music at these clubs was at first an eclectic mix 70s disco, 80s synth- pop, reggae, rock & roll, everything, as DJ Jose Padilla explains:
“It’s not because in Ibiza we LIKE to play like that. We HAVE to play [like that] because we have to fill so many hours”
The drug MDMA aka ‘ecstasy’ arrived on the island in the early 1980s
In the mid-late 80s Chicago house music found its way into the playlists of DJs, of particular note, DJ Alfredo at ‘Amnesia’
Among the guests at ‘Amnesia’ in the summer of 1987 were Gavin Fung, Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling and Johnny Walker—four London DJs who took the concept home
‘Shoom’
Named after the feeling of coming upon E
Founded by DJ Danny Rampling and his later wife Jenni in October 1987.
Small club with room for about 200
“…there’s smoke everywhere and everyone was walking around like ‘Night of the Living Dead’. Then … suddenly people are coming up and hugging you and ‘What’s your name? I love you!’ … They’re ALL on ecstasy.”
- Mark Moore, London DJ and club owner
Chicago stars such as Marshall Jefferson and Larry Heard performed—at Shoom the house DJ started to rise to god-like status
“… when Rampling was due to play people would run around the club whispering ‘Danny’s on in 5 minutes’ … Suddenly Danny’s standing there and he’s waving this record around, shouting and people are shouting at him and hugging.”
- Terry Farley, London DJ
‘Heaven’ and the ‘Second Summer of Love’
On April 11th, 1988, Paul Oakenfold & and Ian St. Paul opened the doors of their new club ‘Heaven’ promoting an ‘Acid House Night’.
On that first night the 2500 capacity club was attended by 124 people, all of them receiving a free E.
Trying to recreate the atmosphere at Ibiza, the playlist very closely reflected that of DJ Alfredo from ‘Amnesia’ during the 1987 summer
Three weeks later…
“The queue started 2 hrs before opening, and at 3.30 am when the club finished the Strand became a huge party with thousands of kids on E jacking on car roofs and stopping the West End traffic. This was the club that heralded Acid House as an explosion of biblical proportions and its legacy still lingers on today around the world. %&*$-ing awesome…”
- Terry Farley, DJ, article in Faith magazine
In London, Oakenfold’s ‘Future’, Jenni and Danny Rampling’s ‘Shoom’ & in Manchester Mike Pickering’s ‘Hacienda’ were the clubs where UK Rave kicked off.
The summer of 1988 in the UK became known as the ‘Second Summer of Love’
UK Pop Charts: Imported and Homegrown
Hip hop;
- Adventures on the Wheels of Steel – Grandmaster Flash (1981)
- Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force (1982)
House/Techno Imports;
Jack Your Body – Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley (1986)
Love Can’t Turn Around – Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk (1986)
Move Your Body – Marshall Jefferson (1986)
Acid Tracks – Phuture (1987)
Strings of Life & Nude Photo – Derrick May (1987)
In the UK, ‘Acid House’ became a blanket term for any new electronic dance music
Homegrown Acid House in the UK;
Humanoid – Stakker Humanoid (1988)
Voodoo Ray – A Guy Called Gerald (1988)
‘Bleep and Bass’, centred in Sheffield was a techno and house inspired, usually completely electronic music;
Dextrous – Nightmares on Wax (1989)
Chime - Orbital (1990)
A Brief and Crude History of Sampling to 1990s
First person to work with sampling was Pierre Schaeffer in 1948, coining the term Musique Concrète to describe his approach;
- phonograph record
Practice of sampling continued and increased in the 1960s both in experimental and popular genres;
- reel to reel tape
- the ‘Melotron’
Hip hop music, arising in the 1970s was the first popular genre to be based on the practice of sampling, often carried out live via ‘Turntablism’;
- vinyl records (1970s onward); digital samplers (late 1980s)
Sampling spread to house and techno DJ practices in the 80s;
- vinyl records; reel to reel tape; later, digital samplers
Companies like Roland in the early 80s began to mass produce
sample-based drum machines, for example the TR-808, TR-909, etc
Digital Samplers were around from the late 70s but not widely affordable until the late 80s
- the ‘Synclavier’ by New England Digital and the ‘Fairlight CMI’
Digital samplers such as the Akai S900 in the late 80s & early 90s
revolutionized the pop music industry
- greater memory capacity, greater processing power, affordability.
Sampling, the hardware, early 1990s
The Ensoniq ASR-10
Ensoniq ASR-10 Hardware Sampler (1992)
- 2MB of internal
memory,
expandable to
16MB
- 16-bit sampling at
30k or 44.1k
- With the standard
2MB of memory,
sampling at 16-bit
and 44.1k would
give you 12
seconds.
- The expanded
16MB version
would give you
just over 90
seconds.
Apple Powerbook 180 (1992)
- 80MB hard drive
- 33 MHz processor
- 4-12 MB of RAM
- Base Model Cost:
$3,870
IBM Think Pad 500 (1992) - 80MB hard drive - 25 MHz processor - 4-16 MB of RAM - Base Model Cost: $2,375 US
IBM External Hard Drive (1993)
- 1 Gigabyte sold for
$3,000
Sample Manipulation, 1990s
199s sample manipulation was limited by today’s standards;
- relatively crude algorithms
- space and processor limitations
However, these limitations are partly what give sample-based music its unmistakeable sound and character.
Faster tempos required speeding up samples - changes in speed of playback was usually accompanied by changes in pitch
- double speed = up one octave
- half speed = down one octave
- easier to achieve - involves no processing
- minimal loss of sound quality at half and double speed.
Time-stretching (warping) in early stages of development
- Difficult to achieve requiring a large amount of processing power
- Involved often significant loss of sound quality
Samples in The Slammer
Tim Dog “I Get Wrecked” - 1993
Krome & Time
Nona Hendryx “Why Should I Cry?” - 1987
The Winstons “Amen Brother” - 1969
Third Base “Words of Wisdom” - 1989
Mantronix “King of the Beats - 1988
Shut Up and Dance
One of several sound system groups operating in the UK in the mid- late 80s along with ‘Soul II Soul’ and others. SUAD differed from most—they were hip hop rather than reggae based.
In the late 80s, founding partners PJ and Smiley started the Shut Up and Dance record label
“… we were rappers making what we thought was British rap, but because we had the dance background, we wanted to make music that you could dance to, so our rap music was a lot faster than rap
we’d just do an interesting instrumental where we’d get a break, speed it up. Which again, back then, no one was doing this, which is why people say now, that we were the creators of drum n bass or whatever
Smiley had a younger brother, and he was a raver, he used to go to all the big nights and he used to come home and say “you guys gotta come out and hear this stuff, they’re killin’ your stuff, their playing it everywhere” and we’re like What?
- PJ, quoted in Droid, 2009
The scene we thought we were in [hip hop] didn’t want to know … And this other scene [rave] held out its arms to us
- PJ, quoted in magazine Melody Maker, 1992
The group’s early singles, primarily through their sped-up breakbeats
had a massive impact on the development of the UK Hardcore style:
5, 6, 7, 8 (1989)
£10 To Get In (1990)
Dance Before the Police Come (1991) Raving I’m Raving (1992)
UK Breakbeat Hardcore and the Rave Explosion
At the end of the 80s, acid house moved out of clubs to large warehouses, aircraft hangers, grain silos and open fields, mostly near the M25 ‘orbital’ motorway that encircles London
“The raves were very special. In some respects it was still underground, still something of a special club, even though it was a mass movement. It was Us and Them. Going out and trying to get past roadblocks … It was an adventure”
- Gavin Hills, Journalist quoted in Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash (2008)
“The M25 was a sick time … You could basically go on the M25 and find raves back in ‘89, there’d be carloads of people driving around.”
- DJ Frankie Bones, quoted in Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash (2008)
As time went on, organised crime groups also became promoters, though not interested in
the music so much as control of the drug trade.
By 1992, a circuit of commercial mega-raves had grown up: Amnesia, Raindance, Kaos,
Mayhem, Eclipse, Fantazia, Vision and many more.
These (mostly legal) events drew crowds of between 10,000 and 25,000 with accompanying
side attractions like bouncy castles, bungie jumping, rides, etc.
On the mega-rave circuit, a pop-hardcore sound emerged: synth vamps, shrieking diva vocals, SUAD style breakbeats and rumbling bass.
What happened next?
Darkcore / Drum & Bass
Darkcore/Drum & Bass
By 1993 there was a division in the hardcore scene—it was one of mood—light or dark.
‘Darkcore’ was a reaction against the against the happy hardcore tunes loved by the ‘cheesy quavers’, a derisive slang term to describe ravers.
“The whole night was dark … I remember dancing at the front, looking round and noticing there wasn’t a smile amongst the people. Not one smile. But everyone was into it … I remember being off my head and thinking that I must remember this. This is different now … no waving hands in the air
- Brian Belle-Fortune, in All Crews: Journeys Through Jungle / Drum and Bass Culture , 2004”
Darkcore and Drum & Bass began to gather momentum during 93/94, as described by
writers Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton:
“As the acid utopia came crashing down to earth—beset by police clamp-downs, dodgy pills, and the criminal elements taking the reins—many preferred this gritty urban realism to the fluffiness of the early ecstasy years…”
In 1994 the Drum & Bass ‘Metalheadz’ label was formed by Kemistry & Storm and Goldie. Along with the ‘Moving Shadow’ label the two record companies produced an enormous amount of Drum & Bass and Jungle music.
