the vast majority of house music isn't very good

(This is semi-serious - house music is actually a bit like hard rock or garage rock or something in that stretching the template is great and all but also so is just exaggerating the template and being even bigger)

(I have been reading Ronan too much on this but I think he is great, an intelligent writer who appreciates the 'big room tunes' (see also Siegbran))

(And most of the stuff Jess is complaining about is tweaking the house template I think but not far enough, so you lose what's good about basic house and then you don't get any of the benefits of tweaking unless you're really easily impressed)

yes, i think that might be a problem too tom: too much european house is too straight and agnostic.

(nb: i'm still excited for that vitalic album)

But yeah.

For things still 'labeled' house, there are still essential tracks that come up here and there in the various sub-genres (which are packaged rather tediously). I find it hard to assign general malaise to a form which spans "Acid Luv" madness to Hotel Costes dinner party mellow.

Also, I tend to slot microhouse and some electro into the general heading of "house", and I think those genres still have some fresh releases on the horizon.

I don't know if this helps, but what also frustrates me (and this may slot into the dilet. vs lyalists) is that, even as I am somtimes bored by the music itself, I am still very much committed to certain aspects of the "ideals of house". I still like the idea of a DJ and his or her records entertaining a crowd for the night, without all of the posturing of rock n' roll (which still bothers me a great deal).

As for the "death" of house - Well, I see what you're saying about not being able to tell the difference between records from 2000 and now. I've been playing a "retro" set lately, with tracks from the mid-nineties (Young American Primitive, FSOL, Speedy J, Dubtribe, etc), and a lot of it still sounds pretty fresh. But you could say the same thing about rock music. Most rock music these days has SOME element that can be seen as repeating an older style. Anything that DOESN'T tends to be on the experimental end of things. Same thing for house. And, like rock, most people don't want to listen to experimental house music. Maybe we're just past the point of evolution in house music, and have settled into a refinement stage...

Part of the problem, I think, is that the gay, black and spritual tradition has been adopted by the deephouse contingent, and made "upscale..." and bland. I have really done a full 180 on this type of music. I used to love Naked Music, and then I realized that it was just pointless except for the groovy cartoons.

I posited once to simon reynolds, in an email he didn't respond to (I aint mad), that maybe every genre goes through its own process from having the characteristics of modernity (linear progression, possibility of avant-garde because there is still terriotory to explore, etc.) and post-modernity (in this case, so many polarities exist at the same time, dialectic falls apart, can listen to adult. or ben watt in the same day). It becomes impossible to say "we need more of this and less of this" because it already exists in that way and it sucks (or at least isnt shockingly new).

Aaron - I hear you. However, it is important, as a DJ, to avoid buying tracks just because they are easy to mix
No, I know, and I do have a fair selection of microhouse, tech-house, deep house, and techno of all types, even some old hoover tracks, but it is also good to have alot of records within genres...

and yeah, the gay/spiritual elements have been far too "regularized"...the banal regimented delivery of (small and/or large E) ecstacy.

it would be interesting to go to a club that attracts people for whom all of this stuff still matters. I hear mancuso still throws loft parties, and that there is a black, gay club in the bronx called the warehouse that has a more (dare I say it? I hate myself!) "authenitc" take on this whole thing because it isnt straight bourg-bohemian fetishization of black gay culture, but actual black gay people! ;-)
I think I will pick a weekend when I move to NYC and go to both Luxx and the Warehouse or the Loft and see what happens.

"...but at least new rock bands are more like to have, you know, songs with tunes you can hum and stuff."
well, again, i go back to the seperation of of ideal and aesthetic. why people can still see dance as cutting-edge is mainly, i think, due to the non-aesthetic aspects of the culture, like the nature of djing, crowd as stars instead of "here we are now, entertain us", the ideas of seamlessness, modernity, futurism, urbanism, etc. Rock is very much turned backward, exonerating outdated notions of blackness, soul, grit, authenticity, etc, so ANY music that still looks forward seems cutting-edge in comparison (in the case of rap/r&b, there is enough seperation between the nostalgics and the popists that it can all coexist). And again, I think those ideals are worth keeping because, it its worst, the cult of celebrity can make people forget the power that they have themselves, which is crucial in a democracy.
In terms of aesthetics, house is just another genre nowadays, and that hurts a lot!

PS: something similar has happened to punk... a very liberal, forawrd-thinking genre, is too tied to its own conservative aesthical ethos. it is almost anti-punk (at least to me) to assert the aesthetic superiority of three-chord guitar songs (ie what most people, including many punks themselves, think is what punk "means").

Aaron - SHELTER, Saturday nights in the early morning. Get there after 1 am. It's -usually- a great experience.

>>> it would be interesting to go to a club that attracts people for whom all of this stuff still matters. I hear mancuso still throws loft parties, and that there is a black, gay club in the bronx called
the warehouse that has a more (dare I say it? I hate myself!) "authenitc" take on this whole thing because it isnt straight bourg-bohemian fetishization of black gay culture, but actual black gay people! ;-)
I think I will pick a weekend when I move to NYC and go to both Luxx and the Warehouse or the Loft and see what happens.

(I ask in part because I had this very stupid grandiose moment the other night where I was doing music-stuff and I briefly deluded myself that my completely lack of understanding of dance sub-genres could actually help me come up with some sort of fresh sound: you'll be glad to hear I came to my senses moments later.)

However, perhaps a fresh approach would be useful. Many pro house DJs I know are so "purist" in their approach that they turn off a lot of listeners/dancers, with stripped-down, hyper-repetitive tracks.

I have to go to my other job now, but I have a lot more to post about this...

also, nitsuh, i think part of the problem is that house has been locked in on the sides... more obvious factors like speed, complexity vs simplicity, etc., have been taken over by others... again, more later...

also house is still good...

(vaguely related question - does anyone see the current drum'n'bass scene (at least over here, it's pretty big - haha metal parallels etc) as better/worse than where house is? is it moving/moved to a similar (albeit narrower) postmodernity as suggested by Aaron above?)

after reading this thread last night, i went straight to the radio and found 2 hour long (i think, i fell asleep to the second one, its was 2am) mixes. highlights: this minimal 4/4 thump with an astoundingly beautiful string loop over it (it was vocal-less, but if it had something to say (and say over and over again) it was "just put your hand in mine and we'll dance, we'll live, we'll discover the city and fall asleep under the streetlights and a purple-orange haze) and then this thing with some 'trad'-african drums that i started having a mini crisis of authenticity in my head about until this huge synth bass fart came in and demolished everything. i could say more but there's someone at the door waiting for me to leave the house!

This connection, to me, is about the untouchable aloof side of house, the central ethos is that there is a hope and a positivity and an ethereal realm within reach, even if spiritual references die in house, this is still present. And it's also related to the drugs thing with me, that there is a bigger kick and a better party and a better night and a better dj set. This isn't a negative thing, or a chase the dragon thing, I'm not looking for the bigger kick, I'm finding it. I've said "oh that must have been the best night" loads of times after coming home.

I don't get that vibe (heh) from other dance musics, I suspect though that their purpose is different, if robin or someone wants to post about techno it would be cool. There's also the fact that I genuinely love trying to work out records, like puzzling over them, physically responding to them, being surprised when a beat comes in where it does, or sometimes not being surprised at all, predicting it exactly. So yeah there is a case for familiarity being a part of it yes, having said that I think house music really is doing new things.

I'm just not a good enough technical writer to document it, I think the archigram/space cowboy/bangalterfalcon/cosmos thing of last year was new, where the records become less and less about the beat and more about a kind of locked rush, it's like as if you sampled older house records and stretched the sample to 6 minutes, making every noise longer and softer and groovier. I realise that's a lame description but if you hear the tunes in question you might get it better.

and then

scratch the 'm there.

Big Roo House? O man I am so totally into Big Roo House

Ob. Actual Comment: damn but that Bobby Konderz best-of is intensely great stuff

Brazilian-house - a bit unfairly maligned I think. It's mostly horrible when it goes for "vibes" and "soulfulness" and gets all jazzy (Faze Action, Masters At Work when they're on autopilot), but can be pretty fucking great when it goes straight for carnival madness (I recommend hunting out Pound Boys' "K Pasa", Phats & Small's "Discoke" and the brilliantly silly Tosh & McLean remix of DJ Luck & MC Neat's "Piano Loco").

Prog-house - possibly the worst offender (well, either that or deep house) when it comes to pearls-to-shit ratio, but if anyone can recommend me something as weird and beautiful as John Creamer & Stephane K's "I Wish Your Were Here" (hallucinatory, galactically vast, so rich with spooky dubby sounds and murky alien textures that I could drown in it for days), I'd be most pleased.

There's endless tons of this stuff, and wading through all the shit can be reeeeeally frustrating, but it ALWAYS pays off with some true gems. Another major irritant is the dance press, with which I always get the impression that it halfheartedly and grudgingly acknowledges the latest trends (trance, UKG, nu happy hardcore revival etc) while gleefully exhalting any moment when it seems (by however desperate margin) that house takes over clubland again cos, like, it's the only real good stuff and everything else is just passing-fad bollocks for disrespectful kids who just want to 'ave it and don't care for "the true club culture" (whatever that would be).

Nabisco's point about great results through misunderstanding is spot on, and I don't think he's deluding himself. I'm reminded of that great SFJ review of "Rooty", and how he bemoaned hip hop musical values taking over America and slaying the heritage of disco - I see this era as a great point in time for American music to take disco back, cause it's been so thoroughly erradicated from American pop that Americans could take disco to strange exciting new places. If such shift comes, I'm sure it won't come from the US dance ghetto - I don't know much about US house scene, but when I look at the Billboard dance chart, I get a depressing vision of a neverending Reich of Victor Calderone/Hector Hex/Thunderpuss remixes.

On the other hand, Eminem's "Without Me", Da Real One's "U Like Pina Coladas" or Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body" are so much endlessly more fresh and invigorating, and point to what glorious thing could happen if more of hip hop community would pick up on disco (I look up especially to southern hip hop as it gets more musical and dancey; anyone heard B Rich's "Whoa Now"? It's not really 100% related to my point, but it's flatout awesome, and I haven't seen anyone mention it anywhere).

Then again, Baltimore club music (or at least what I've heard of it) doesn't help my argument much, cause it's the purest example of Americans going for disco without even the basest understanding of it, and to these ears sounds like a slowed-down take on booty bass, amateurish to the point of being barely enjoyable.

O
T
M

btw, my favorite house tune of the last two years or so is the original version - not the basement jaxx remix which i feel doesn't actually add much to the original other than stomp all over its tentativeness (really its secret weapon...like timbaland doesn't quite know what to do with 4/4, maybe period or maybe after so many years of jittery programming so he's achieved this uneasy tension which actually manages to stretch back to - not just reference - the earlier, ruff-cut days of house) with the tried&tested House Beat designed to MAKE YOU DANCE - of missy's "4 my people".

I get a depressing vision of a neverending Reich of Victor Calderone/Hector Hex/Thunderpuss remixes.

I never understood why people in the US seem to like these producers - what self-respecting DJ plays this shit? It's really the very definition of "worst of both worlds"...

http://othernessblue.blogspot.com

Re 4 My People: one of the great thing about the Basement Jaxx is that the minute or so if its intro is a godsend for DJ mixing: that "yo I'm on FI-YA-YA-YA-YA-YA-YA---!" stretched vox part merges wonderfully with a good pounding filter/disco house groove.

Somewhere along the thread Ronan mentioned Mutiny: anyone heard their vocal mix of Sophie Ellis-Bextor's "Take Me Home"? I love it to death, and it makes me think they should just stick to being a darkside-B.Jaxx tribute act (which they may well be for all I know, since the only other thing of theirs I've heard is "Virus" and it neatly fits that description).

Thanks for the tip-offs Siegbran, I'll have them in mind and try to find them in a happier future when I get a chance to p2p again.

There's a US funk-rock outfit called Mutiny featuring Jerome Brailey, one-time Parliament Funkadelic drummer (a quick visit to amazon.com has revealed that much).

I presume Galleon are another example of that leap you're talking about Tom? They've sure got that air punching, brash rock dynamics thing going on, and I love "So I Begin". Still, I kinda regret the fact that this particular strain of anthemic house seems to be going for rock feel more via power ballads rather than via oi!-punk like "Where's Your Head At", "I'm So Crazy" and "We Don't Care", which excite me so much more (and, no, I don't give a rat's ass about "punk spirit" in general).

But it's a standing on the shoulders of giants situation: because house's pre-established qualities are already so potentially immense, even minor tweakings can be enormously effective (and affective), whether (to focus on the last five years) it's Deep Dish's perfecting of deep house on Junk Science or Armand van Helden's masculinisation of disco. More concrete shifts, such as Basement Jaxx's polytechnicolour nympho-house or Luomo's voluptuous glitch-swirls, sound positively revelatory.

why is a future of endless subtlties of value?

more and more it just seems like house is coming up due for its dave q "house: the nuremberg trials" thread

btw tim, you didnt answer my question

Nothing Roll Deep have done is relevatory outside the genre. Blah blah cold brittle electro beats and unhinged rapping; if I wanted that I'd just listen to ODB rapping over eighties beats. [/jaded cynic] Jess what amazing artists are you thinking of that could escape that criticism?

"basement jaxx might even be the Death of House as such (a genre so Catholic at it's now best producers can barely even be defined by the genre = one step from "visionary auteurs")"

Again, the same arguments apply to any "vibrant" music. Is house to be damned for changing and garage to be celebrated? Also I have no idea how Basement Jaxx could be considered "barely" house - isn't the defining principle of house its beat, which the Jaxx almost always use and which forms the gift/curse crux around which all discussions of house much rotate?

I think the contrast of house versus hardcore-continuum is using a double-standard - house has never, for example, gone off the deep end like jungle has, but it doesn't have the luxury of totally abandoning the blueprint like the hardcore-continuum model has. Shouldn't we be celebrating house for having packed in such a wealth of possibility around the boom-tick?

"why is a future of endless subtlties of value?"

Why is it not? I just said before why it was of value (to rephrase: house's use of repetition is so entrenched at an unconscious level that minor changes create enormous and disproportionate effects - Reynolds wrote something about this re minimal techno, but the difference between house and minimal techno is that house has become less restrictive not more, with ever more *types* of subtleties being introduced, such that instead of driving itself into a grey dead end there is the possibility of endless differentiation. In this sense house's Catholicism becomes again its strength. It's also a trick that techno's been relearning off house via microhouse.

(Conversely, those subgenres of house which tend to prioritise the paring back of differentiation (all the unexciting parts of prog, tech-house, deep house) have misguidedly taken their cues from techno; I consider this stuff to be house that has lost its way, and while you can certainly use it as fuel for your argument it's not really effective as a denial of house's fundamental qualities and potential.

"(haha how is "House Is Back!" any better than "Rock Is Back!"?)"

Jess it's not any better, but "House is back" has had to compete with "trance is back", "prog is back", "techno is back", "jungle is back", "r&b/hip hop is back", "breakbeat is back" and "electro is back" all at roughly the same time. I don't think there's nearly as much of a hegemony as within the rock press, where the "rock is back" revival has been the only significant rallying cry of the last two years. House exists within a hype-dominated field (dance music) and is no better or worse than any of the other genres it competes with for lavish and unnecessary self-promotion and micro-differentiation. Its flaws/advantages are that it is more accessible and more perennial.

Jess there are a lot of dance music fans on this board but no-one takes this position (cf. Detroit techno!); whereas obviously a lot of people have almost-unconsciously struck up this position in re indie. This suggests to me that the people you're talking about are a minority - a minority which always exists in every dance music genre which is no longer the next best thing (techno and jungle in particular are bloated with rhetoricists who still consider their music to be "the future").

I understand this is only a tiny portion of the house diaspora but its mainly the one which concerns me coz I see microhouse as outside of it and deep/prog house as something else entirely, a false projected continuum back in time -- like I think that solid jack tracks are the real continuity and there's no other sort of music as disciplinarian and fucking funny simultaneously.

House seems to me to be both hemmed-in and liberated by its underlying structure. When i hear house (and much of the rest of electronic music), I hear a totally different idea of composition that doesnt apply to other genres. The "boom-tick", I think, is just a way to hold together the style of compostion that is house. I tend to call this style "cellular" and I oppose it to more traditional songwriting. When i say cell, I guess I mean a certain rhythmic and melodic idea. A house record is sort of an amalgamation of different cells, and the composition stems from the addition and subtraction of those cells. whereas rock is mostly based on traditional song form, and the difference between songs stems from what is placed on top of the song form, house, on the other hand, really has no pre-determined structure, even if many conventions are repeated, and the structure is really determined internally from the musical elements instead of being an internal imposition. maybe to summarize, i could say that in rock or other song-based musics, the form dictates the music whereas in house, the music dictates the form.

the "cellular" idea in house is actually part of a much lnger tradition.. you can hear it in james brown... my favorite example is the middle section of the album mix of chic's "i want your love", where the idea of the pop song breaks down and suddenly it is just the interplay of different looped cells of drums, bass, guitar and piano and addition and subtraction.

i guess my point comes to this: the cellular structure allows a great deal of freedom, as any sound or intrument can be utilized to make a good pattern, and these patterns can add up to a great track, now matter how diverse the source material. on the other hand, i think maybe the structure prevents great leaps forward, especially in relation to the "meaning" of the music. when spanish guitar or punk guitars or indian music or whatever is brought into house, the original aesthetics and ideologies of the source material is rendered meaningless. so house cant really find meaning from without. the only way the music can mean anything is if these sources are subsumed into the music for a higher purpose, and maybe why i think the spiritual devotion is needed if one wants to see house as more than "just fun music to dance to". to me it is the difference between post-modern artists who just simply depict or represent the chaos of information that is presented to us in daily life versus those who seek to use collage to make a larger statement, who can create rivers out of deltas. that is why the dj is so important to me, because a good one can even utilize music from the different and segregated genres of dance music itself. the dj then becomes almost the personification of house, because, just as house borrows from every genre, djs can borrow from the different (and sometimes opposed) subgenres of house itself to create a new vision for it. i mean, a tech-house record by itself can be pretty bland, but played correctly, and in the right context, it can be much more powerful. i think i have mentioned my conflict viz genre vs aesthetic, and this is where that comes in. do by purist about a certain type of music means you are tied to the music itself even if it comes into conflict with its own ideals. when you abandon musicl purism for ideological purism, you have much more freedom and more power. i mean, again, i can go buy minimal techno records and combines them with whatever else and make more meaning out of all of them without subscribing to the specific ideological and aesthetic concerns of that scene because when i dj, my ideology takes precedent and since the aesthetic is subservient, i can just play the damn record...

House exists within a hype-dominated field (dance music) and is no better or worse than any of the other genres it competes with for lavish and unnecessary self-promotion and micro-differentiation.

a world where a critic can't draw up distinctions between "better" and "worse" is a world of mixmag or muzik talking heads (which is frankly what you sound like on this thread, tim.)

Its flaws/advantages are that it is more accessible and more perennial.

i fail to see how this refutes my basic premise in the first post.

i also fail to see how you can divorce "sonic" and "cultural" definitions when talking about music.

Jess there are a lot of dance music fans on this board but no-one takes this position (cf. Detroit techno!); whereas obviously a lot of people have almost-unconsciously struck up this position in re indie.

i wasn't talking about ilm. or even the fans (as something differentiated.) i was talking about House Music. as a whole. an overarching "project" (ala nitsuh on the 50 cent thread). the idea that house doesn't hold a certain position as the Mother genre over all the others seems a bit myopic (or easy) to me. the position of the major dance magazines re. house versus (the oppositional angle is key) the other generes and (ESPECIALLY) new genres. (how long was it before garage started getting reviewed in even the most catholic dance mags like xlr8r? 2000, easy.) that deference to house on the part of the magazines (which are supposed to be both the critical arm of the genre/its fans as well as the "keepers of the flame") - always at the "front" of the review sections, always caned on the front cover mount free CDs, always monitored via the front cover for even the most minute changes - certainly seems to reinforce the idea that other genres are, if not lesser, than certainly cheap fads, missteps (always "validated" when they fall from public favor and the cushy bosom of mama house is waiting for the prodigal) from the primacy of house. besides, the idea that indie fans have developed this thinking "unconsciously" (idiot savants?) and house fans either haven't or can't seems awfully chauvinistic.

see, tim, i think your problem is that if you go back and reread your posts, you basically agree with the position i outline at the beginning: house music has become the default dance music option by 2003 and as such it is riddled with lots of stuff which "works", lots of mediocre material, lots of insipid sameyness, and a handful of "relevatory" artists working outside the confines of the major sub-genres or helping to invent new ones. but for whatever reason (talking-headness, the need to be "right", Reynolds disease) you've decided to set yourself up against me.

a world where a critic can't draw up distinctions between "better" and "worse" is a world of mixmag or muzik talking heads (which is frankly what you sound like on this thread, tim.)"

I meant that it had the same proportionate amount of self-promotion etc. This wasn't clear I admit. The mixmag talking heads shot is a bit beneath you though, Jess.

I would have thought it was clear that my first post wasn't attacking anyone, even non-personally. It wasn't even contradicting you. It was merely offering a perspective on why house is (yes, because of its relative stagnation) perversely enjoyable. I do basically agree with you on all your points but I think your ire is a tad unnecessary - ultimately because, while I hold Mixmag in as high esteem as you do, I don't think it and organs like it exert nearly as much a sway over people as the corresponding rock mags, largely because dance scenes are much more firmly fragmented - the ideological struggle for, say, Roll Deep, is not against Mixmag but against The Dreem Teem. Or maybe I've just grown so used to the blindness of such magazines that it's hard to even imagine anything else existing (phrases like "funky chewy tech-house" becoming the equivalent of NewSpeak, maybe). But the fact that I think a lot of the people who write these magazines are on the whole total idiots doesn't cause me to dislike house; as I said before, i think these people tend to valorise the wrong house, in the same way that they valorised the wrong jungle, the wrong garage etc. etc. They do so because they are essentially conservative. House is older, so it wins over other, newer, emergent styles and cultures. But there's also a lot - a lot - of really fantastic house music being made all the time.

"but for whatever reason (talking-headness, the need to be "right", Reynolds disease) you've decided to set yourself up against me. "

Yes, clearly this has been my grand plan all along. You've hit the root of "my problem", I guess.

P.S. Sterling yer right about jack house - have you got any of the Subliminal Sessions comps?

This is not at all what I was saying. The idea that indie is in a struggle with some other (pop, whatever) is so entrenched that it seems a lot of people hold it almost without realising it; I myself did for a while, although I never properly articulated it to myself I think. It's much more a fundamental tenant of the "genre" than it would be for house. Of course there are absolute fools who bang on and on about the need to keep house pure (even great producers like Frankie Knuckles - who is a good example of why you should never talk to your music idols), but I think for most people the attraction of house is rather its comfortability. A comfortability which is easily (and justifiably) open to criticism, but a comfortablity which can nonetheless be incredibly satisfying.

The argument seems to now be a debate about the extent of house music's domination, but I'm not sure how that ties in with the initial post. Isn't this the old chicken egg thing re:what people want to read about and buy, and what they are constantly given to read about and buy?

Ronan, in terms of the devotional quality of your writing about house - I would assume it's the case of the context of reception affecting the style of the response. "I have seen the light" evangelising is a natural (and, in your case, enjoyably and sensitively delivered) response to dancefloor(+drugs) based reception; but again I don't think this is specific to house. If a writer's dancefloor(+drugs) experiences are based in techno, or jungle, I doubt their writing style would be terribly different - beyond adopting the various linguistic tropes of the genre.

If I can boil down my opinion to anything it is this: yes, house is by far the most popular style of dance music; thus it reflects the failings of dance music generally in a greater amount than any other dance music style. But I would argue that only a few of these failings are intrinsically house-based, except insofar as they arise directly from its status as most-popular genre. I don't pretend that it's the most futuristic or innovative of genres, but on the whole I'm glad that if there has to be one genre awarded extended pre-eminence that it is house; can you imagine how more irritating it would be if jungle post-97 had become the staple form of dance music? Or dancefloor techno? Or trance? Or hard house (not house at all - unless this a more general critique of genres that use 4/4 beats)?

P.S. Jess I reckon you might like Deep Dish actually - Junk Science is a surprisingly wonderful album, much less hampered by puritan ideals than I expected beforehand, and the arrangements are frequently dazzling.

completely agree. I never bought junk science because I'd felt so burned by the Murk/Funky Green Dogs album which just sucked.

Michael, what do you think of DD's post Junk Science sound? I quite like Yoshitoshi but I've been afraid to go any further for fear of PROG!

also I need to make you a tape or something

i saw Deep Dish at Twilo and i found it thin and directionless. i used to LOVE their "Music" remix and now can't i find anything to like about it

next, i like deep dish. I think they use prog in a much different way than sasha or jokenfold do. the records they play are much more house-informed. I saw dubfire spin in boston and i was quite impressed. he played dark tribal techhouse the whole night, and i assure you, it was not boring at all! I love junk science but i have not been incredibly impressed with anything since. i actually have a copy of their first release on deep dish records, which preceded yoshitoshi. yoshitoshi (the label), btw, has put out a lot of great tracks. some early stuff to search for: ymc "last stop" EP, chiapet "tick tock" ep, and heiko laux's "dedicated to all believers" EP. the YMC is still around, the others are hard to find (i was quite surprised to realize that i had found a copy of the Laux record before a friend who is a professional DJ!)

i have a bit more random shit to put out. some of it doesn't fit this thread, but i guess i would rather post it here because this is a good thread with nice people...

first of all, i was thinking a lot about drumming again, and i was remembering that there is a reason behind the simplicity of the house beat. i think it is possible to trace the history of "black" dance music and see a process by which drum beats became more simple, while the bass player played more notes. by the time disco came around, the drums were very simple, and the bass very complex, practically taking the lead as the sole melodic voice in some songs. now, it is actually considered a virtue in the music world for players to give each other space, so really, the oft-insulted simple drum beats of disco were really just examples of politeness. ;-)

another thing: i am wondering if maybe the anti-rockism on this board has pushed me and maybe others to popism wihtout being cognizant of popism's deficiencies. if rock holds the album to be the holy indivisible object, then popism holds the single in the same regard, but, and maybe this is SR's most salient point, dance isnt about individual songs or producers or anything. its easy to claim decline when listening to an individual track, because so much depends on the DJ. Going back to May's "mayday mix", there are records on there that i own, and i may never have the creativity to do what he has done with them. i would go as far as to say that they are different records. the most profound mix sequence on the album is between three tracks: the first Convextion record, a basic channel record, and then Jaxx's "get down, get horny". the first record, which i own, is all static and is a very detroit record, and it is somewhat chaotic at times. the BC record, on the other hand, is austere, elegant, and very minimal, and he mixes the two in a way that draws the listener in to hear the contrast more. there is obviously a great deal of intent in the mix, and you can really get a sense of how May is thinking behind the decks. almost immediately, he brings in the Jaxx record, but just the vocals "I wanna get down, I wanna get...", and suddenly, the asexual BC record is lush, sultry, a little more down to earth, and by the time the Jaxx record comes in, evrything has changed. in two minutes, you have gone from standing in a power plant to fucking on the floor of a dance club. that is a huge constrast, obv. if i had all of those records (i had the jaxx in my hand one day but i had no cash!), i couldnt do that, and, whats more, you could come over to my house and hear all of them and say "those are decent, what else have you got in your crate?"so again, it comes back to the DJ, to the interpretation, and here, i think, is where the problem with house music these days really lies.

Larry Levan is held up as an idol by many, but i think many miss the point. I never saw Levan play, and i was 11 when he died, but i, like many, have had to hear the endless venerations coming from everyone who was ever there. but maybe, because i wasnt there, i listened a little bit more, and what i remember most is how levan would take control, would stop playing records and show movies, would play the same record over and over, would take control of the lights, would do anything to enhance the experience of all. in a situaion that powerful, again, the individual records dont even belong to their creators. also, levan played pop music. he playes whatever would work. i think it is quite amusing that some who venerate him also play traditional records, espouse conservative beliefs about what house "is". if levan were around, he would stuff acid down their throats and play them pat benetar records all fucking night. he found a way to go against everyone's expectations and make them love it. i think a lot about doing the same myself, of walking into a club, and, upon seeing a crowd of indie hipsters, play them the gayest, blackest music i could find, and, alternately, playing hoover techno records to a bunch of "classy" deep house snobs.

i think that spirit is what is missing in DJing right now. people are getting exactly what they pay for: a good night out. but wasn't this supposed to be about something more? what is the point of hearing a dj play what amounts to the new releases from a specific section of their local vinyl shop? as a DJ, it is likely that I will have heard the same records in the shop earlier in the afternoon! ;-)

more stuff: as much as I am hyping the DJ, the individual, i am not ayn raynd, and i think there are a lot of social factors to consider. first of all, i think belief, in a holy-ish sense, is important, because so much power is derived from the crowd in the club, and it takes a lot of collective work to get to Durkheim's "collective effervecsence". also, i also think a lot about another french theorist, Rousseau, who, if i remember correctly, understood that humans are born with all rights, and choose actively to give them up as part of the social contract. the DJ-as-polemecist only works if the crowd actively and willingly gives up a little of their autonomy.

The Quest: another place where a lot of people seem to miss the point revolves around the conflict between "underground" and "mainstream". the mainstream doesnt suck because of stupid people or cheesy records. what is missing is something that is common to all underground scenes, the Quest. I think the experience of seeking out the music, of only being able to collect shards of information at an infuriatingly slow pace, adds to the experience. if anything makes the underground better, it is just the fact that so much work goes into finding it, and into creating it. and when you get to an underground club, you know that everyone else went through the same process. but there is a danger to this scenario: once everyone comes together, do they see themselves as "arrived" or at the beginning of something else? if the former is the case, then the work ends, then the complacency begins. i saw this happen with indie, especially when i got to college. in college, all of those kids who had turned to indie and punk out of a genuine sense of dissatisfaction all found each other and what did they do? did they collectivize and work to end all that had angered them? not at all! they had smug little dance parties where everyone brought tapes and drank pabst.

thats all for now... sorry i forgot my good grammar~

This is true on the level of the way the actual music works. To extend it to the way the genre works is a mistake. Hearing a minor chord change kick in after 5 minutes of relentless drum pounding can be extraordinarily cathartic; listening to some prog/tech house wanker's slight mutation on last year's blend of techno and house is not (the same could equally said about, say, most jungle post 95, where all that's really happening is people are managing to tweak the hoover bass sound just a tiny little bit more, etc)

(For what it's worth--and speaking as someone who's always been generally more in line with Jess' position on house--I do think people like Basement Jaxx (at their best, ie say the first half of Remedy, not the second, which is total generic house, albeit very nicely done) and Luomo are doing something that's far enough outside the boundaries of house to be considered something new. "Jump and Shout," "U Can't Stop Me" etc just don't sound like most house music; and while I'm not such a rabid fan of Luomo, they don't really sound like any of the other microhouse people, let alone house as it was defined back in the 80s.

And if it's done right, does house really have to change that much? I was driving through the DC area last year and happened upon a radio station that was playing hardcore pounding Chicago jack beats and dropping Martin Luther King, Temptations samples etc on top and it was just incredibly powerful and ecstatic--I felt like someone had just shoved 3 vials of amyl up my nose and dropped me in the middle of a sweaty basement with one light. No "progression" there, and none necessary.

And at the same time, I'm still perfectly happy to listen to real old-school house that hasn't changed, or been tweaked, in any major or minor way for about 20 years.

tim, the problem with this statement is that I was never arguing that the "failure" of house music is somehow a reflection of the "failure" of Dance Music. frankly, as i age (and move away from my jungle-tainted past somewhat), the notion of Dance Music - as a differentiated and specific "genre" which is the ultimate form(s) to dance to - seems a bit chauvinsitic as well as a bit misguided, as i have seen more people dance to non-"dance music" in the last few years than anything with a 4/4 house beat. this statement smacks of precisely the sort of fear that underpins the whole "dance music" project: a continual reinforcement of strength through hegemony while never being able to lose sight of the losses column. also, i am far too interested in the fall-out of "rave" to think that dance music has "failed" in any way: in terms of sheer invention at a moments notice, it's yet to let me down. at the same time i won't deny that there's a bit of truth (although possibly not the way you intended) in what you said: house's own dominance (as the Dance Beat for anyone born post 1975) is a reflection-through-mere-existence of it's general failing (stamping out "diversity" in favor of a "perfected" sound.)

But I would argue that only a few of these failings are intrinsically house-based, except insofar as they arise directly from its status as most-popular genre. I don't pretend that it's the most futuristic or innovative of genres, but on the whole I'm glad that if there has to be one genre awarded extended pre-eminence that it is house...

but why? because it's there? because you can't think of an alternative? the reason dance music threads on ILM piss me off so much these days is precisely because they're populated with a lot of people (and i'm not disincluding myself here) who have - unconsciously or not - inherited a VERY SPECIFIC way of looking at the value of certain preexisiting tropes, both sonic and cultural, in "dancing". (aaron's take is a nice change of pace.) as for: But I would argue that only a few of these failings are intrinsically house-based, except insofar as they arise directly from its status as most-popular genre....see below:

can you imagine how more irritating it would be if jungle post-97 had become the staple form of dance music? Or dancefloor techno? Or trance? Or hard house (not house at all - unless this a more general critique of genres that use 4/4 beats)?

this is just silly: the whole point of the argument is that NONE of these genres could have beome the staple form of dance music. they lack the easy-rolling, slightly (but not too) malleable rhythmic matrices, the open-ended approach to drawing on other forms of music, and they were never as wide-spread or popular (poss. exception: trance) as house. the crux of my argument is precisely that: house's Perfection of a certain form - a form ruthlessly designed for "dancing", which is simultaneously highly structured (the beat the beat the beat) but also allows space on top, in the sides, the spaces inbetween for any number of OTHER sounds suggesting if not actually offering endless possibilities (freedom through extreme repetition?) - is why it has attained it's status, thereby reflecting on the "failing" of these "lesser" genres in not being able to achieve a similar perfection of form and (sorta, kinda) content.

aaron:

first of all, i was thinking a lot about drumming again, and i was remembering that there is a reason behind the simplicity of the house beat. i think it is possible to trace the history of "black" dance music and see a process by which drum beats became more simple, while the bass player played more notes. by the time disco came around, the drums were very simple, and the bass very complex, practically taking the lead as the sole melodic voice in some songs. now, it is actually considered a virtue in the music world for players to give each other space, so really, the oft-insulted simple drum beats of disco were really just examples of politeness.

this is a really interesting theory, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for the effect of white, European sound/design on "the disco beat." (also, the ease/cheapness of technology, the inability of early home users to accurately program drum machines, etc.)

(as for basement jaxx: i agree with ben and disagree with tim that they're "inherently house" at all...many of their tracks completely abandon the 4/4 beat (no, not 4/4 tempo, pedants) - "u can't stop me", "sexy feline machine", "broken dreams", "i want u" - and enough of the others abandon or break up the standard "flow" of house enough to disrupt the idea of "dance music" - "romeo" (far too abrupt, tensely structured, and R&B...why else would they have to tack on those interminable breakdowns and buildups for the 12" mixes?), "always be there" (which is what i always want "prog" house to sound like, if i was merely going by the name alone.)

(admittedly i'm talking about Top Album Producers basement jaxx, not the guys who produced "fly life" and "samba magic" or the even the Live Basement Jaxx carnivale.)

On the musical level, there are the formal characteristics of a particular piece of house music. On the genre level, there is the way house music in general changes over time. The argument has been made that the former applies to the latter, and is a reason to applaud it.

In general, I don't think the former does apply to the latter, and in specific cases where a parallel arguably can be found, I don't see it as a good thing.

i had forgotten to extend the theory, in that, at the very end of that paragraph, i use the word disco, and not house. i think the theory holds up until eurodisco (and i didnt say this because i was thinking that if i took the time to write that out, i would forget everything else i had to say, which is good or bad depending ;-)... but it is still amusing to me to a certain extent, and i got it mostly from reading "modern drummer", which has a column that features non-drummers talking about druming. all of the bassists who played funk, disco, r&b, etc., would come in and say how their favorite drummers were the ones that left them a lot of space. the stance that the disco beat is too repetitive is bullshit to me (at least when it is stated by yr typical rockist critic) because, well, listen to "I Want you Back" by J5 and you will realize the drummer plays maybe two or three fills the whole track.

But Ben I already discounted tech-house/prog from my argument. I consider the shift from MaW to Basement Jaxx to be, on the scale of things, a "minor variation" - and very much disagree with the idea that Basement Jaxx are not house artists (MaW themselves do heaps of non-house-beat or non-house-tempo work, as do practically *all* the auteur house producers).

I consider this to be a minor variation in comparison to the radical rhythmic/sonic shifts one hears over a similar timespan in hip hop or UK garage, say, which are formally much more dynamic than house, which will always be tied to the boom-tick.

So I'm not saying that house-over-time is better b/c it changes very very slowly. The difference w. house to eg. uk garage or hip hop is that the basic structure of the groove has remained more-or-less constant, such that Basement Jaxx (in house mode) and Marshall Jefferson are ultimately working from the same template; there is a level of groove-continuity that just isn't there in the same way from, say, Artful Dodger to Roll Deep. It's not an advantage that house has over these genres - in truth I much prefer the radical changes of hip hop and garage - but it's a quality.

"frankly, as i age (and move away from my jungle-tainted past somewhat), the notion of Dance Music - as a differentiated and specific "genre" which is the ultimate form(s) to dance to - seems a bit chauvinsitic as well as a bit misguided, as i have seen more people dance to non-"dance music" in the last few years than anything with a 4/4 house beat. this statement smacks of precisely the sort of fear that underpins the whole "dance music" project: a continual reinforcement of strength through hegemony while never being able to lose sight of the losses column."

Jess do you *really* think I disagree with this statement (I'd be interested to know just how long you've considered me to be some chauvinistic house head - most of the clubs I go dancing at play R&B/Hip Hop, but, yeah, whatever)? "Dance Music" in this case is obviously a false genre label, which has failings precisely because it is a false genre label. I was use Dance Music to refer to the overall enclave of genres that consider themselves as such, how they think about themselves, organise themselves. I'd be quite happy to submit Dance Music (capital letters) as a whole to one of Dave Q's Nuremburg trials. If more "Dance Music" DJs had the courage to play stuff like Sean Paul's "Get Busy" (the best sorta-house song I've heard in ages - so yeah maybe I do agree with you completely, I dunno) most of those failings would become non-existent. If Dance Music placed more emphasis on performers/songs etc. it might not get stuck down such relatively deadened stylistic ruts as house/techno/d&b/trance - but again I fail to see the reason for singling out house in particular.

"this is just silly: the whole point of the argument is that NONE of these genres could have beome the staple form of dance music.......house's Perfection of a certain form - a form ruthlessly designed for "dancing"......is why it has attained it's status, thereby reflecting on the "failing" of these "lesser" genres in not being able to achieve a similar perfection of form and (sorta, kinda) content."

Okay, yes, that is why it is the most popular, but is that also why it's bad? What negative possibilities arise from this, except that people are dancing to this who could be dancing to music which actually changes radically? In this case I think the terrorists have already won/lost - my/our entire generation seems to dance to R&B/hip hop much more readily than house. That this truth is ruthlessly suppressed by Dance Music Advocates is another reason for Dance Music (again capital letters), not house, to be critiqued and criticised - and you're absolutely OTM for doing so.

Really? I've always felt it as evolutionary (disco with productional updates) without any "shock of the new" rather than revolutionary (in the way techno, trance, uk garage, idm, goa, etc were).

UK Hardhouse came from a whole different 'evolutionary tree' (the techno and hardtrance side of things), I never understood why the name hard HOUSE caught on...

In that case, none of the above listed genres should be seen as revolutionary either - every genre springs from developments within another or fusions of several. I really don't get that line of reasoning at all. The advent of house was a major turning point for music and, for the life of me, I can't see how its birth cannot be seen as a revolutionary, innovative moment.

Wait, are we talking about the same hardhouse? The hoover & pitched-up vocal tunes on Nukleuz/Tinrib/Tidy Trax/Honey Pot/Stimulant/Tripoli Trax? Fergie, Nick Sentience, Tom Harding, Lisa Lashes, Lab 4, Andy Farley? Because that stuff is all 140+ bpm...

Of course the history of dance music isn't as rigidly defined as a family tree, but hardhouse seems to have few connections with any house scene at the time...in terms of production techniques, DJ style, demographic and "scene values" it was/is much closer to happy hardcore and the parallel european hardtrance/hardstyle/schranz techno developments than any house substyle.

more on the way!

(don't mind me, i get off work in fifteen and have to catch a flight in two hours, i'm just sore that i'll miss this thread. also nothing personal but the premise that started this great thread makes me grouchy just looking at it)

Yeah but I was looking for something very specific and also was reacting immediately to tracks mentiond in this thread. And whether or not the question posed is erm "right," it still provoked a very good discussion.