Mala B2B Loefah, ft. Sgt Pokes live at FWD» 1st June, 2006.
Ten years ago today I started a blog only because I wanted to see how easy it was to start a blog. Five years ago to the day I shared a seminal Hatcha CD – and wished to still feel this strongly about music as I did then. Five years on and many life obstacles since, I still do so to celebrate, I want to share with you something that’s been privately sat on my iPod for quite some time.
I’ve had access to this set ever since I did some archive work for Ammunition around the time of the “Roots of…” compilations. Thank you to FWD» and DMZ for letting me share this previously unheard live recording from FWD» at Plastic People, east London.
Now, I was there in the flesh for this set… I remember it well and wanted to share some memories to accompany the audio. Happy Birthday y’all.
I guess that’s what makes this such a special thing - moreso than any thinkpiece even the most razor-sharp of writers could hope to conjure in chronicling the rise of dubstep. Blackdown was fucking there, you know? Like, man, I coulda sunk weeks into digging through every single last post on dubstepforum and obsessively reading thinkpieces on FACT and RA theorising and wanking on endlessly, and it would have all been for shit because I will never, ever, ever have that fully-formed experience of participation. And even with those hours of detached, rigorous research, I still wouldn’t be able to answer the question - why the hell should you care what I have to say, anyway?
Let me try to explain it from the sociologist’s perspective. In social research, quantitative methods deal strictly with that which can be defined, measured, interpreted and tested - numbers, scales, hypotheses. The qualitative approach, alternatively, demands that we as researchers examine the lived experience, immerse ourselves in the worlds which we wish to understand. The insider perspective, babes. It's useful for understanding social patterns and phenomena which are often quite complex – particularly for exploratory research within emerging and often-inaccessible subcultures and groups. And Blackdown, of course, has this on lock. The depth of knowledge, the oblique references, that deeply visceral conjuring of self is everything I love about electronic music - the space it draws into existence for us to recall experience, form memory and meaning in ways that are entirely our own. Take me into your world and tell me about what you love.
Sociologists also speak of reflexivity: the means by which the characteristics and behaviours of researchers and participants have the effect of acting upon themselves, affecting that which is seen and how it is experienced, transforming experience in its own new ways. I love the fragmented narrative of Blackdown here, and the way in which his presence is so crucial to the retelling of this scene narrativised in this single moment but also in the context of dubstep scene at large. Smoking bans, dubplates, shoutouts, cultural theory. The musings and philosophising, the sense of familial adoration and respect, the zeitgeist of time and place it represents. This is the space I too feel most comfortable occupying, as both researcher and participant in electronic music culture. I am no expert. Nobody is liking my posts in When off chops, link toonz. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the underground. It’s likely I’ve never heard of your favourite record label.
Here’s the thing: I’m not sure how important that is to me when it comes to writing and reading about electronic music. What I love most about electronic music in particular is that it is so conducive to the subjective construction and recollection of experience: the stark and clean rhythms, the lack of definitive meaning in its wordless, hazy soundscapes. Song titles function as clues, maybe, if you’re lucky, but ultimately dance music is about forcing something out of you, too. No words between us - or just cut-up and reconstructed in half-indecipherable ways like the brief exchanges between us when we come up for air. Club culture and that alluring hypnosis of going in deep on the dancefloor at 4AM - the pulse of a kick drum so full it reverberates in your chest, the way a bassline can draw you right in like a lover’s eyes. There’s an erotic hypnosis to the sensation of bodies in motion, caught in the same beat and manifested in that chaotic, arresting electricity of limbs and fast-beating hearts. It invites you in and lets you and I take whatever we want from it. I love the blacked-out hyperconsciousness of the dancefloor and the aftermath, the space to piece these endless prismatic fragments of light and experience together in a way that is irreproducible and entirely your own.
That old Simon Reynolds quote: “this is my story: tell me yours.”