Steve Goodman
"Strategies of sonic seduction seem more interesting to me than sonic violence"

Excerpt published in Gonzo (circus), nr. 63 (Leuven, 2004).
Alex de Jong en Marc Schuilenburg

Speed is a central notion in your work. You refer to speed as "a sonic relation in electronic music". Can you explain this? What is the qualitative aspect of speed?
Matter is composed of relations of speed and slowness. Geological movements are clearly slower than those of a river, and in fact their primary differentiation is one of speed. Solids are molecularly slow compared with liquids and gases. I'm not so interested in speed in a quantitative sense [fastness was a pre-occupation of the futurists and the original derivation of the term 'speed tribe' stems refers to amphetamine charged motorcycle gangs in Toyko] but rather as a relation, one of rhythmic composition, a vibrational coalescence's of populations of bodies. The equally applies to sonic populations, sonic bodies, sonic matter.

What are the examples of songs in electronic music in which speed takes a new or different turn?
Jungle was a rhythmic warp in the fabric of sonic matter. It singularly brought together the tectonic speed of dub bass with the warp speed of hyperrhythm thus forming a vortical plane of consistency. So I'm interested in following this plane through the hardcore continuum [hardcore/jungle/drum'n'bass/uk garage/grime and so on] With grime, mc vocals, a hyperkinetic orality, takes over where accelerated breakbeats once were. The beats end to be empty and angular, providing a rhythmic shadow space for the percussive voice.

You define a speedtribe as "an abstract machine for modulating mood and constructing vortical rhythmic collectives". In which way is a speedtribe another word for a lifestyle? And can, for instance, Greenpeace or the anti-global movement be a speedtribe?
Sign value and signification seem to be a very central part in what are commonly referred to as lifestyles, and so tend towards the capture of a speed tribe into merely a series of references which is not so interesting. But what I am interested in with the concept of the speed tribe is much closer to a collective ethics, in Spinoza's sense; a tactics of affective contagion. Anti-capitalist, ecological or ideological movements certainly have no necessary relationship to speed tribalism. As essentially movements of resistance and critique, they tend to have very little interesting to say on exciting affective potential. Certainly Greenpeace's maritime interventions could be thought in relation to speed and movement as these operate at the level of tactics. And the swarming tactics of the anti-globalization movement often converge with a speed tribalist modes of composition. But neither are really that concerned with or have anything positive to say about the micropolitics of sensation.

In which way do you correlate a speedtribe (or vibe tribe) to a subcultural continuum or our multicultural society?
I prefer the concept of a Microculture to that of subculture. The sonic cultures with which the idea of the speed tribe resonates tend to be predominantly Afro-diasporic, which thought through subcultural theory tend to be reduced to practices for the production of identity and signification. Speed tribes are viral microcultures, in which processes of subjectification are side effects of more fundamental rhythmic and affective processes. Microculture as a term draws our attention towards those techno-cultural rhythms which compose groups, and their potential for affective contagion via the sonic.

The word 'vortex' is appearing a lot in electronic music from the UK especially break beat centred music. Can you explain what it means, how you use it and in what sense it is used in music?
I use the term vortex in relation to the physic of fluids, specifically the dynamics of turbulence, and the emergence of order out of chaos. A vortex is a 3 dimensional spiral in the fabric of matter, and functions like the engine of change, mutation and becoming. Currently, when used in conjunction with the sonic, it commonly tends to appear in avant gardist and microsonic approaches to indeterminacy and generative music. But I think it makes a more positive conjunction with the polyrhythmic perversity of the hardcore continuum and its mobilisation of affect via the circuit of percussive pressure-body-sensation-movement. Literally a vortex is a movement engine, causing rotating in the most rigidified structures, like a sonic tornado cutting a path through an urban sprawl, mixing particles from flattened architectures into new transitory configuration.

Can you explain what the notion of Afrofuturism is? How does it shows up in electronic music?
Afrofuturism is the intersection of the themes of black science fiction with the fields of literature, music, cinema etc. One of afrofuturism's most important moves is to collapse science fiction's far future narrative of alien abduction into actually being about slavery, colonialism and the impact of modern imperialism in Africa, and the experience of alienation within the African diaspora. In electronic music, the term is usually used to refer to a Afro-american lineage which includes Sun Ra, Lee Scratch Perry, George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic, strands of sci-fi hip hop and so on, and often is manifest as a black cyberpunk of sound, or what Ron Eglash describes as a vernacular cybernetics . It is the uk variants of sonic Afrofuturism, reflecting the British experience of diasporization, and best described by the writer Kodwo Eshun which most interest me, in particular the intersection of Afrofuturist themes with what I described earlier as the 'hardcore continuum' and its hyperrhythmic vorticism.

In the Netherlands there is, on a political level, a lot to do about multicultural society. In which way draws this Afrofuturism parallel lines through multiple identities? Which lines or journey's (asian, africa, etc.) are undertaken according to your opinion? In what way does Afrofuturism differ from a subcultural study? Does Afrofuturism have a class or race notion?
Afrofuturism is the product of the specific racial history of the Black Atlantic, European imperialism in Africa and the subsequent diasporization of African cultures to South America, the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe. In any system, the periphery is always a particularly powerful zone, and to the extent that it is relatively destratified, lets the future to feed in. It is important therefore to locate the peripheral rhythmic futurism in any distributed diasporic population. In contemporary urban systems, that periphery will often be found nestled relatively close to centres of capital.

Subcultural studies often had very little to say about sound, and would instead proliferate discourse surrounding a sonic culture, paying attention to styles of dress, group ritual and so on as 'significant' or generative of meaning. I really don't think it is the most productive way to think about Afro futurisms, although no doubt many will. I prefer the term microculture to subculture and the way it draws attention to the molecular composition of a sonic population, its speeds, frequencies and affects, not its meanings – also 'micro' it has none of the connotations of lowliness in a social hierarchy. Kodwo Eshun has often related Afrofuturism to what he calls 'black unpopular culture', attacking the stereotype of black music being simply the meme pool from which Western popular culture finds its energy. Some Afro futurisms may well fit with this analysis, some may not.

Jonny L says in an interview to Knowledge that the body has two frequencies: "One at around 80 KHz and one at about 6 KHz. You can make a bass sound that's low and loud enough to match the same frequency as the body. When you do that, it cancels them out…." In what way does Jonny L speak of intensity in addition to electronic music? Is this research of sound as a weapon our final intensity (our final 'Hurt You So')?
An American company recently signed a $1 million contract to supply sonic lasers to the US marines in Iraq. Apart from delivering ultra-directional messages over a long distance, and thereby helping keep the enemy at arms length, these sound cannons can literally make people move, like a sonic water cannon. Their primary use has therefore been about the dispersion of crowds. For me, when electronic music is doing something interesting, it is doing the opposite. It is moving yes, but charging a crowd with energy, intensifying it, not dispersing it. It is a convergent mobilisation as opposed to a divergent one. Both these militaristic and minor modes of sonic warfare are about hacking into the nervous system of the body. What is interesting about different sounds and rhythms is how they activate different parts of the body. The detail of the higher audible frequencies for example tend to mobilise the digits in the fingers, while bass frequencies tend to possess the bodies energetic centre, just below the stomach. More than this affinity of certain frequencies to different zones of the body, different parts of the body, as lumps of matter, have different resonant frequencies. Here, the inaudible is more interesting whether under 20Hz or over 2kHz. For example around 17Hz the eye balls begin to vibrate causing visual hallucinations and tracers. A minor sonic warfare seems to me to diverge from an avant gardist equation of noise as weapon. Right now, strategies of sonic seduction seem more interesting to me than sonic violence.

In an interview with Plasticman you've called grime "an urban affect". Can you explain this? In what way is the urban related to popmodern media as music, clothing, clips and games?
Cities work like vast rhythmic transducers, bringing together and converting all kinds of cultural pulses and cycles. They simultaneously force a multiplicity of competing rhythms into massified, metric isorhythms, while at the same time releasing mutant polyrhythmic packs from peripheral zones within. Grime converts the tension of living on the underside of the city. It takes this set of tensions, sensations and percepts and builds a virtual sonic architecture out of them, remaking the city. As an urban affect, grime constitutes a particular block of sensations, frequencies, rhythms, phonemes which populate and intensify the airwaves. 'Grime' doesn't simply 'represent' the ghetto, like people have always said about rap and hip hop, but rather transduces some of its energy, converts the tension of living in a bleak concrete environment into the sonic. Sonically, grime transforms London, particularly east London, into a computer game, all suspense, challenges, trapdoors, elevators, invisible forcefields, blips, bleeps and fanfares. Like hip hop, grime's power is as much at work through its fictionalisation or virtualisation of the city as in its social realism.

Tracking the various permutations in hardcore jungle to drum & bass we notice a development from the drumpatrons (Photek, Squarepusher) to the bass (Bad Company, Dillinja & Lemon D) and, now, to the use of vocals ('vocal science'). What are the consequences of this focus on the diva? Is the beat shifting to somewhere else (for instance chello-bassed music)? Can you tell us about the current state of the London music scene?
I can only really talk about current mutations of the hardcore continuum, which to most Londoners is invisible, unless you listen to pirate radio. The notable change in the post-2step soundscape relates to the oral culture, the MC culture taking over as a significant part of the hardcore continuum instead of taking a back seat to the DJ. But at the same time, the rhythm culture seems to want its autonomy back.
One could argue that in the 1990s, the hardcore continuum perfected its rhythm and bass science. UK garage therefore was a refocusing of those very distinctive tactics of sound science on the female voice, and therefore the colonisation of a new frequency band and its subjection to click and cut. The post-2step landscape has thrown up a range of strange sounds, mostly all of which still run at UK garage speed, around 135bpm, although many have adopted a half speed orientation to make space for the mc.
You could say that one crew in particular have functioned as the chemical catalyst for much of what is happening now, and it is not necessarily the one most people have heard of. While So Solid crew stormed the charts, they clearly took a wrong turning, ending up producing music on a US r&b/hip hop template, thus loosing everything exciting about the scene that had pushed them through. Meanwhile, with a much lower profile, the other major crew of the emergent late 90s garage rap scene, Pay As You Go cartel [featuring dj/producers such as Target, Geeneus, Slimzee and mcs such as Wiley, Gods Gift, Maxwell D & Plague, Major Ace & Flow Dan] have gone on, through their independent activities within the scene, either as key players behind major pirate radio stations, or producers, DJ's and MC's, to nurture and inspire the emergent grime scene and crews like Roll Deep [from which Dizzee Rascal emerged, nurtured by PAUG's Wiley], East Connection, Nasty Crew, N Double A, Musketeers, More Fire Crew, Meridian, Essentials and so on.
I hear a lot of the 80s in grime, a certain excitement about basic synthetic sounds such as the square wave or saw tooth tones. Also much grime uses dramatic abrasive strings, especially cellos. It is not surprising to find a micro-style originally termed 'devils' mixes by Wiley [see Wiley interview on hyperdub.com], which have no beats, but just cello'n'bass, which slide octave by octave up and down the scale [e.g. Wiley's Igloo], like old school platform climbing computer games like Donkey Kong. While it has beats, Roll Deep's 'Salt Beef' is a classic example of the cello'n'bass style.
Perhaps grime cannot really be considered dance music anymore, even though it clearly emerged from the hardcore continuum. However, aside from the MC dominated sound, a trackier grime sound has emerged, sometimes referred to as dubstep [south London], sublow [west London], 8bar and so on, all of which roughly refer to micro-variations of the instrumental sound emerging from different zones of London. Generally this trackier side of grime came out of the darker side of UK garage, like Dem2's 'Da Grunge' mix, So Solid's 'Dilemma', El-B's dark swing, Zed Bias or Dj Zinc's breakstep, or the handclappy 'Melody' by Mastersteps.
The key track marking the emergence of 8bar grime however was Musical Mob's Pulse X from a couple of years ago. With its pummelling kick drums, and 8bar alternating patterns customised for the passing of the mic from one MC to another, the link with 2step's slinkiness was broken. This tracky side of grime has a diversity all of its own [producers like Target, Terror Danja, Skepta, Wonder, Wizzbit and Plasticman], with strains also referred to as dubstep [south London with producers such as the Digital Mystikz, Horsepower, Benga & Scream etc.] and sublow.[west London with producers like Jon E. Cash]

What will be the central notions in your forthcoming book Sonic Warfare?
Sonic warmachines, abstract vorticism, bass hydraulics, turbulence, speed tribes, audio virology.

Links:
www.hyperdub.com