2OO6 – a year of jaded Jazz Funk Greats?
A regular annoyance of the late half of 2OO6 has been the dreaded ‘New Rave’.
It actually started as a nice idea by Joe Daniel to discibe The Klaxons, but then rapidly nose-dived into journo-Hell with certain magazines hailing everyone from The Knife to New Young Pony Club to Shit Disco to Metronomy as New Rave indie-dance bands with glowsticks flashing from every orifice. Its got so bad that you can’t wear dayglo colours now because “oh my god, your so New Rave!”. I was going to buy pink Converse, now i’m not.
I am sad and ashamed at being so image conscious.
So lets look at the facts :
1. Bright colours and luminous stuff is cool as fuck.
2. NME got bored calling everything punk funk or angular disco.
3. Indie kids take pills and react like its a rave to GUITAR MUSIC AND NOT RAVE MUSIC**.
**The guitar bit is very important.
Until they get sick of it NME will be calling every single band you can dance to (or not with most of The Knife) New Rave. The new !!! and LCD albums will be held up as the godfathers of New Rave and you’ll find bands you love who have been going for over six years and never been anywhere near New Cross in a cassette playa t-shirt tared and feathered up by NME as – you guested it – New Rave. This can be quite distressing if you fell in love with them at computer camp. Not only do you now own several New Rave records, you are New Rave.
“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into New Rave!”
It’s also working the other way round. Since most people havn’t got a clue, they are now calling anything they don’t like New Rave and thats even more confusing. This lead to people thinking New Rave is anything that sounds or looks like tetris, so that is lektrogirl to 8bitpeoples to Scotch egg to the micromusic comunity and Crystal Castles while others tell me Steve, Jim and Bob from Detournement play New Rave (current top ten: Robbie Williams – Lovelight (Soulwax’s ravelight dub),Simian Mobile Disco – Tits’n'Acid, Hot Club De Paris – EveryEveryEverything, Dead Disco – Automatic, MSTRKRFT – She’s Good for Business, Mock’n'Toof – Lyrca Virgin, Mates of State – Fraud In The 80s, CSS – Off The Hook, jamelia – Something About You (Mr oiizo mix), Grauzone – Eisbar ).
Awesome.
It’s a win win situation.
Lets just rebrand the world as New Rave 2.0 beta gamma.
Does this mean Ajax, Action Script 3.0 Ruby on Rails are New Rave?
And what about NEU! Rave ? we were looking forward to that :(
I fear for the fragile lives of Ratatat as a new EP ’9 Songs’ is coming next year which could possibly be slapped with a Smiley face bumper sticker by stupid cunts cos its vaguely indie-dance. Journo fools will no doubt ignore that it leans more toward Grime and most definately hip-hop with its beats and hoovery bass bellows. Oh but wait doesn’t that make it Grindie – aww fuck it we cannot win! Don’t get us wrong, we love this, we just feel jaded and cynical – must be that time of year I guess…
In this year of 2OO6 we have learnt the following lesson: No one can do screaming glitch funk banger-pop like the French can. This year Ed Bangers ruled the dancefloors with bass thumps from Justice, shards of monochrome and red ’85 italo from Kavinsky and grinding feedback bursts from SebastiAn.
Meet Flairs:
I thought ‘Trucker’s Delight’ was a posh name for a Yorkie Bar, but hey, and Flairs used to live in Staines which is odd in itself too, so yeah he’s cheating a little on the French banger-baron front but we are forgiving and we admire good work. The artwork suggests a possible connection to Ed Bangers but alas the only thing they share is a city. Our name has Funk in the title and here is some actual funk – we thought we should actually put some in, and with added elasticated synth flashes and soaring lazerbeams too, wow we are so nice to you!
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New Chromatics video for upcoming 12″, ‘In The City’. They had You Tube in the 70′s, who knew?
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