Matt's doubts about drum and bass

[Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

I liked drum and bass for about 6 months in the 90s, and then it went
stale for me pretty quickly after that. As a genre, it sounded amazing
when it first started getting around, but then there was no evolution.
As more and more musicians started doing it I was disappointed by how
little variation there was from artist to artist. It was like being
told the same very funny joke over and over again.

So when I first saw that youtube clip, I was like - Aha! That explains it!

I find it appealing that a large pool of musicians could do different
things with the same source material. The problem with DnB for me is
that I don't feel like they're doing different things. The amen break
is almost always front and center in the mix, and with all but a few
artists the way it's sampled/deconstructed is virtually the same,
except for the occasional pitch bend here and there.

So to answer your question, I always thought that most DnB after 1997
or so was pretty unoriginal - unforgivably so after 2000. I didn't
know until I saw the video that they were literally using the exact
same drum sample. I've known since 1999 or so that there is software
that you can drop a drum beat into and have it automatically
"jungle-ized".

Still, I think this story about the Amen Break is probably one of the
top 5 most interesting stories in the history of electronic music.

Matt Davignon
www.ribosomemusic.com

At first I was like:
>>I'm dumbfounded by
>> what it reveals about Drum n Bass music. Can any DnB fans help me out?
>> How could an entire genre of musicians use the exact same drum loop as
>> the central focus of so many of their songs - for like 15 years?

Them Marc Francombe was all:
> Well thats an interesting question, and I wonder whether you thought it 
>up
> before or AFTER you heard this documentary?