chasing the virus / chasing the divine

Over at No Bells blog, here's a piece in which genre epidemiologist Kieran Press-Reynolds tracks and traces the mutation and proliferation of new audio variants - nanogenres with names like sigilkore, slung, dariacore, murder metal, maplekore, hyperplugg. Even someone like myself - triple vaxxed with scepticism, ears shielded with N95-like taste-filters - finds his diagnosis compelling. 

In the '90s, folks liked to talk about the dub virus. Which never made sense to me - why compare something sacred and healing to little bitty entities that wreck your computer or make you feel like shit? Dub and roots makes you breathe better, it rebalances your system. Here's a luminous-numinous piece by Matthew Ingram about his lifelong love of dub and the music's connections to his latterday concerns with health and spirituality. There is also a Woebot in Dub mix, #3 of a series (here's 1 and 2).

One my favorites (a Woebot turn-on, in fact) and as a good a reason to believe in God as any I can think of. 

RIPerry

 

My favoritest Lee Perry (a Woebot turn-on)

Cool typo here - "recorded at BLACK ART STUDIO"

Almost equal favorites 

and the whole of this album 

so many more though.... 

The idea of something from Bristol that's influenced by dub does make one reflexively yawn a bit...  but this Young Echo album Nexus is something else.

The way sounds trickle and levitate reminds me more of INA-GRM, your Rissets and such, or perhaps a latterday concrete-mixer like Christophe Charles (of Mille Plateaux). Monolake's Hongkong also sprang to mind.

At least until -- with both these tracks -- the vocals kick in and we're back in familiar Bristolian emotional landscapes: Martina Topley-Bird in a fugue state,  Robert Del Naja with seasonal affective disorder.  Living in one of England's prettiest cities, you'd be a lot more chipper, I'd have thought.

Luckily most of the record is instrumental.