Everything integrated
It seems that several genres or styles came closer together and some of them have already merged. Fine examples would be the latest hyperdub releases: every release is trying hard to stretch the boundaries of dubstep drawing elements from dub techno, house, rave, wonky, chiptune and skweee. Rustie has done remix for Zomby, Samiyam released his EP on hyperdub and Kode9 himself is fooling with broken beat and house. No, there is nothing wrong with this but not everything they release are advancement. Zomby’s 2×12 EP speaks for itself. Yes, it’s experimental but why does it have to sound like stone cold SHIT. It’s very much like Anticon were. They even had ‘Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop’ -compilation back in -99. I’m expecting to see ‘Music for the Advancement of Dubstep’ -compilation in -09.

These tides
The latest hotness regarding to dubstep is the union with dub techno (didn’t it happen last year too? And the year before). This isn’t exactly new thing to appear since plastikman’s musik “foreshadowed” this 13 years ago. Dubstep is expanding for sure but especially last year and it’s indeed a good thing. Half-step + wobble bass -tracks by some wannabe producers became quickly boring (fact that some people (e.g. people that are new to genre)  seem to forgot: dubstep is supposed to be listened from VINYL so LOUD that it gets PHYSICAL, so in that light those half-step-wobbles might sound decent). Note that a dubstep record that is released today, has probably been played out all at the parties over London for the last 12 months at least. Besides that, we did see increasingly amount of influences drawn from other genres as mentioned before. In turn, producers like Mike Slott, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Flying Lotus, were/are no doubt influenced by the sound of dubstep. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Kanye West would recruited Rustie & Joker to produce his album proper. Joker = Champion of synthprogramming 2008?

You are so HOT for me
It’s difficult to be savvy when you are hot. Not every Flying Lotus release is necessarily good. Surely the guy thinks so himself but give it a year or two and some might think (including FlyLo himself) “how did that thing got released”. Some quality management would be needed here! Same kind of thing has happened to Lindstrom during the past few years. Having Lindstrom rmx in it doesn’t prove a thing about the record’s quality! Lately Fly Lo seems to be figured out how to do Burial-style beats with his remix of Kanye West’s Love Lockdown, which is one of the few highlights from Fly Lo for the latter part of 2008. You can do better than this! I trust that his DJ Kicks-deal will be good. I’m not blaming the guy but the labels who are way too eager to release any of his productions.

Flying Lotus – Essential Mix – BBC Radio 1 29/11

Boogie
I finally truly realized the essence of boogie! Thank you very much Dam Funk! And thank you Beat Electric and keep posting great tracks.

The songs that defined 2008:

Joker & Rustie – Play Doe
Zomby – Where Were U in ’92?
Pinch – 136 Trek

More about Mike Slott (with exclusive beat)

There’s lot of new electronic music terms/genres/themes over the past few years. Dubstep is quite self-evident and justified, Skweee is ultimately just distinguishable style of electro, Baltimore is solely partymusic and “blog house” just futile term (imo New House would be better). This summer we have yet another theme for music that have existed pretty long time.

Martin Clark calls it “Wonky”, Sasha Frere-Jones “lazer bass”, Megasoid calls the music “psychedelic robo crunk remix action” , Ghislain Poirier uses the phrase “bastard bass”, edIT offered the phrase “digital crunk shit.” and the list goes on. This music has been going on since EL-P  and Def Jux (which strangely no one mentions when talking about this new generation of futuristic hip hop shit), Dabrye and Prefuse 73.

I’ve been referring this music just “off-beat” hip hop or lately “Electronic Beats” (which refers closely to Eliot Lipp’s blog of the same name). All I know that I’ve liked it all the time never mind the term. If it’s good. So this is loosely the theme for this months KynyNasty party. Off-beats, Skweee, New House and yes, some Chiptunes too. The Return of the Boom Bap? Perhaps.

More about “Wonky”:
Martin Clark’s Pitchfork article
“Lazer-guided” article at The New Yorker
“Wonk Fonk”, free mix for download
Hudson Mohawke – Hudson’s Heeters, beat tape (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

Off-topic:
What is Wonky techno? Phew, you could spend hours and hours researching all the genres and styles.