Hollow Earth

I wish I could link to the precise post on which Simon first described the Hardcore lineage as "The Continuum". Almost immediately, in the following sentence, he abbreviated it to 'Nuum. I'm an absurdly close reader of his and certain it was at Blissblog, not within another context. I distinctly remember thinking I didn't like the coinage one bit. I could see precisely what he meant but I wished to goodness he'd chosen a different word, it seemed a bit clumsy, a bit explicit, an intellectual term masquerading as slang. But in testament to his judgement it has stuck in a way that some of my own hopeless attempts at coinage never have. The concept was written large throughout Energy Flash of course, but somehow the lack of a precise word made the idea suitably fuzzy - because of course this is an etymological grey area. However, we call the Thames the Thames even when its source and mouth are difficult to pinpoint and when it is fed by many other rivers, so enough of the griping already!

It wasn't until the series of lectures that Mark organised for FACT (not that FACT) and The Wire that the term "Nuum" really came into focus and became the battleground it is today. Subsequently Reynolds has been edged into the role of gatekeeper, unwillingly expected to pass judgement on what is or isn't Nuumological. The Nuum has become a focal point for a raft of younger critics to express dissatisfaction with what they feel to be a critical hegemony. Also now it appears that if Reynolds, on the basis of entirely reasonable subjective judgments, doesn't like a piece of music that this infers that the music is not of the Nuum. As though on behalf of a dismissed employee people rally around promising that such-and-such an artist has authentic Nuum credentials, used to carry a record box for L Double, was in charge of Goldie's remaining tooth enamel or ran a Sex Hotline for Dem 2.

The whole thing about claiming to belong to "The Continuum" is fraught with complexities. The very use of the term or concept of the Nuum immediately implies that the person using the term is conceiving of this music within an historic context. This is incompatible with the lumpen nature of Nuum music, this kind of Middle-class intellectualism and self-consciousness is by definition absent from the Nuum. The moment an artist declares he making Nuum music he isn't - because to be a proper member of the Ardkore Continuum is to be a water particle in the river, not standing on a bridge looking upstream.

Now I didn't write the rules and I didn't come up with the concept! I'd freely admit to being a privileged Middle-class intellectual, but it wouldn't necessarily be the way I'd dissect it. In all probability I'd pussyfoot around uselessly. I don't even have much of a problem with any old music or musician "wanting in", they're welcome as far as I'm concerned.* That is simply how it works. I did try to make it along to one of those lectures but I wonder if anybody made this point? In some ways it's so blatantly obvious, and staring one in the face as to be invisible. Though of course it's only with the crisp focus of the word "Nuum" that this becomes so stark. There is, however a big stumbling block to my argument. One of the ways, beyond it being a Pirate Radio staple in London, beyond the involvement of a similar cast of characters, beyond its presence in a certain kind of grassroots record shop, in which a vaunted Middle-class intellectual is able to identify what is "of the Nuum", is how this music quotes itself. On the face of it this denotes that indeed it is conscious of itself.....doesn't it?

I was rooting around for examples of wholesale plunder, whereby an entire tune was lifted wholesale from one era to another to make a musical point of continuity but actually there were slim pickings, the best I can come up with is the Speed Garage remix of "Music is My Life". Most of the time, to return to my earlier metaphor, the quotations are molecular: accelerated breakbeats, klaxons, cut-up samples of gushing Divas, distorting basslines. Generally though they form a musical vernacular, and are not wheeled out to prove lineage. Often the most powerful signals of supposedly belonging to the Nuum are the least tasteful and most maladroit, the samples of T'Pau and the disgusting basslines, musical choices the Middle-classes masquerading as bad bwoys implicitly are uncomfortable with. From the perspective of my argument therefore, and I admit this is a little difficult to sustain, the artist's intent when making music is everything. To use a linguistic metaphor, to speak cockney is fine, for the University-educated to slacken their jaw and double their negatives ain't.

*...though honesty is a big thing for me..