From: mei172@cch.coventry.ac.uk (guru)
Subject: Re: Utah Saints/Shamen/Utah
Organization: Coventry University
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 14:02:41 GMT

In article <BxBLzB.Crv@javelin.sim.es.com> pashdown@javelin.sim.es.com (Pete Ashdown) writes:
>Met everyone in Shamen and half of the Utah Saints.  Got the Shamen to sign
>all my CD's as well as Utah Saints.  A friend was talking to Mr. C when he
>mentioned the word "rave".  C said, "Rave is a DIRTY word in England (which
>has been apparent here recently), what is up now is HOUSE."  Mr. C's DJ set
>still consisted of a large majority of trance, not a piano riff to be heard,
>but whatever.  He said he throws undergrounds for around 700 people, any
>bigger and he doesn't like it.  Same friend then mentioned "ambient" and C
>gave the definition, "Ambient is WITHOUT a beat."  I'm sure glad we've got the
>UK to tell the rest of the world how it is done.  Of course, this whole
>conversation took place while C and my friend were smoking some buds that my
>friend supplied.  So much for the anti-drug stance.

guru sez:
	in this country Mr C is considered to be a tit of the highest order,
	but I can see now that he has got his head on straight, Gaia crap
	about LSI notwithstanding.

	UK Rave is dead. Period.

	Now that the kind of music that started it off (following on from
	acid house) has become commercialised and absorbed into mainstream
	pop crap, the whole thing is falling apart (hooray!), and it now
	*might* be the turn of the bands with genuine talent to grab a chunk
	of the limelight.

	Over the last 2 years of rave, I have been so pissed off that so 
	much really excellent electronic music (not neccessarily dance) has
	been ignored because some bunch of people on tablets thought that all
	music was about was blowing a whistle and waving your hands in the
	air whilst wearing as little clothing as possible. Now, I'm not
	criticising the people who genuinely do love the music ( I think
	they'll agree with me that a lot of purported "rave" is utter shite),
	more the people who are only into it because of the drugs thing and
	because they like the idea of the scene.

	House *is* the next wave: it was passed over so rapidly as acid took
	hold that it has had the chance to become much more mature while
	people have listened to different stuff. House now has its own style
	and identity, and I can't wait to see what will happen now.

	Now, as for ambient, I was reading an article in Vox magazine the
	other day, which claimed that ambient has two camps: hippy and zippy.
	(I have no idea how appropriate these tags are, I don't listen to
	much ambient). The Zippy stuff is more The Orb and related trancey
	stuff, whereas Hippy is much more the spliff-smoking music of the
	Sixties.

	I think that "Ambient is WITHOUT a beat" is a tad too general: pure
	ambient maybe, ambient house (which is what I think we're dealing
	with) has a beat, however subtle.

	You can ignore the stuff from Vox if you like: they think The Future
	Sound of London is ambient, when they're definitely progressive house.
	Prats.
-- 
      /~~~) /   / /~~~) /   /   
     (___/ (___/ /     (___/   These mind-expanding drugs have given me so much
        /                      imagination, I'm hallucinating grey vividly....
   (___/ mei172@cch.cov.ac.uk                       Victor Lewis-Smith
Newsgroups: alt.rave