Classics

beknoxx

beknoxx

7/11 7/11
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Jun 13, 2013
Are there classic songs in dnb anymore? What was the last classic? I think there are so many releases now that tunes are just thrown away and these are tunes that if they had came out twenty years ago they would be getting played in every set today. Thoughts?
 
Classics are still made from time to time imo, it's just that music is consumed differently these days so they're not celebrated like they used to be. Plus the over saturation, speed & volume of releases means rather than a classic tune being rinsed by 100 dj's for a few months, it's now only played by 50 dj's for a few weeks. Like everything it's all in the eye of the beholder at the end of the day, & with the way we communicate these days a classic to some is another mans rubbish
 
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balistics said:
Classics are still made from time to time imo, it's just that music is consumed differently these days so they're not celebrated like they used to be. Plus the over saturation, speed & volume of releases means rather than a classic tune being rinsed by 100 dj's for a few months, it's now only played by 50 dj's for a few weeks. Like everything it's all in the eye of the beholder at the end of the day, & with the way we communicate these days a classic to some is another mans rubbish
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what do you think the last classic was tho?
 
beknoxx said:
what do you think the last classic was tho?
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It's really just down to the individual imo, & what you personally consider a classic. For me what comes to mind right away is the Blocks & Escher album, or Dom & Roland's last album. Both very different angles but imo both classic albums. But as I say, I have no doubt the next man would say those albums are utter rubbish & say something ridiculous like Benny L's Low Blow as a classic 😂 There really is no true answer, only what you believe personally really, & at the end of the day that is really all that matters.
 
There are very few bonafide anthems/classics that cross the subgenre divides these days.

Like balistics said above, one tune can be massive in some quarters and other fans in drum & bass would consider it utter shit. Tour by Macky Gee being probably the most obvious example. A lot of drum & bass heads fucking hate it, it's a meme tune, but it has 10 million views on Youtube, which is around 100 times as many as Vault by Pendulum which itself was a massive anthem in its day.

The most recent anthems/classics which united the whole genre might include

Dub Phizix - Marka
and
Commix - Be True

Low Blow is a decent shout too for a more recent tune, not sure it will have the same staying power though

There are probably more, but it's not like it was in 2000 when everyone bought vinyl (from a much smaller pool of labels), everyone listened to the same tape packs and radio shows and the big tunes were the big tunes, and pretty much all DJs played/bought them.


It would be great to hear some more new tunes that got everyone excited, but obviously things are different now.
 
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balistics said:
For me what comes to mind right away is the Blocks & Escher album, or Dom & Roland's last album.
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dambusters said:
Dub Phizix - Marka
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totally agree to that.

but i think since the scene is quite separated because of so many subgenres these days it gets harder to make a classic tune almost everyone has a connection to.
maybe it's more about creating a distinctive trademark sound and keeping things individual. i defo have some > personal < classics which surely will be timeless to me but these are far away from being anthems uniting crowds like back in the days. d-bridge "wonder where", synkro/indigo "guidance", synkro "acceptance", bop "song about my dog" commix "japanese electronics" (instra:mental moog remix), consequence "a man and a woman", asc "focus inwards" and loxy/resound "leagues deep" to name a few.
 
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William Stutter said:
totally agree to that.

but i think since the scene is quite separated because of so many subgenres these days it gets harder to make a classic tune almost everyone has a connection to.
maybe it's more about creating a distinctive trademark sound and keeping things individual. i defo have some > personal < classics which surely will be timeless to me but these are far away from being anthems uniting crowds like back in the days. d-bridge "wonder where", synkro/indigo "guidance", synkro "acceptance", bop "song about my dog", asc "focus inwards" and loxy/resound "leagues deep" to name a few.
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thats fucking funny man, thats crazy, i was thinking to myself, like, what outside of drumfunk, this last decade, do i rate as classics? and i couldnt think of anything, because i feel like i didnt listen to anything for the longest time, but then ASC popped up in the back of my mind.
then i saw your post and all those are classics. maybe not resound so much, he is dope, but i dont know about classic.

timeless is probably a classic though, and new forms probably
 
logikz said:
thats fucking funny man, thats crazy, i was thinking to myself, like, what outside of drumfunk, this last decade, do i rate as classics? and i couldnt think of anything, because i feel like i didnt listen to anything for the longest time, but then ASC popped up in the back of my mind.
then i saw your post and all those are classics. maybe not resound so much, he is dope, but i dont know about classic.

timeless is probably a classic though, and new forms probably
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added a few more. some of them gave birth to a certain subgenre (or fully represented their genres) like "song about my dog" to microfunk and the remix of "japanese electronics" to autonomic. imho.
and some just have a strong message to me, just like the one by asc, synkro's "acceptance" or the tune by loxy and resound:

 
balistics said:
It's really just down to the individual imo, & what you personally consider a classic. For me what comes to mind right away is the Blocks & Escher album, or Dom & Roland's last album. Both very different angles but imo both classic albums. But as I say, I have no doubt the next man would say those albums are utter rubbish & say something ridiculous like Benny L's Low Blow as a classic 😂 There really is no true answer, only what you believe personally really, & at the end of the day that is really all that matters.
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B&E and D&R are classic albums I agree....although out of both of them a new renegade may be the one tune that would be in a ton of mixes today.
 
@William Stutter

I know what you mean about personal favs as classics and you named some great tunes but I wouldn't say those are the type of classics im talking about. 15 years from now I don't see people drawing for Bop-Song About My Dog if you know what I mean.
 
PMG said:
A tune I still can't get out of my head is Only u from Response. That's a classic to me.
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this and Tell Me are perfect examples of what I was getting at with my original post mang......if these tunes dropped in like 04 on soul:r or Innerground they would be getting canned today but instead are overlooked by many and are great fucking tunes.
 
beknoxx said:
this and Tell Me are perfect examples of what I was getting at with my original post mang......if these tunes dropped in like 04 on soul:r or Innerground they would be getting canned today but instead are overlooked by many and are great fucking tunes.
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I feel the same about some Naibu tunes. Like, I still dearly listen to Fireflies and Seoul (Scorpio version) from Naibu, which are also pretty "old" by now. Naibu is actually one of my favorite DNB artists. His music is one of the reasons I got into DNB in the first place.... But yeah, I cant imagine any other label besides Horizons music, which would have released music like this.


.
 
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do dnb 'classics' have to be universally agreed upon? a tune like HC - If We Ever seemed to unify the scene to a large degree but I can't stand it. whereas a tune like Die & Break - Grand Funk Hustle is a humungous genre-crossing anthem if ever I heard one, but it kinda vanished without trace.

either way I'm not expecting to see anything have the same impact that tunes like Inner City Life and Brown Paper Bag had back in the day. great tunes will always be made, but I think once a new genre becomes properly established, it's really hard to for anything truly groundbreaking to happen. the surprise-factor disappears because now everyone more or less knows what to expect from a dnb tune, whereas back then we didn't.
 
Large Marge said:
do dnb 'classics' have to be universally agreed upon? a tune like HC - If We Ever seemed to unify the scene to a large degree but I can't stand it. whereas a tune like Die & Break - Grand Funk Hustle is a humungous genre-crossing anthem if ever I heard one, but it kinda vanished without trace.

either way I'm not expecting to see anything have the same impact that tunes like Inner City Life and Brown Paper Bag had back in the day. great tunes will always be made, but I think once a new genre becomes properly established, it's really hard to for anything truly groundbreaking to happen. the surprise-factor disappears because now everyone more or less knows what to expect from a dnb tune, whereas back then we didn't.
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excellent point there.......I just think the muzik is made so much easier now and accessible now that tunes don't hold the shelf life. BITD when I could only purchase vinyl 5 singles would cost me about 55 to 60 bucks American. So that was 10 tunes and some of those maybe I didn't like a side as much as the other so I had to be selective with my choices so only the best got purchased every week. Now the same 60 bucks I can get 40 tunes or more so every week there are a lot more to replace the week prior. Also maybe 20 releases on a Monday (I think was the release day back then hahaha) vs the 70 releases on just Friday is insane.
 
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