It was the "dubstep's for pussies" comment in "Deadpool 2", which I watched part of Sunday morning as I ate a donut (ok, multiple donuts) for breakfast, that drew me to share this one, and to thinking about microscenes in general. I've always loved riddims, and so it was that I was drawn to drum n bass in the mid 90s as my exposure to electronic music expanded. And anything that grew naturally from a love of both synthetic sounds and hardcore politics was going to grab my interest. So sometime in 1996, I learned about Atari Teenage Riot and really got into digital hardcore. Bought the records, mail ordered the t-shirts, went to at least one or two shows when anyone from the roster came to the States. Even showed up for Wu-Tang/Rage Against the Machine to catch ATR from the expensive seats at Merriweather.
But it was a trend, like crystal soda and third wave ska. It didn't stick for me past the now-beloved "Live at Brixton Academy 1999" set, by which point I had probably donated the t-shirts and sold the CDs. This, which came pre-stocked in a 15-count display to the record department in 1998, is one of the few vestiges of that fandom. This holds up pretty well a quarter century after the fact; it clearly did some blocking to clear a path for big beat and IDM and, ultimately, EDM to become one of the predominant sounds of the 20s. At this late date, I'm probably most jazzed by Curse of the Golden Vampire, an Alec Empire/Justin Broadrick/Kevin Martin collab that draws as much from early 90s UK grind & crust as mid 90s hip hop as it does from 80s UKHC. Did it open me up to checking out Coil and Whitehouse? I can't say precisely, but there's a line there I just can't ignore.
So back to microscenes: I think I've always been reluctant to talk about the art I've embraced only temporarily. No one wants to be considered a poseur, but it's also a very normal part of our fandom for it to burn brightly and quickly sometimes. Yeah, I'm a guy in his mid 40s who'll probably listen to Fugazi and Discharge until the day he dies. But I also chased down out of print Toasters records in the 90s, had more than a few Bandcamp purchases of chillwave, and hope to be a bit more kind to myself when my current k-pop obsession wears down. Whether the greater world thinks it was cool is irrelevant. I dug it then; that's enough.
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