SPEED TRIBES
Tivoli de Helling
The arrival of low-budget music technologies in the mid 1980s drastically altered the relational bonds between humans and machines in electronic music cultures. According to Kodwo Eshun “Atlantic Futurism is always building future machines, sensory technologies, instruments which renovate perception, which synthesize new states of mind”. The possibility of altering the speed of a record functioned as a key audio-technical transformation with wide-ranging subcultural impact. The bpm (beats per minute) metric, the operating grid of electronic dance music culture, acts as a filter whose fine-grained mesh distributes these audio populations. The sound system driven music cultures of the last two decades, especially in the UK, are populated with thousands of micro-scenes that have been deploying poly- rhythmic attacks on this audio metric. Steve Goodman aka Kode9 calls these vertical rhythmic collectives ‘Speed Tribes’, collective bodies swarming around certain speeds of sound. This night is all about these ecologies of speed, “those molecular seepages and rhythmic infections which deviate from social segmentations.”
23:45 Mount Kimbie + James Blake
The explosion of breakbeat culture has provoked a plethora of sound experiments and cross-overs from which a fresh sound emerges from time to time. One of these surprises is London duo Mount Kimbie (United Kingdom) who inject melancholic pop sensibility and hybrid beats into dubstep. They are joined live by vocalist James Blake (United Kingdom) whose exciting debut reconciles jazz, soul and a taste for melodrama with the sound of the imploding metropolis.
0:30 Cooly G
This protégé of the cutting edge Hyperdub label drew the attention of the so-called ‘UK funky’ scene last year. It’s not surprising: her spicy but contagious mixture of deep house and dubstep, seasoned with bitter sweet vocals and subtle touches of acid and hardcore is, without a doubt, a fresh wind in the British club culture. Tribal rhythms and woozy synth chords, deep basses and aching sighs, light vibes and dark undertones: it’s precisely these contrasts that make her music so irresistible!
1:45 The Bug + Flowdan
The man behind The Bug is Kevin Martin (United Kingdom), who has been reinterpreting industrial, dub and breakbeat since the 1990s. His fascination for intense and dark mutations of electronic rhythms and sub- harmonic frequencies was already present in earlier projects such as God, Techno Animal and Ice. The Bug is the culmination of all these influences: a highly personal exploration of bass culture, with a sound that he self-described as “warped ragga meets heavy electronic dub”. His most recent release London Zoo was praised by several media as one of the most important albums of 2008. MC Flowdan (United Kingdom), a key figure of East London’s grime scene, will accompany The Bug as guest artist.
2:45 Kode9
In recent years Steve Goodman aka Kode9 (United Kingdom) has established himself as one of the most influential names in contemporary electronic music culture. A music producer, theorist and the owner of the celebrated Hyperdub label, he obstinately continues to explore the big city’s sonic fabric, its energy fields and rhythms. Movement, vibration, exaltation, emotion: Kode 9’s music acts like a hyper urban virus that mercilessly gets into our central nervous system.
4:15 Sonido del Principe (Generation Bass)
This is the new incarnation of bass heavy music ethnographer Vincent Koreman (The Netherlands), who will shift this night’s focus to the raw beats and rhythms coming from the slums of the Southern hemisphere.