[Glice]

Sure, granted. Yeah, Harder than the Rest was the second DHR record I bought. I have an awful lot of them, but I gave up after they dropped Patric C and started to court NIN.

I can see what you're saying, there is a good point there - for a lot of people, dnb was a very exciting development in music. And it has been absorbed into a lot of other genres. I think an analogy for my line of thought is the difference between punk rock of the Rancid/ NoFx type and where bands like SY or Bauhaus (etc, etc) took it.

What I mean is that punk rock of the formulaic type and dnb of the dancefloor type (so, 1989-1997) is true to its roots. Both serve a social function, and both require that the music adheres to the formulas of their genre. Insofar as this category exists, both musics are functional and anti-progressive... there is progression, but the progressions are small... for dnb it would be finding new ways of using the Amen break, or the few other breaks that were used.

This is the point where the argument gets difficult - I define dnb as being primarily a dancefloor medium, that is, it serves a purpose and a function; anything which does not serve this purpose is probably techno. People like Moby (although it galls me to say this) were exciting at one point because they lifted ideas from 'pure' dnb and packaged them in a more amenable way. Essentially, I'm happy to agree to disagree - I think the cerebral type of music for the record player isn't really dnb, but has elements of it. This is why I say there aren't really any whole albums - Roni Size came out of the proper dnb scene (if you're from around Bristol you were obliged to see him at least a million times, he dj'ed with his girlfriend at a house party down the road from me once) and tried to make listenable albums, and although his dj'ing is shit-hot, the albums don't really get the respect in the scene. The only person I ever saw as taking dnb to a more 'artistic' level sucessfully was Photek, and that was only the one album (the one with nen-ti-ich-ryu or whatever it was called) after which he settled more into the techno/ laptop scene, and by which time people got bored of 'progressive' dnb and turned to electronica, glitch, IDM and techno.

There are a few utterly wonderful 12"s that came out of dnb, but I suspect the only people who would be able to give a comprehensive list would be dj's. I'll e-mail a few mates of mine who've been in the scene for 15 years or so, see what they say, but I will say that I know they'll agree with me - I say this because these are borrowed opinions, lifted entirely from people I know on the scene.

Rambling bollocks, sorry...