if you're gonna shoot, you better not miss

いきなりだけど　Do you know the song ‘Circles’, by Adam F? If so, you might enjoy this song.

If you don't know that song, no worries. For just a moment, I'd like to talk about soccer (football, whatever):

It's the day after Christmas, December 2013, and fans are crammed into a stadium watching the Scottish Premiership. Glasgow Celtic is stuck deep in their own territory, having just regained control of the ball after fending off a scoring attempt from the other team. They make a few attempts at a counter-attack, but the opposition applies pressure, trapping Glasgow at the half line. The score is tied, 0-0.

Left without options, Glasgow's #16 dishes it back to a player named Virgil Van Dijk, then a young up-and comer in the league. Virgil is the second-furthest defender back on the field, so the correct tactical move for Virgil here is to pause while his teammates re-position.

His job is to play it safe. If he loses the ball, that presents another potential scoring opportunity for the other team — this time, they might not miss.

So, Virgil's teammates begin to spread out, making themselves open for a pass. Virgil starts to jog forward with the ball, edging toward two opponents. They clearly expect him to pass it to one side, but ...he doesn't. Instead, Virgil finds a miniscule gap in between the two forwards, and threads it. Then he keeps going, bending around another opponent. Then another.

This is a terrible idea. Virgil has left a hole in his own team's defense, and is instead in a full-on sprint toward the opposite goal line, still a good 40 meters away. Several opportunities to distribute the ball to his teammates are ignored. He keeps running.

There aren't many cheers, yet — the crowd doesn't have time. They're more confused than anything. You can actually hear the klink-swish of the ball smacking the back pole of the net before they start really screaming, because they simply didn't see the shot coming, and they certainly didn't think it would go in.

One-nil for Glasgow Celtic, for what will be the first and last goal of the game.

There isn't anything in the rulebook against taking the risk that Virgil Van Dijk did; that's why the goal counted. It was just unexpected.

But there is an unwritten rule that was in play on the field, which I think is also a rule that apples to music:

If you're gonna shoot, you better not miss.

~~~~~~~

If you've never heard the original 'Circles' by Adam F, you should absolutely listen to the original. It's a foundational song in what was then a still-maturing genre of jungle/drum n bass. At once ethereal, technical, and soulful, it sounds like the soundtrack to an alternate-future documentary about a cyborg ceasefire. Over the decades we've become accustomed to bass-as-hammer, learning to enjoy the pain of being hit in the face; 'Circles' offers a low-end formulation of a more elegant sort, in which the bass feels more like the violet-blue purring of a rocket engine, gently phasing us toward Saturn.

But then again, it's impossible to talk about 'Circles' without talking about how most people have heard it recently — on Tiktok, as a sample in the Pinkpantheress song, Break It Off.

It's easily recognizable, because Pinkpantheress has barely altered the source sample. She's used only the most memorable part of the song; the drums and the melody. The patient, pensive layered chords are gone, as are the slow 808 bass meditations. It feels like a sketch, because it was a sketch: As she posted in a Tiktok before releasing it,

'so i was playing around and just made this track / just a lil experimenting u kno'.

@pinkpantheress

please also tell me which song you guys want out next because I HAVE NO CLUE WHICH ONES TO RELEASE #JDAirMaxYourWay #fyp #LiftYourDream #music

'Break It Off' is barely a 'song'. It's 95 seconds long, has only two verses, and in terms of its structural DNA, it probably has less to do with the jungle scene than with what Dipset was doing with their beatjacked mixtape freestyles in 2006. It's basically a collage.

Her version, if we can call it a 'version', is so gleefully cavalier with the source material that it that it enacts almost a complete removal from its original context: something that was once pensive and almost religious is turned into something fast, frantic, and cute.

This works precisely because Pinkpantheress is making music for an audience that doesn't necessarily know or care about the original.

I imagine the situation is different in the UK, but I've met plenty of Americans who have told me that they love 'Break It Off', but have never heard of 'Circles'. I'd also imagine that lots of her new fans are completely unaware that there is even a genre called 'drum and bass' or 'jungle'.

to wit:

This isn't to diminish anything Pinkpantheress has done: her song is incredibly catchy. I dare you to play it only once.

I suppose that, to some people, her use of this song could feel like 'disrespect'.

But I would contend that anyone who feels this way probably doesn't truly understand culture, and maybe should sit down and think about the fact that they have become a walking Principal Skinner meme.

In other words, what pinkpantheress is doing is very punk, and if you don't get it, you're square.

This brings me to the Pola & Bryson mix, which is very much not punk. For the first 42 seconds, it sounds exactly like the original, just sped up a tiny bit. In fact, the track is so similar that it's managed to confuse YouTube's copyright algorithm into thinking it's just the original song.

But then, suddenly, it shifts.

It’s hard to explain how that initial kick drum at 0:43 feels to someone who is intimately familiar with the song. Even now, it makes me uneasy.

The dead space in between that kick and the first snare is probably only a fraction of a second, but it feels like it takes days; anyway, it’s an uncomfortable pause, enough time in which to realize that you’re not hearing the original, but something which might well be blasphemous.

But the song keeps moving.

The bass is a little too wide, far too gutteral to be mistaken for something that would have been made during the 90s, but it's not too far off. And it ditches the iconic drum sample for something more clipped and utilitarian.

It's good. But more than that, it's surprising. The first time I heard it, I was shocked that anyone would have the nerve.

This is different from the sort of glee one feels when hearing Pinkpantheress' playful take on 'Circles'. Instead, Pola and Bryson bring a kind of bewilderment, the same

'... no way, is he actually going for it?!’ 

that was undoubtedly running through Van Dijk's teammates' minds in 2013.

I don't particularly want to pit these two songs against each other, but considering that they built off the same sample, and released within about 8 months of one another (Pinkpantheress was first), maybe it's unavoidable.

But they’re fundamentally different. Whereas Pinkpantheress is simply using the conventions of drum and bass as one color among many in her musical palette and thus perhaps can get a ‘pass’ for dabbling, Pola and Bryson are planted firmly in the drum and bass lineage. They've released music through Hospital, a record label that's been around since the mid ‘90s. Their direct audience is deeply aware of the source material, and 'Circles' holds a canonical place in the legend of drum n bass' formation.

They're standing on the pitch, deep on in their own territory with eleven men standing in front of them, and they ...just start running.

If it wasn't absolutely top-notch, they'd instantly be shunned for defiling a classic. Think back to the last time you've heard a rapper do a cover of Biggie's 'Juicy' on their album. You probably can't - because nobody wants to risk that shot. Same logic applies here.

It's hard to call their remix 'imaginative', or even 'creative'; it's just very, very well executed. No flashy fake-outs, no tricky curves. Just calmly and confidently putting the ball into the back of the net.

When the crowd loses their mind over this one at the rave, it's mostly because of the sheer nerve of it all.

@shogunaudio

Thank you Bristol ❤️ It’s good to be back! Pola & Bryson dropping their Adam F - Circles bootleg on Friday 🔥 #drumandbass #dnb #rave #bristol #dnbtok

This remix is a 'VIP'; which in the parlance of the scene is a fancy way of saying that it is an illegal bootleg; Pola & Bryson have said that it will probably never see an official release. Sure enough, it’s been three years, and no Spotify, no iTunes, no nothing.

I don't think the Pola & Bryson remix is in any way superior to the original. Nor do I think Pinkpantheress' version is better. They're different, and interesting in their own ways. I enjoy both interpretations, but neither quite transport me to the same place that Adam F did, and does.

But then again, Adam F was in uncharted territory.

...which is a little ironic for me to say, I guess. The only reason Adam was in 'uncharted territory' is that he was doing precisely what Pinkpantheress did: gleefully pilfering the sugary frosting off of another song, and refusing to engage it on its own terms, instead inventing a new game to play.

That is to say: Adam F completely eviscerates the 1976 jazz tune 'Westchester Lady' for his own purposes. He doesn't touch Bob James' piano solo, and completely ignores the presence of Grover Washington. Adam F's song is composed from the first eleven seconds of the recording. The rest of the composition, the true guts of it, are left on the floor.

Most of the ravers in 1996 were completely unaware. I certainly was.

I'm sure there were some old jazz dudes out there who loved the original in ‘76, heard what Adam F did to it twenty years later in ‘96, and scoffed.

But who cares about those guys? They’re squares.

Just to recap:

Van Dijk's goal, [link]
Adam F - Circles, [link]
Pinkpantheress - break it off, [link]
Pola & Bryson - Circles VIP, [link]
Bob James talking about his song being sampled, [link]

All highly recommended, if you dig.

Anyway, this makes me curious; is there a remix that you've been surprised at recently? Send it to me, I'd love to hear it.

Also, if you’ve read this far, I’m thinking of making this one into a video. Would you watch a video version of this?

Let me know. I’ll read all responses.

stay in tune,
dexter