plz help me understand: what is DnB ?

[sqigls]

Here's what you need my friend.

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

If you don't know who Ishkur is, that's ok, just remember, he's not asking what DnB is, you are. In other words, he's right, pay close attention.

WOW, I haven't read his blogs for ages. He's a funny dude. Very clever. Used to do some hilarious stuff when the web was very young. Good times, good times.

[Ch00rD]

What is drum and bass? It was mainly an attempt to evade the Criminal Justice Bill of 1994, which outlawed 'repetitive beats' in the UK. Your typical party crew had no choice but to start shuffling the beats around to keep it all legal.

Lesson learned: if you *really* want to stimulate innovation in the arts, the best thing you can do as a matter of government policy is attempt to annihilate it completely. Subsidies will *never* work.

Notes and corrections #1. DNB was in no way an attempt to avoid the CJB. That was aimed at illegal raves and it's only effect was to make party organisers better at avoiding the law.

DNB grew exclusively at legal events in legal venues round London and the Midlands-Quest, AWOL, Dreamscape, Speed and others I've forgotten.

To be specific: every big DNB tune ever blew up at a legal rave

Every DNB DJ who made a living did it at legal raves

Every punter who paid to watch big DJs and hear big tunes did so at a legal rave

The shuffling beats around that marked early jungle/DNB (the template was established by '93, before the CJB) was all about barely post-pubescent kids trying to one-up each other with their complex beats

Thanks very much for those factual corrections, very interesting to hear.

I was of course at least half joking there, and I do not have much factual knowledge about the developments in the UK and the effect, if any, it may have had on the artistic and cultural developments, as I definitely (and unfortunately, perhaps) wasn't part of that scene when it happened. I was only aware of some of the legalities, and am interested in such things because these types of laws are typically quite hilarious (hence good stuff for making joking about) - as well as violations of freedom of expression.

In the Netherlands, during about the same period, we had similar developments with (mainly local) government trying to ban 'gabber house' parties for example; whenever we investigated the exact legalities of such policies, in our inquiries we typically did not find much 'technical' definitions (like beat or melodic patterns, types of sounds used, dominant frequencies, sound levels, dynamics, basically nothing what e.g. an engineer or musicologist could not objectively establish, let alone a regular police officer) but 'off the record' direct answers like "we don't really care about the music in itself, but it's the entire culture that we find offending; we just don't wan't that type of people here, period." Of course the government already had more or less sufficient legal instruments for the specific actual problems they would mention 'on the record' - drugs, violence, all the regular stuff already covered in criminal law - so this type of regulation is always quite suspect, imho.

PS: back to joking: of course DnB became big at 'legal' raves, at least insofar as that 'repetitive beats' clause goes: the beats were perfectly legal.

[Ch00rD]

[accidental double post removed]

[psychoxkps]

dnb? best musical style....

[Brookside_Chase]

At it's most basic, raw form, DnB (Drum 'n' Bass) is literally Drums and Bass sounds but other elements can be added such as jazz, ragga, funk, soul, disco, and rap etc., There are even vocal DnB songs like Un-Cut's Midnight that sampled the great intro of Shirley Bassey's cover of Light My Fire. Uncut added other production elements and included a vocalist.

DnB was also known as Jungle but to many people the two genres were essentially synonymous with one another. The drum was a broken beat sped up to around 170 bpm with a bassline going at half of that speed so 85 bpm for this example. Sometimes they would take a snippet of a vocal or a guitar riff or whatever, and either speed it way up, or slow it down to the half-speed tempo. If you are looking for artists in the genre look up among many others:

LTJ Bukem
J Majik
Peshay
Grooverider
Fabio
Goldie
London Elektricity
High Contrast
Calibre

[highkoo]

Calibre

[Robosapien]

Anything with little high end running at 170-180 bpm. Except that.

[Kaine]

Anything with little high end running at 170-180 bpm. Except that.

Except that? Hardcore?