BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER
by Anicee Gadis, CITY SEARCH NIGHT CLUBS September 13 '99
They say history repeats itself. Only the names and faces change...and the number of beats per minute. The fastest music around these days is drum 'n' bass, the British-born fusion of dub, techno and hip hop that clocks in at 160 beats-per-minute plus. The fragmented polyrhythms of this hi-tech roots music were always a reaction to the rigid thud of machine-generated electronica; but now a growing number of New York musicians are taking that reaction one step further and embracing the technically challenging—some would say impossible—idea of reproducing drum 'n' bass live, without relinquishing the rapid-fire tempo. The result might be described as a jazz improv platform for the year 2000.
According to Swiss-born jazz-trained drummer Jojo Mayer—35-year-old crown prince and current organizer of the NYC live drum 'n' bass scene—the new sound is a live reinterpretation of DJ culture, crossbred with the interactive syntax commonly used by jazz musicians. "We're basically reverse engineering electronic music," Mayer explained. Though it can sound like a textbook imitation, live drum'n' bass is actually a real-time exercise in polyrhythmic layering. In other words, local drum 'n' bass bands, like Mayer's own Nerve and others such as Liminal, Plexus and Futureproof, function as a kind of sonic brainwave, passing rhythmic impulses from bass to drum to keys.
Like any burgeoning underground scene, the music meets with mixed responses; crowds range from over the-hill club kids to techie nerds to dub junkies to new school b-boys looking for a fix. One of the bestplaces to watch live drum 'n' bass in Manhattan is the Tuesday night Prohibited Beatz party at Tribeca's Shine. Started by Mayer at Izzy Bar in January '98, the party now attracts a sizable crowd of Soho sophisticates blending with post-ravers in a kind of Lenny-Kravitz-video-meets-"Blade Runner"-backdrop scenario.
Mayer likens the scene to a new forum for experimental jazz-based music, using the work of Miles Davis as an analogy. He jokes that he even had hopes of playing with the jazz icon when he first moved to New York nearly 10 years ago. "Miles was never a brilliant technician. People like Dizzy Gillespie were true virtuosos on the trumpet. But Miles started the idea of reduction as a concept and really learned to do stuff with space. Then in the late '60s, when he started all of his electronic stuff, and put out 'Bitches' Brew'—he was the first."
Instead of Davis, Mayer played with musicians like Me'Shell Ndegeocello and Vernon Reid, eventually spearheading his own band Nerve in spring '98. The drum 'n' bass quartet (Mayer on drums, Tim Lefebvre on bass, Jamie Saft on synthesizer and Roli Mosimann as producer and sound engineer) plays one of the best live sets in the city. Like a true composer, Mayer says the music comes first, but he also agrees that there is a delicate balance between developing a new genre and keeping it audience-accessible. It was for that reason that he brought in a core group of well-known MCs like Jonny D., T.C. Izlam, MC Panik and Posi-D, whom he claims are good at "snapping the crowd out of its shyness," but also know when to pull back.
Conrad Sanguineti, who manages many of these same NYC-based MCs for the company Headrush, agrees that they are a crucial link between the musicians and audience: "They definitely hype the crowd,and they also direct the band, sometimes without people even realizing it. T.C. will whisper in the bassist's ear to funk it up a little, or to do a solo. They'll rhyme for maybe 16 bars, and then the band will know to change up the tempo." Sanguineti recognizes the music's jazz improv roots. "[Nerve band members] are mostly jazz cats. It's pretty sick what they're doing up there, when they all hit the right chord." A 24-7 drum 'n' bass man, Sanguineti is also affiliated with the Direct Drive label, whose fall lineup of Saturday night parties at Baktun, hosted by such DJs as Wally, Cassien and Carol C., reveals yet another branch of the electronic music scene.
(exerpt)
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