Electronic Music History (Part 5)

Isolationist ambient music is perhaps the darkest, least accessible of ambient music. Inspired by industrial music, noise music, and classical music, isolationist may be rather dirge-like: more repellant than inviting. The Sombient label is the primary purveyor of isolationist ambient, in particular with the "drones" compilation series. Some of the artists known for this style of ambient music include Robert Fripp, Vidna Obmana, Jeff Greinke, and Naut Humon.Ambient electronic music is the current most widely heard form of the ambient music and began in its modern form in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Artists considered to be part of the inception of the late 1980s, early 1990s ambient electronic music movement included Aphex Twin, Pete Namlook, The Orb, Moby, Future Sound of London, and William Orbit. Other prominent artists that make ambient electronic music include Air, Biosphere and Bill Laswell. Initially an underground movement, ambient electronic music continued to rise in popularity until its less obscure status in the early 2000s. Although not strictly speaking, ambient music, mainstream electronic dance music styles such as trance, techno and drum and bass draw inspiration from the soothing electronic sound of ambient music artists in these styles often incorporate ambient elements into their work. Examples are found in Voodoo Child's (aka Moby) The End of Everything album and others.Works by Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble and others, including a number of compilations by various artists. Includes prominent bass guitar as does dub music, but without drums, vocals, or horn sections of reggae, and with the usual prominent synthesizers ambient music is known for.Ambient groove music could be seen as a sub-genre of both ambient and trip hop music. Ambient groove is a stylistic middle ground between the two, incorporating elements of both along with dub and world music. The sub genre was created accidentally by the series "A Journey Into Ambient Groove" by Quango Records, a subsidiary of Island Records. (Quango itself evolved out of the ambient groove project.) All four in the series are various-artists compilations, with tracks selected and compiled by Bruno Guez. Guez featured similar music on his radio show in L.A., though the movement is European in its origination. As with most sub genres in music, there is some overlap between them. This style is mostly limited to the mid 1990's. The ambient groove sound was created in particular by artists on the Pork label. Guez collected songs exclusively from this label for the "A Taste of Pork'" compilation. The songs themselves feature a combination of synthesizers and drum machines as well as acoustic percussion and other acoustic instruments. Ambient groove does not feature much in the way of vocals or four-on-the-floor techno beats, but the beat and the groove are featured elements, unlike ambient per se. The style has much in common with more modern dub, but generally less reggae-inspired, though there are dub tracks included on the compilations.Drum and bass started in the UK cities of London and Bristol around 1992 and mainly came out of the house/hardcore music scenes with predominant musical influences being dub music and hip-hop. The drum and bass genre has gone through numerous mutations and sub-genrefications, making it one of the most diverse styles to rise out of the rave scene of the 1990s. It is played all over the world and is considered by some to be at its most progressive and cutting edge in London.Early jungle music was referred to as breakbeat hardcore, which was an offshoot of uk rave music that focused on the breakbeat. As a more and more bass-heavy and uptempo sound developed, jungle began to develop its own separate identity. After being further developed by MC Jonny Waines of the Leeds Massive, the sound took on a very urban, raggamuffin sound, incorporating dancehall "ragga" style mc chants, dub basslines, but also increasingly complex, high tempo rapid fire breakbeat percussion. By 1995, a counter movement to the ragga style was emerging, dubbed "intelligent" jungle, and was embodied by LTJ Bukem and his Good Looking label. Intelligent jungle maintained the uptempo breakbeat percussion, but focused on more atmospheric sounds and warm, deep basslines over rough vocals or samples. At the same time, the ragga jungle sound mutated into a more stripped down hard percussive style, Hardstep, and its more hiphop and funk influenced sister style Jump-Up, while other artists pushed a smoother, dubby style of tune, referred to as Rollers.Through 1996, Hardstep and JumpUp sounds where popular in the clubs, while Intelligent jungle was pushing a sound more accessible to the home listener. Stylistically things kept getting more and more diverse, as well as crossbreading with other styles of jungle. In 1997, a funky, double-bass oriented sound came to the forefront, and gained some mainstream success with Roni Size's New Forms album winning the UK's Mercury Prize. On the other end of the spectrum, a new dark, technical sound in drum and bass was gaining popularity, championed by the labels Emotif and No U-Turn, and artists like Trace, Ed Rush and Optical, and commonly referred to as techstep. Techstep took new sounds and technololgies and applied them to jungle. It is characterized by sinister or science-fiction atmospherics and themes, cold and complex percussion, and dark basslines.As the 1990s drew to a close, techstep came to dominate the drum and bass genre, becoming more minimal, and increasingly dark in tone, and the funky, commercial appeal represented by Roni Size back in 1997 was waning. By 2000, there was an increasing movement to "bring the fun back into drum and bass". There was a new revival of rave-oriented sounds, as well as remixes of classic jungle tunes that brought things full circle back to the origins. Although techstep continued to dominate, other substyles have gained ground over the first several years of the decade, including the highly techno oriented style of Konflict, the dub sounds of Digital and the house meets drum and bass flavor of Marcus Intalex.One country to have recently developed a drum and bass scene is Brazil, with DJ Marky and DJ Patife amongst many others. The rhythms are strikingly similar to Latin music and putting a Latin sample to breakbeats works well. This has been somewhat commercialised with Shy FX's tune: "Shake Ur Body" taking the cliched latin piano from TV program Sex and the City and getting it into the mainstream (UK) charts with some pop sounding production. Another successful tune along similar Brazilian lines is "Don't Wanna Know" by Shy FX & T Power, but the artist is from Essex (North of London), not Brazil.

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