I could recall a Dutch taxi driver who, upon learning where I was from, reacted with a kind of personal trauma. He knows that reality firsthand. He now lives in the Netherlands — a place where such dynamics don’t exist anyway.
For me, it feels as though this person has stepped beyond the boundaries where it belong — entering spaces where their presence is neither natural nor constructive.
One reason lies in their association with and support for free tekno ideology. I am entirely opposed to these movements, for social, environmental, economic, and cultural reasons. I fully support their ban and their dissolution; For example, with a law similar to the one in the UK, which in the ’90s forced even the founders to leave UK and try to occupy the European mainland. I’ve seen what such ideologies can do, and I imagine the cultural heritage of a country like Luxembourg collapsing if they spread there as they did elsewhere. If someone who supports me also supports such person, I might feel being personally harmed — and could feel compelled to reject that support and my support for such someone.
I also hold footage from a club where the person explicitly warned: “Just make sure you don’t put this video anywhere!!” I also have another video where security says, ‘No filming…!’ It was an event where all pandemic restrictions were disregarded. Among others, I was the only one person wearing a mask there. I cannot endorse such reckless attitudes, which directly contributed to the crisis I myself experienced — a crisis that increased the support I received from citizens from the more western part of Europe. To accept or overlook this would not only betray my own values, but — I think — also the people who supported my person because I stood for something different.
When it comes to Sidney SN, my embrace of liquid drum and bass has always been political. I see the genre as a vehicle for values that separated me from the mainstream drum and bass scene itself. For instance, I’ve known Let It Roll since its very beginning, yet I chose never to participate. And their now-closed club confirmed these reasons for me. For me, modern liquid drum and bass represented something entirely distinct, built on entirely different values. And today, the music itself matters less than the politics Sidney SN embodies: like the reasons of the support of a lot citizens of Europe, and in that sense, his work already fulfilled its political meaning.
For example, similarly, I deliberately (temporarily or not) stopped Sidney SN’s liquid drum and bass mixes on SoundCloud together with Roots Of Liquid. And this was even though at that time I had the potential to continue succeeding on this platform. I also said, “Sidney SN is now on the BassBlog.pro drum and bass mix platform. I have a profile there, although I’m not expecting as many plays as on Sidney SN’s SoundCloud.” I probably don’t need to say why the last mix is called Roots Of Liquid.
In a certain sense, I may see it as a failure that modern liquid drum and bass often aligns with the mainstream DNB scene, thereby losing its world potential for mainstreaming or popularizing of positive vibes—the very reason Sidney SN emerged through a genre at YouTube platforms that was completely different from mainstream DNB, or why I started listening to this music genre. Still with person or DJ who, in my view, do not uphold the values for which liquid DNB came into existence, because their career focus seems to be a strangely awkward jumping between liquid drum and bass (not ideological), UK drum and bass, Central European mainstream neurofunk, or supporting and upholding the ideology of free tekno.
Maybe Sidney SN popularized liquid DnB like no one else.
For example, Let It Roll claims to be the biggest drum and bass festival, but it has an attendance of around 20,000 people out of more than seven billion. And it doesn’t seem like it will have greater attendance in the future. This alone shows that drum and bass is a very niche music genre. Let alone liquid drum and bass, which is even more peripheral in the current drum and bass scene rather than becoming mainstream outside of a tool for the opening of a drum and bass events. This makes no sense to me. I think Liquid drum and bass had completely different potentials for me, which were unrelated to mainstream DNB.
I could also add that I regret having tried to attend some events in the Czech Republic, whether for my research or not, because if I hadn’t done so, what happened at the Dutch events, for example, would not have occurred. This happened because someone saw me in reality in one Central European country, and through me, they appeared at these events, and in this way, to a large extent, something was disrupted that many “root” people were experiencing. However, I couldn’t have known that so many people would “go crazy.” Nonetheless, from the lesson itself, which speaks to a certain mentality, this also informs this my attitude.
