Repetition is perhaps the defining feature of electronic dance music. It is a deal breaker for many people. Whether or not a listener can embrace the repetition inherent in the genre is probably the deciding factor in making fans of techno or drum and bass music. Nowhere is the repetition factor more significant than in the footwork genre, particularly in the music of its originator RP Boo.
There are moments in RP Boo’s second LP Fingers, Bank Pads, and Shoe Prints that reach almost Phillip Glass levels of maddening repetition. Listeners feel like they are trapped in some demented brain loop brought on by bad drugs or psychosis. These moments, and indeed entire tracks, can be downright punishing to listen to, testing the listener’s patience and sanity.
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But as with the aforementioned Philip Glass, if listeners can immerse themselves in the repetition, let go, and stop fighting it, the results can be transcendent.
Part of the issue here is that this is, first and foremost, dance music. This is music designed for wild, sweaty clubs at 3:00 AM, for people who forgot how to stop dancing hours ago. The looping, ceaseless quality to this music probably sounds very different to someone dancing frantically, bathed in sweat, mind hopelessly disassociated by bumps of K.
Interesting, artistically sophisticated music does not need to be easy to listen to. Indeed, maybe it should not be. There are times on Fingers, Bank Pads, and Shoe Prints that almost seem like the inverse of harsh noise artists like Merzbow. Whereas harsh noise immerses the listener in pure abstraction with nothing to hold on to, BP Boo forces the listener to endure repetitive, often monotonous loops that give her very little room to breathe or gain orientation. Although nothing on Fingers, Bank Pads, and Shoe Prints quite reaches the screeching, ice pick to the head experimentalism of Merzbow, the relentless, whirling, vocal samples push you almost to the same level of endurance. Other examples of footwork, like Machinedrum’s elegant, entrancing Room(s) flow over the listener like summer rain. Fingers, Bank Pads, and Shoe Prints is a much harsher, more trying listen, but well worth the effort, at least as a frame of reference.
01. 1-2D-20’2
02. Bang’n On King Dr.
03. Your Choice
04. Freezaburn
05. Heat From Us
06. Kemosabe
07. Finish Line D’jayz
08. Daddy’s Home
09. Let’s Dance Again
10. Sleepy
11. I’m Laughing
12. Beat Me
13. Suicide
14. B’Ware