#perch mc

Aaron Vybe & Perch MC - Devastation Mix

AUDIO: MR SOLO - SOUND OF THE RAVER FEAT. PERCH

https://soundcloud.com/mista-solo

AUDIO: ARCHIE B FEAT. PERCH MC - ENERGY

https://soundcloud.com/archieb1

Aaron Vybe & Perch MC - Strange Static Show - LDN Live 14-03-14

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe since UK funky died off you’ve been wondering when the latest iteration of London’s pirate culture music was going to emerge, and what it would sound like. Us nerdy types who like to talk at length about the ‘hardcore continuum’ and suchlike were probably hoping that it would sound something like Juke/Footwork - as rhythmically challenging as Jungle was, as alien and crazed. We weren’t pinning our hopes on any such sound emerging from deep/tech house music, that’s for sure. But then, what the fuck do we know? Most of us thought UK Funky was ‘just house’ when it came about (and for a while it arguably WAS). We don’t know what we’re on about. We just observe from the sidelines and hope to catch on when things turn (from our point of view) ‘interesting’.

For many, UK Funky was never ‘interesting’ enough - for some people this meant it never was dark and spartan and foreboding enough. Producers like Beneath are catering to those people nowadays, and all power to them. I wonder if those who found funky too ‘girly’ and poppy and MC friendly will be more into what is currently being called ”Deep Tech”? Deep tech is dark, ‘serious’, its drum patterns sometimes stiff, hi hats almost militaristic and metronomic. (In fact, I think, drawing some influence from the popular US rap production sounds of the last few years - Lex Luger et al).

I don’t know if this Aaron Vibe set is Deep Tech, stricty speaking. There are strong Bassline/Jackin’ house influences coming through in some of the tunes. There’s loads of samples from old house/garage tunes such as ”Gypsy Woman” and ”Freek N U” etcetera, which I haven’t previously heard as much of in sets by DJs like Lance Morgan and Mark Radford. Well, whether Deep Tech or not, this set is definitely BANGING and with MC Perch shouting out texters and calling reloads you can’t help but feel the garage vibes which seem to have been lacking in London radio for a while.

I mean, a lot of these tunes ARE garage, essentially. It’s all very stripped down, bass-line centred 4X4 beats. There are jungle-ish breakdowns (always something I like to hear) with blissful chords, and drum-n-bass-ish build-n-drops. As I said, a lot of the samples are instantly recognisable to yer older heads as belonging to pirate anthems of bygone years. There’s really nothing we haven’t heard before. But then - where have we heard THAT complaint before? In any case, for those who can't stand things which are 'JUST' things, there's plenty of signs that underground London (via/in collaboration with Birmingham/Sheffield) is putting house through the ringer, its producers naturally gravitating towards the same sonic spectrum as grime/garage/jungle.

''Know My Name'' by Carnao Beats (particularly the AMINE EDGE remix) might prove to be a symptomatic/seminal anthem as house is toughened up to resemble grime. And who would bet against that happening? After all, for British people these are definitely some hard times, particularly for the Coalition persecuted working class communities that have historically produced rave music. Perhaps its fanciful to interpret things so politically, and always tricky with largely instrumental music, but you'll notice listening to this set that there's a tune with a spoken vocal that strikes a glum, paranoid note that you won't find in the average Resident Advisor techno/house set. The voice of a black Londoner spells out a philosophy familiar to fans of US rappers like Chief Keef, Rick Ross and so on: you can't trust anybody, you have to look out for yourself, it's all about making your own money (N.B. I will edit this once I listen to the set again cos I can't remember the actual words, hope I'm not misrepresenting the message here).

This cold pragmatism stands in contrast to the ebullient voice of MC Perch, the reaching out to a community of listeners and invocations to party. Is this music the music of unity, of P/L/U/Rs hugging and blowing their airhorns? To some extent, but also not quite. When I went to see Lance Morgan play at Bodynod in Bristol recently, I noticed that the so-called 'shuffling' style of dancing, while potentially communal (I saw couples/couples-to-be dancing like this), is more usually solitary, a boxed-in aggressiveness which perhaps echoes or dramatises the sort of (justifiably) wary and paranoid psychology that the aforementioned vocal draws on.

Maybe this is the more brutally honest flip-side to the mainstream success of acts like Disclosure and A*M*E - who have made great pop-house tunes but are also quite bland, really? We really are yearning, I think, for something to liberate us from our class-ridden, reactionary, frightened society, our implicit belief in the ''BROKEN BRITAIN'' tabloid diagnosis of our country. We want something that will make us dance together. Perhaps, especially in the middle of society, we feel we ARE together, bound so by our consumer products, our smartphones and our Movembers and so on. But a style of music that creates a crowd of more (temporarily) isolated individuals is perhaps symbolic of what life under neoliberalism is really like - competitive, aggressive, stand-offish?