Quoth the Peanut Gallery

This week in Liverpool, Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher were going to be discussing, in propria persona, the lineage & evolution of British rave music. Not that I particularly cared (no offense intended), since I only dance when shot at, and to my ears bassline sounds like Paul Oakenfold eating a Twinkie wrapped in bacon, then farting through a Vocoder.

Zing! Juvenile derision & anomie are abound tonight! The point is this: sirs Reynolds contends that

These early sounds – bleep tunes from the North East, breakbeat house and ragga techno from London – were the first time that the UK came up with its own unique mutant versions of House and Techno (ironically by adding elements from dub reggae, dancehall, and hiphop that weren’t British in origin, but equally would never have been let into the mix back in Chicago and Detroit).

Fisher goes on to list of some perennial properties of this new (circa '90), innately British subgenre: "heavy synthetic bass, breakbeats, MC chat, film and videogame samples."

Hmmm... something "hardcore" that includes heavy synthetic bass, breakbeats, film samples - but couldn't possibly be rooted in Chicago house music? Okay, I'll see your chemically-crutched technicolour blipfest and raise you Al Jourgensen.



I know, I know, apples and oranges - or rather, ecstasy and heroin. Ah, but then, in such terms: which would narcotic omniathlete Gibby Haynes pick?



I rest my case. Foghat, motherfucker!