Mark Fisher (yes, that Mark Fisher) front & center, featured with the techno/jungle/ambient group D-Generation (no, not that D-Generation) in 1994, as part of a write-up by future Fisher collaborator, Simon Reynolds. Quoting his original article:
“D-Generation's atmospheric dance is like a twilight-zone Ultramarine--lots of English imagery, but instead of bucolic bliss, the vibe is urban decay, dread and disassociation. On their EP "Entropy In the UK", "73/93" rails against the "Nostalgia Conspiracy", using Dr Who samples of "no future". D-Generation call their music "techno haunted by the ghost of punk" and on 'The Condition Of Muzak' that's literally the case, as it samples Johnny Rotten's infamous taunt: 'ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". Originally, the target was
rave culture itself, but this has widened out, says band ideologue Simon Biddell, "to implicate the entire culture of cynical irony." Then there's "Rotting Hill", a stab at "a 'Ghost Town' for the '90s"; Elgar's patriotic triumphalism is offset by samples from the movie Lucky Jim--"Merrie England? England was never merry!".
D-Generation, says Biddell, are dismayed by the way "young people are content to embrace a rock canon handed down to them, and seem unable to embrace the present, let alone posit a future." But they're optimistic about the emergence of "a counter-scene, bands like Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis, Pram, Insides, who are using ambient and techno ideas but saying something about the 'real world', not withdrawing from it".
Add D-Generation to the list of this nation's saving graces.”
Fisher was five years off from his PhD at that point, and already “hauntology” was clearly present in his endeavors.
You can take a listen to their only release here.
Just discovered yet another remix of Blue (originally by Eiffel 65)... 😮 The dance music of the 90's/early 2000's was so good that it's actually no wonder if lately artists are bringing those songs back in new versions (for an easy win too 😏)!
90's dance today. Funnily enough, one of the keyboardists for this band was Brian Cox, a physicist of which I have read one of his books, and have probably seen at least one of his appearances on television. Small world.
Anyways, This album is mediocre at best and sleep-inducing at worst. If you want to make a D:Ream song, here's the formula: take an average dance drum beat. Fiddle around on your bass for a minute until you find something that sounds good enough (some of these seriously sound like a line I would make while idly staring at my fretboard- not awful, but definitely not inspired). Get a poppy rhythm piano or maybe a synth, put that on top. Get your female backup singer to repeat the main phrase of the song, often the title, over and over again; then sing over that with some near-meaningless lyrics for the verse, making sure to harmonize with the backup singer during the chorus where you also say the main phrase. Then repeat nine more times to get yourself an album!
Perhaps I'm being too harsh. It's not bad music. It's just deeply uninteresting. I'd probably like these songs a lot more if I was dancing to it drunk or high in a British club back in 1993 (or if I was a Labour Party member, apparently). It's cheesy, and this isn't a nice wheel of cheddar; it's aged like the soggy old slice of 3-month-old american cheese you forgot at the back of the fridge, and even then that slice would probably still look better than the album cover.
I will concede some things, however. The transition from the first to the second track is smooth as butter, and the song 'Glorious,' which is the only instrumental track, is far more engaging of a song than the rest of the album. I like the interplay between the piano and acoustic guitar, and the lines with said guitar are legitimately pretty good. Finally the chorus of 'So Long Movin' On' does have a moment of catchiness before fading back into mediocrity.