Simon Reynolds disengagement from dance culture/the only people he says care about dance are deejays, druggers, and those with a business interest(incl. journalists)

I'll leave it to others who know more about and who may have been more heavily invested in dance culture one way or another to comment or respond to some of the more specific points about the state of electronic dance that he makes.

the problem here is that it's implied there actually are still new head-rearranging sounds waiting to be created but i'm not sure that's actually possible

try the Palms Of Goa in Soho matey

i'm 26 and i feel about the same as he does.

I think it's brave of Reynolds to admit he's losing interest in dance culture since he wrote one of the defining books at the subject. He lets go of dance culture at the risk of minimizing his own relevance, and that take some guts.

*it's always been a leisure option to me so I wouldn't know!

now i'm not sure where simon is coming from, but personally i find it hard to get excited about sparsely-attended events, gloomy club nights, the sense of defeat from my dj friends, etc.

i'm very interested in why the people have gone elsewhere - my first instinct isn't that dance music sucks so much as it is that other music (rap in particular) has just gotten much, much better than it used to be.

also i think phillip sherburne's comments of 17 february (scroll down a bit) are also spot-on, in any case they explain why (round here) people have ditched the electro nights just as the djs got brave enough to start throwing more house and techno into the mix.

Sometimes I think the reason why people like myself and Simon are reluctant to give up on dance music totally is the fact that, well, what else is there? It's not just dance, is it? When was the last time you could look at any one genre, survey the (broad whole of it), and say "yes, I am a fan of this." Not all of it, obviously (I mean, I never really rated tribal house or Autechre-style IDM or or or), but when you could call yourself a "[blank] fan" when someone asked what you were into. (Actually I am still more than likely to call myself a "dance fan", when prodded. I dunno if Simon does or not. I wonder if you get more funny looks at this point calling yourself a dance fan in England or America.) Even as late as 2000, I could have looked at the whole and enjoyed at least 50% of it: UK garage, IDM during its first putsch of Kid606-style tomfoolery (then a briefly helpful corrective to autechre anal-ness), the aftermath of Modulation & Transformation 4, the first flush of micro-house (ditto electroclash), house still seemed pretty revitalized ala B Jaxx, random stuff like the early Recloose 12"s on Planet E, the early stirrings of the disco-punk-funk revival with the Disco (Not Disco) comp and the Larry Levan reissue and the Loft comps...hell, even breaks seemed like a moderately good idea.

But seriously...what else is there, on the whole? Rap? Even if we break it down to "one populist choice, one semi-popular choice, and one obscurantist choice" as (an admittedly lopsided) representation we get, say, Young Gunz, MF Doom, and Clouddead. Rock? Fountains of Wayne, The Shins, and Wolf Eyes. I think at this point I'll still take Bangalter & Falcon, Herbert, and Villalobos, thanks. (And yes, no need to re-order those ballots and give me David Banner, Madvillian, and . Or Linkin Park, Ted Leo, & Animal Collective. I'm happy with my rhetorical strawmen, thanks.)

Though just barely. And if those names seem slightly more on the "semi-popular" side now, well, that's probably due to dance music imploding, no? Six (jesus!) years ago Bangalter was responsible for the biggest club hit of the year, and now he'd probably have a hard time packing out the babybox at Ministry of Sound. (T-minus five seconds until Ronan emails me telling me I'm up my ass...) Does anyone even listen to that Herbert big band album at this point? And I'll cherish Alcachofa til the day I die (and Villalobos may well be packing them in down in Ibizia), but he's doomed to be playing tiny clubs here alongside Mayer et al. Are there even really "name" DJs in America now that the average bridge & tunnel punter could recognize? Or is that "parasitic massive" (pace Simon) just going to hip-hop/R&B/pop nights? Ten years ago "clubbing" in America at least meant going out to hear bad trance and hard house mixes of pop hits rather than the actual pop hits. (Maybe this is a knock-on side effect of pop/hip-hop/r&b getting faster and appropriating so much dance science themselves...) With EFA going bankrupt, clubs closing, stores downsizing, indie rock kids barely able to focus their fruitfly attentions on anything for more than five minutes, the "regular folks" not even remotely interestd...well, what's keeping this whole thing alive other than journalists, bloggers, and the tiny but comitted hardcore massive?

The problem for the punter is not just that the stuff isn't being covered in the press or that you can't find it anywhere. It's that there's (as always) too damn much of it. (And I'm just talking CDs...I shudder at the very idea of 12" buying these days.) This is the across the board problem, the reason why its impossible to call yourself a fan of anything these days other than a tiny sliver of a micro-micro scene. If anything I heard TOO MUCH good music last year. But it was spread out across dozens of genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres. And at the end of the day, much like in 2002, there were probably only about five albums I loved without reserve, no questions asked. The other five spaces were a total crap shoot, the last two only picked maybe a day or two before my P&J ballot was due.

[unfinished, obv]

of course, this all goes back to the raging dillytant vs. hardcore soulja arguments of 2002-2003...

There is a lot to listen to, but if it was always like that, why pick now to fall behind?

I got the impression that while things aren't as big as they were it's still rather a big scene. As I've said before on this subject, I think it's easy to forget, as we all get older and gravitate towards the deep house purist mansion in the sky, that lots of young people aren't exposed to dance at all. If it's less popular then that's even more the case. Clubbing and the atmosphere and the drugs aren't something I ever had any impression of until hitting 17 or so. It's not solely about the music, and it never was I guess.

I think dance won't really die until that atmosphere is lost, until there aren't places to go which are dark and sweaty and full of people, to some extent, and I can't believe I'm saying this, the music can be an irrelevence. Surely what made it a "movement" or makes it one now isn't the music but the lifestyle?

Jess's last paragraph is ENTIRELY otm, and for me I think you can see this trend reflected by the DJs who are the popular ones these days, your Felix Da Housecat's or 2manyDJs type blokes. There's no real clear public face of dance music anymore or idea of what it is, just the residue of french house and perhaps a smattering of electroclash in manufactured pop, or in the charts.

I think SR is wrong on one count, the idea that the fashionistas have left dance. I'm not sure what others think and maybe I'm not around long enough to judge an increase or a decrease but dance clubs are the only place I ever see fashionistas. Bear in mind I live in Dublin so perhaps my entire perspective on what's conservative and what isn't is ruined forever! This may taint my argument also.

In Dublin dance seems to be just rebuilding, I don't think it's just wistful thinking on my part suggesting it will boom again, perhaps not as big or even in the same way as before but my earlier point about the scene and the atmosphere having a universal appeal to kids is what makes me believe this.

Having said all that I must say that I think a big reason for dance not being such a public phenomenon anymore is that house really sucks for the last 18 months. I still maintain that 02 was a fucking killer year for house, I'll list off 40 records I think are as good as anything I've heard from any other year. But last year? Awful. House has always been the seller I guess.

(Re:Bangalter, Jess I think maybe the link between hot production and hot DJ isn't made in alot of house peoples heads, afterall you go to see someone spin based on hearing their ace, not on the records they've made)

But my friends and I have reduced this sentiment to an in-joke catchphrase that just gets irritatingly funnier every year since 1997, especially when delivered with tongue-clucking tsk tsk-ery:

"The Metalheadz scene isn't what it used to be."

I think dance, though, maybe more than any other artistic movement/genre or whatever, suffers from the speed at which it progressed. The expectations we have of it are exceedingly high, and since it has only been around (in the current electronic form starting with techno/house) for about 20-25 years (and it was not ubiquitous for 5-10 of those years for many), it becomes much easier to accuse the music of losing the plot, or exhausting its creative energies, especially in relation to rock. In rock, those formal or aural innovations that only lasted a few years are still treated as important, and dont sound dated. Shoegaze only lasted a few years, and yet people still love "Loveless", and I dont think its many fans (or even its detrtactors) hear it as being just an artifact from the early 90s, and I dont see anyone lamenting the moevement's death in the same way that one could lament the short hypercreative lifespan of jungle (and you could insert any micr-scene in the place of shoegaze and jungle). Additionally, a jungle record from 1994 holds more potential as an artifact than "Loveless". In other words, "Original Nuttah" sounds more like 1994 than "Loveless" sounds like 1991. Something about the ubiquity of rock, and its culture and attitudes, makes it sound less dated (of course, rock rarely proclaims to be the future, or at least not in the same shiny, plastic sort of way).

I think the "death of dance" or whatever really can be ascribed to the failure to implant certain aspects of its culture into minds and media. The anti-rockism of singles, of anonymous DJs in dark spaces simply playing records, of club profiles, experience profiles in magaazines instead of artist features, has collapsed under the weight of branded mix cds. Local scenes, like the one in DC, barely seem to exist, because so many people have become used to looking in the paper to see what names are coming to town, even their local DJs have the same records, the same mixing ability, etc. I read once that Kenny Larkin's "Azymuth" from 1994 was the first techno album to feature the creator on the cover, which still astounds me.

I am tempted to say that club culture needs to go back to basics, needs to codify all of the unspoken assumptions that underly the culture, and to try to figure out what can be done in practical terms to ensure their continuation, their obviousness to everyone involved. People coming into the scene now dont even know there was ever anything more to it than what they are doing now, which is simple going out and getting fucked up, and maybe trying to pull. and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. I dont want the music and its fans to be all overserious urban connoisseurs, but i think there needs to be a better balance than what now exists. In the past, the scene seemed to be a mix of technerds and druggers, but it was a community, whereas now it feels to me more like a schism.

Of course, what has to come before any "back to basics" movement is a way to figure out how to do it with out being reactionary, without being preservationist. Simon made fun of people who felt there was something at stake in the music in GE (techno purists who hated rave were guilty), but I think he and they are right only partially. The only way dance music can still be viable as a community and an aesthetic is to only concern itself with preserving its beliefs but not its aesthetics. In a larger scheme, listening to breakbeat hardcore or +8 techno was the same thing, becuase, at least for me, the whole experience of being into dance music in its larger sense (since it is a proactive choice) should transcend the limitations of biology and birth, which seem to have much more affect on people's choices in other genres (i think rock, rap, classical, jazz, etc., for whatever reason, still dont have the felxibility to be "everyone's" music in the same way).

I wonder sometimes whether the attitudes towards Detroit have affected perceptions negatively sometimes (god that is bad diction). Reynolds and his fans are not necessarily anti-Detroit obviously, but the harshest criticism seems to be directed there, though sometimes it is totally warranted (just the name "true people" makes me want to throw up). I still think, though, that some of the values of Detroit are worthwhile. There is an awareness there that they are part of a scene, part of a community, and that there is an importance to their project. Yeah, the actualy music gets complacent sometimes, but somehow I feel that if someone or some scene were to understand the attitudes of Detroit without sharing any of its aesthetic assupmtions, there would be the possibility of magic.

I also wonder if it isnt time for another hardcore to come around. I dont know if it could have any impact in such a fragmented scene, but it might be worth a try. Something needs to happen to get people out of their complacency, to say "this is what you need to be listening to, or else you dont know what the fuck you are talking about". Incidentally, isnt hardcore, the retreat into darkness, its own kind of "true people" sort of attitude? (who knows. when i get my synths, i am going to make the nastiest, darkest micro/electro records i can, all at 140 bpm).

Lastly, I do wonder if the generational thing is an issue. Anyone who was into rave in its golden era (the early 90s in the UK, anytime before Fatboy slim in the US) saw the scene at its best, when the quality of music and community were exceptionally high. sure microhouse isnt as exciting in pusre novelty terms as darkcore, but i think there are people my age (23) who will find it really revelatory, might decide to pick up some synths, and might come up with something amazing. I still really believe that the smartest people right now are making dance music. And it seems odd to basically ascribe the death of the music to the fact that only people who care about it care about it.

one more fragment: After all is said and done, dance music as a whole still holds the potential of more active participation, more democracy, more inclusivity than any other music scene that I know of, and, even if dance music is dead aesthetically, even if it becomes the proverbial tree being eaten by parasites, those values mentioned above still make it worthwhile. I will continue to celebrate the music for the this reason, even in bad faith.

(this is a massiv x-post. the first unread message is Ott "yawn")

But one other factor in the US that I think contributed to dance's decline was the police crackdown on underground parties in the late 90s. Restricting dance music to clubs cuts out the younger audiences, so the younger generations are more restricted in the types of music exposure. There have always been lots of all-ages legal hip hop shows, and now that hip-hop is getting dancier, the generation that has grown up on hip-hop is moving into the 21+ bracket and starting to dominate the club scene as well..

for me, at least, the love of the music is locked into the love of cities, of their importance as places of culture and of conflicting beliefs. its not an anti-suburbanization or rural stance, though maybe i am secretly a snob, but i think that its imporant to be in touch with modernity, modernization, and its impacts, and this music is valuable towards that end.

culturally dance has been declining for a few years, the closing of gatecrasher/cream were major shifts, but garages continued rise at that time, meant it was only part of dance music shrinking, but garage has undergone its own shrinkage now.

i think another major event (in the uk) has been the rise of hip hop, you could look at garages rise as a shift from house to hip hop and r&b, with garage as a middle ground, but now its moved past that, and hiphop and r&b are the dominant cultural sound. grime is a post-dance music as simon says, it is a music that, when it looks abroad, looks to america, not to europe or jamaica. (there is another thread here about the decline of the role of jamaica in the uk, ironically as it is on the rise as an influence in america)

there is a danger here though of conflating disengagement with cultural decline. one is personal, the other social, one doesnt necessitate the other

i think the very fact that you have this "dance is dead", "no it isnt" dialogue is telling you right then and there, that something isn't the same culturally. dance music doesnt have the same cultural influence it did. can you imagine people saying "hip hop is over, its dead" right now? (as a qualititave statement possibly, but as a sociocultural one???? no way!)

Jess I think I have located the source of your malaise

Sorry. I've always kept a third eye towards dance music all my life. It's always there, and always as vibrant.. it's just that sometimes people in positions of power to publicize it get more into it at certain times and then out of it.

I have to laugh at a majority of this thread.

Rave culture on the other hand HAS been dealt a blow, thanks to more regulating and scrutinous governments, no thanks to shit like the R.A.V.E. act or other similar acts in other countries.

You know, you gotta cover your ass and not allow anything in this new Culture Of Extreme Liability.

I have to laugh at a majority of this thread.

Concur. I mean seriously.

-- strongo hulkington (dubplatestyl...), March 9th, 2004 6:41 PM

Yeah, well maybe it's not about absolute ages and more about how long you've been on the scene. Which doesn't explain the way strongo feels, but maybe his general ill temper does.

these are surely 2 separate issues?

i think others are conflating the quality of records with the sociocultural role being played also. ie, "has dance declined critically", and "has dance declined socially?" are being presented as though they were the same question. the first is much more difficult to answer than the second, i cant understand how anyone can deny the 2nd though (anyone want to catalogue the number of dance magazines that have closed, the number of clubs that have moved away from house, the not full clubs?)

And this just seems to point straight back at SR's point - ("It's at the point of there being a 'record collection dance' just like there's been 'record collection rock' since the Jesus & Mary Chain.") I've always thought that the appeal of dance music is little to do with collecting records, unless you're a DJ and need to. Most of the people I've known who've been very into clubbing and raving at some point in their lives have never been huge collectors of the stuff. I mean lots of compilations, yeah - but it's not like indie completism.

i can't believe i just read this on ilm

On the other hand, while I was buying some tickets for another Derrick May appearance at a well known record shop I was shocked how this place that once was alive with action of DJs and would-be DJs was virtually empty. One guy behind a deck and two employees, the irony, blasting ‘French Kiss’. Not a good sign.

n is correct about the records thing

Very insightful post btw Mr. G.

At the end of the day you need to decide whether you are in or out. If you are not feeling it, you ought to go because there is too much dead weight holding things back. After I left radio, I dropped out of electronic music for a year, and it was the best thing I ever did.

It is funny (synchronicity has been playing a major role in my life for the last three weeks...) but I actually happened upon a 1995 interview/article that was about the True People comp yesterday. AG is absolutely right, the only thing that is going to save dance music is when dance music producers/journalists/whatever stop caring about dance culture. The thing about Detroit is that if you are actually going to do records you are probably a bit weird to begin with, and whatever you do eventually do, nobody is going to care anyway. You might as well go out on a limb and make exactly the kind of record you want because it doesn't matter anyway. That was the whole point of the article; people always come back to Detroit because you can feel the energy of people doing these records because they want to and because sometimes they go out on a limb. I will admit that the advances of the 90's that were once being made are not being made as quickly anymore. Considering how small the community was/is it is a miracle that those advances were even made at all.

The next set of advances are not going to be huge international movements, they are going to be weird isolated little regional twerks that start sweeping outward. I think the problem with dance at the end of the 90's is that we were too connected. We expect these huge international movements of the demf/mutek/sonar variety, and if a new genre is not sweeping the world every 18 months the sky is falling.

I think what people really need to be doing is looking at things on a smaller community basis, and working there. Worrying about the greater state of dance music is putting the cart before the horse. Hang out with your friends, and make a weird little 300 pressing records that don't make any sense in the continuum. What is there to fear now? If you make a dance record in 2004 you are a failure by default. The only way things can get better is if dance becomes absolutely irrelevant. Things need to get even more weird, disconnected and idiosyncratic before there can be progress. Those pointless stumbles, leaps, and lurches will eventually congeal into something greater. (re vahid's "Glasgow invented microhouse" cdr, which I still need to get a hold of) As long as people are so concerned about the macro and their place in the larger world of culture, nothing will ever get accomplished. Advancement doesn't come the center; it comes from the backwaters.

That doesn't help international print journos because they need copy that will attract readers from a diverse audience, but at the end of the day all journo's can do is either comment on what is there, or try and gain favor amoung other journo's and hype something into existence. One thing I can tell you as one of those horrible purists is that techno has been in a state of crisis since as long as I can remember. When Azimuth came out there was a huge crisis that Detroit was becoming watered down and that all the product was not real Detroit product and that Detroit was getting diluted (and this was a euro journalist perspective btw), and then when the electronica goldrush hit in 1996 there was a fear that things were getting too commercial and that the "underground" scene was going to get co-opted, then Swedish pump-tech/hard tech hit and there was a fears that techno was losing it's soul, and then the bottom fell out as the generation gap hit and techno people started buying idm records in 99 and techno was dead, and post 9/11 everybody is freaking out because the state of the business model is in flux and nobody is selling records. People forget, but this shit has been in a continual state of crisis since as long as I can remember.

the thing is, i actually agree with you, about going smaller and stuff. my comments above have no bearing on the quality of any particular dance music, merely about its wider social relevance. i think the statement "dance music does not have the same wider social relevance or cultural currency that it did 10 years ago" has any bearing on the quality of any particular music. its merely a social observation.

i saw jeff mills 10 days ago, it was the best time ive seen him, he was better than when i saw him 94, a blinding set. but i cant pretend that it was part of some great movement, like it was in 94 when the millsian style was beginning to conquer europe. that didnt stop it being a great set though

Ha! This reminds me eavesdropping on a changing rooms conversation amongt the hiphop kids at school, circa 1989:

"Yeah, everyone's getting into fucking dance music and dropping hiphop, but I ain't"

I hope it's not a macho thing. I don't think it is.

but:

Dance here means: trance in a very wide variation: from fluffy to almost gabber-like hard trance. There’s even talk of exporting the whole thing to Korea (no joke). And the audience is really young too.

I don't want to come across as a total wanker but as a pretty regular clubber in Holland's nightlife for the last 13 years I disagree here on two points:

- while trance is still the predominant chart-crossover choice and the first thing non-dance fans encounter, techno (everything from the funky stuff to hard-as-nails Schranz) and hardstyle are more than equal in terms of actual club & festival attendance. Last Queensday I walked around in Amsterdam and noticed there was techno pouring out of literally every other bar, haven't heard one bit of trance all day. Check Tiesto's playlists these days: combination of techno, trance and the harder stuff. Ferry Corsten is mainly producing electro these days. The days of hands-in-the-air trance dominating Dutch nightlife are long gone.

- the audience for trance has grown much older over the last 5 years than you'd expect. Tons of people in their late 20s/early 30s at raves, much more than five, ten years ago. Not so for techno & hardstyle.

If you're desperately searching for revolutionary new things in dance music or dance culture after being exposed to thousands of dance tunes all across the spectrum in the last 15 years, you're not going to find much, that's clear by now. However if you consider the amount of excellent records still coming out every week, dance is not dead by a long shot. I haven't heard a 'paradigm shifting' US Hiphop record in this century either, but few would consider that genre dead.

Drum 'n Bass didn't start sucking when all records started sounding alike (they always were quite formulaic even in the golden years) but when quality dropped off in a major way. I see that happen in a few scenes (progressive breaks, for example) but at the same time there's a surge in quality elsewhere (techno). I have no doubt that 'dance music' as we know it now will 'die' sooner or later, but personally I'll only proclaim it dead when I hear hardly any good records anymore. Circa '96/97 that was (shortly) the case for me. It bounced back. All the talk of media exposure, branded compilations et al killing dance is a red herring I feel. People understandably get tired of all the bullshit around 'dance culture' and the dance music industry (esp if they've been around for a while), but the only thing that matters in the end is THE BASS ON THE FLOOR.

(Completely off-topic: I'm actually far more pessimistic about metal. Nearly all decent bands have gone down the shitter in a major way, and all subgenres are virtually comatose qualitywise, content with happily recycling on a lower level and dabbling in painfully obvious, half-assed experimentalism. This is nothing short of disastrous for a genre that was incredibly innovative, vibrant, musically fantastic and yes, life-affirming throughout '85-'95)

< /Andy Rooney and Chuck Klosterman's bastard lovechild>

While I'd agree that the record collector mentality isn't as ingrained in dance culture as it is in rock it's definitely there. Check out the prices, Renaissance, Megabass, Northern exposure or retrospective of house mix sets go for on ebay if you don't believe me.

cos movements and concept of is one of the most attractive aspects of the cultural that surrounds and grows out of music for a lot of people, myself included - and really we are recognising that this particular movement may have reached it's initial zenith a couple of years back and now may be the limbo

Maybe I'm all wrong and dance music is actually just rock.

-- donut bitch (do...) (webmail), March 9th, 2004. (donut)

Yes, what happens if we stop interpreting the whole situation in terms of a succession of movements?

haha check out ILM or soulseek!

The best post on the thread is by mr. Born-Again Pubescent Undercover Pocket Nihilist Crochet Ninja!

"Hang out with your friends, and make a weird little 300 pressing records that don't make any sense in the continuum. What is there to fear now?"

This is what it always was about and always will be about. If Simon R is convinced that dance music is dead then maybe he will convince everybody else and that will force the price of synths and software to the point they were in the 80s when techno first started.
All I know is I will still love the music and if it was the drugs that first turned me on, I have chilled out on that side, and am still able to feel goosepimpley thinking about what it would be like to one day listen to that superpitcher mix that andy k constructed here: The One and Only Superpitcher Thread

Anyway who made him the god of the dance?

(first off, my original comment about movements was meant in jest hence the "Andy Rooney and Chuck Klosterman's Lovechild tag", but hell, I'll go with it...)

There's sweetness and thorns associated with "movements"... The creative momentum and reason thereof is unmatchable. The insularity and cliqueness is unavoidable, too. Unfortunately, I think movements have been growing more thorns than pedals lately, especially when movements passive-aggressively want to keep things "within the country/clique" so to speak.

And should they be blamed? I mean, it's not as hard to start movements anymore, thanks to readily available and affordable means of making music and distributing it. Likewise, the whole concept of a "movement" is becoming more obsolete for the same reasons. Which is why the seemingly more "gang/posse" mentality of "musical movements" is leaving a more bitter taste with me, personally.

this is what happens when you write about something rather than experiencing it firsthand. blogs are like these giant recursive repositories of recycled ideas and i think they're really dangerous in this way. the idea that floats to the top is not necessarily the right one, just the most linked up and therefore carries the most weight in google.

tricky disco describes the process of unregulated mass media news in one fell swoop as well! Brilliant.

Does this make us all fools for even discussing this to such an extent then?

x-post: i do too, but i don't enjoy "humor".

Of course ironically you sometimes get shifts in the politics of dancing which bear no relationship to sonic shifts at all. Both is best obv for that combination of visceral and critical buzz.

Or, I might add, get all evangelical.

The Gatecrasher explosion was another one, I guess.

(btw, I'm not questioning you to be contradictory. Quite the contrary of, ur, contradictory. I'm starting to follow you, and am earnestly interested in what you will induce)

oops, x-post- you dudes are too quick.

i don't mean to be obvious here but isn't the "when" and the "how" all about the change in audience??

was there a change in the "politics of dancing" when london kids stopped listening to dub and started listening to drum and bass? (that's not an argument, i'm really wondering here) or was it only when white shoegaze kids (jason pierce) started repping photek?

*Does it make more sense to be talking about electronic music rather than dance music?

*Is the trash-talking, fun times electro with vocals we're now hearing in the more popular clubs the current state electronic dance music?

* Is musical progression on the dancefloor dependent on rhythmic innovation?

*If electronic instrumental dance music went profoundly audiovisual, with visuals synchronised to all components of the rhythm, would that reinvigorate the situation at all?

* What other innovations are possible, and would be welcomed? I assume we're not interested in a straightforward revival of anything.

somewhere southalls nuts just exploded

Vahid -- Bark Psychosis definitely did NOT sound like that. Stop by some weekend and I'll burn you a CDR or two or something.

Politics of dancing is like any other form of politics in this situation I think - we read different events as being politically significant for different reasons depending on whose story we're telling. There's no objective answer.

An analogy: one can argue that when Margeret Thatcher gained control of the Tories and when Tony Blair gained control of the UK they were actually fighting on behalf of the same overall political shift - towards economic rationalism. But obviously these are considered to be radically different moments for many people (politically and otherwise), and neither is the "true" moment. Perhaps it's the same for dub fans and shoegazers wrt to d&b.

Didn't we effectively cover this on that where is electonic music in america now thread?

Some people are dancing less, sure but people are also rocking less and hip hopping less. The economy is in the shitter, most people have less money and a lot of us have gotten older and have had responsibility thrust upon us.

Yer stoned! Admit it!

http://www.overloadmedia.co.uk/archives/miscellaneous/audiovisual_synthesis.php

I don't smoke any more but it does occur to me that the drugs argument running through this thread is not to be dismissed lightly (not that it has been). I discovered nail-hard, electronic, fizzing techno around the same time as I started smoking. It seemed to open up the visuality and grain of the sounds, so that they glowed with light and colour - and the sense of rhythm was deliciously visual too. I could really see the pistons moving, so to speak. That's why I think there may be something in this audiovisual synthesis idea. It makes manifest a certain kinaesthesia that people tap into when on drugs. Of course you may disagree.

I don't see me carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders any time soon.

Ned, omnipotent one, make it happen!

By the power of Greyskull, I summon Simon!

reynolds seemed to always hype the "psychedelic" dance experience and right now the strengths are in the negative space of the minimal sound and the rise of the electronic artist turned vocalist. i think at some point video technology will definitely push a more psychedelic experience back into dance music.

1. are there more dance magazines than 5 years ago, and do they sell more copies?
2. are there more dance clubs than 5-10 years ago, and are they larger, and are they still packed?
3. are branded dance compilations selling more than they did 5 years ago?
4. are big name djs able to command the same fees that they were 5--10 years ago?
5. is dance music all over the mainstream press?
6. is there a higher percentage of youth going to dance clubs than 5-10 years ago?
7. is dance music an unstoppable juggernaut, colonizing all in its path, expanding with each coming year?

(And if the answer to all these questions is no is this necessarilly a bad thing.)

That's an important question because, back in 1983-6, when everyone was saying to Gary Numan fans like me that electropop was dead and rock was back, and even Depeche Mode were picking up guitars, we had no idea what was happening in the bedrooms of Chicago and Detroit.

2. not in the superclub sense, but there are more smaller bar type clubs and nights which blur the notion of 'dance club' generally, what with the gentrification and trendeification of certain urban areas

3. possibly yes but only the nostalgic ones i would've thought, witness the glut of 'old skool anthems' double CDs in recent years for example - tho i imagine compilation sales in general are down on 5 years ago

4. i doubt it, altho i expect there's a very top tier equating a handful who can still (Oakenfold, Sasha, usual suspects)

5. no, not compared to rock, pop and hip-hop/rnb - the bulk of the coverage for dance is devoted to 'is it dead' theorising

6. it's more likely to be constant than either a massive decline or increase - 'scouse house' or whatever you want to call it seems to have been on the rise in the last eighteen months and is selling well in the charts but this is a little deceptive because again singles sales are down on 5 years ago, and i used to read M8 in the mid-late 90s and cheesy trance-lite anthems were just as big then (Lucid, GRace etc.). the decline in other sub-genres is more noticeable however - due to a number of factors

7. no, dance has fermented and matured after much experimentation and chaos, as a term it's like pop in that you can't pin it down to any one thing, it's passed childhood and now adolescence ends and it feels a little burnout naturally. no movement can sustain and expand continuously (scientists debate whether even the universe can do this) - contraction seems part of the process but it's cyclical naturally

additionally i would say technology HAS affected youth culture more and more - esp. comms, but internet and mobiles don't quite command the same romanticism because they're practical devices rather than artistic ones...unless you're the worst (or should that be best?) nerd ever or something

if so then it's time to start speculating on WHAT because i can't think of anything that doesn't have more to do with technology than it does artistic innovation (not necessarily a problem)

I mean from a personal point of view that was the first place I heard dance, chemical brothers, orbital, underworld, even fatboy slim, aged 13 or so this was great stuff, it may not be what I'd consider total dance now but it definitely gives you a basic understanding.

I see gareth pointing out the cultural decline very strongly and of course he's right, I don't think anyone's denying its declined in popularity, in fact it hurts quite a bit to have it hammered home in such a black and white manner. I'm not sure where the benefit in that is, since actively there aren't alot of people saying otherwise here.

Of course it's less popular, but the debate isn't that simple and as I say I don't see what g-man, much though I love him, is getting at by bringing this argument down to a simple yes/no.

Even if it has declined as a cultural movement I'm not sure this stops it being one. gareth you say yourself that that jeff mills show was amazing, don't you think there are people going to those things for the first time? Whatever way people want to look at it a thousand people in a room dancing to weirdo repetetive music with flashing lights, music like you've never heard before if you're 17 or so, with half the crowd off their faces, it's a completely nutso social experience, as I've said before elsewhere it still can be quite a shock for me sometimes.

I think it's easy to forget how different socially going clubbing is to just going out drinking or fucking "on the pull" or to all those awful clubs that people go to.

If anyone thinks it won't seriously affect a load more lives then I'm surprised.

Re the record collecting thing, it's an interesting point, I think the people who've left dance now or aren't coming out are the floating voter types, you could argue fairly easily that its massive popularity was always very much to do with ecstacy, for alot of people, and the music for them came in second place. I mean how accessible is dance? How was it ever as big as it was when you think about the records that got played?

Is what's happening now just a natural reversion to people not wanting to listen to an increasingly obtuse genre of music?

but i dont think it will do it in significant enough numbers to count as expanding social relevance.

So 'dance' as a purely formal musical form might have retreated from the position it was in a while back, but 'dance culture' seems to have broadened (or other 'cultures' have broadened to assimilate it).

In many ways, dance has won the battle. It has been accepted.

I do think Jim is otm really. It's interesting to wonder how far the whole 2manydjs/erol thing will go, I mean could it ever be taken so far as to create a situation where the good DJ sets are sort of standardised as something to look for across genres, whatever you're into?

i didn't say progression, all i meant was that people keep thinking that the past is going to be repeated in that there are new scenes and new sounds around the corner. the former maybe but as you may have noticed i can't shake off the idea of sonic novelty being completely over. however i am very optimistic about technology continuing to open things up in other ways - file sharing the obvious example (and an example of a revolutionary continuum remaining in effect, tho what comes next even in this domain it's hard to really flesh out)

except for that guy who said my top was awful

and Dewaeles, Alkan and co's remit only goes so far - punk, electro, techno, hip hop, 80s pop and the odd indie anomaly - they stray into rave a little but not enough for my liking, dancehall, crunk n' grime pretty much ignored but that's mainly cos they stick to a certain tempo range (100-130bpm) i guess, so not quite the true eclecticism some seek (tho that was what Justin Robertson and even Weatherall were often being lambasted for in the mid 90s)

that said when they started doing the radio soulwax mixes i was a bit dismissive mainly out of jealousy because they weren't the only ones doing it but they were getting the attention (along with Avalanches, but they had Dexter who was a genuine scratch n' mix talent) and i was huffing because with the amount of records they had access to and the amount of time they had it wasn't that impressive in terms of concept or execution...but i'd still enjoy a set by them more than most others...

I am sure he is not really doing so, so I won't bother.

I mean I've criticised them myself in the past but honestly, WE KNOW YOU DISLIKE THEM! winky face etc.

GET BUSY NOW

xpost

possibly Faithless who were launched as a band project and had success relatively quickly - very little actual development of sound and indeed nothing they've done in recent years is quite as good as the club tracks on the first album ('We Come One' <<<<<<< 'Salva Mea'), but they had acoustic ballads on the first album and all kinds of shit here and there so i guess it's not quite the same

or isnt it more that these random dance number ones just sort of get thrown up into the charts and then disappear? has there ever been a dance act (aside from b jaxx or d punk, i guess) (and maybe scooter, ha ha) that's produced more than, say, two top-selling albums and maybe more than three singles?

Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Prodigy, Faithless, Fatboy Slim all sold more than Basement Jaxx I expect, with Leftfield, Orbital, The Orb, The Shamen, 808 State and FSOL bubbling just under. All old skool brigade now with stars fading - I'm not sure the market conditions are suitable for a similar act today. It DOES feel like there are no big dance acts or DJs anymore - Streets, Audio Bullys, Dizzee and the like feel like the next phase of that but none of them are going to sell as well I figure.

That's because you don't read my other posts which mostly mention my intense dislike of MJ Cole and Big Beat. ;-) I just want people to dance to *sound of the underground.* I do like you calling me Jesus Nath.

x-post: ugh

sorry, couldn't help myself. this thread needs some weirdness anyway

that chem bros remix of kylie is quite good

I’ve never been comfortable with SR describing dance culture trends as “movements”. Although, I admit it is an interesting and useful tool of analysis, I’ve always felt it was clumsy.

By utilizing the concept of “movements” (and I’m guessing - as in left wing working class POLITICAL movements?) to analyze and critique cultural trends you are setting yourself up to fail because dance music movements are not political. Even if some try to claim so, if anything, it ends up being anti-political. Maybe I’m totally misinterpreting, but what kind of movement is it exactly? It’s seems like it’s purely for the academy.

Any well-disciplined post modernist can “read” the entire history of the working class struggle “into” his/her analysis of youth culture making it seem political, but the underlying premise still remains that it’s pretty much hopeless to fight the system for real. At the very best we can have some good-ole outlaw fun, and hope that it lasts. The classic bo-ho equilibrium.

But are there not REAL forces at work that are determining/influencing youth culture outcomes?

Through this way of analyzing then, it is inevitable to feel a “let down” when the outcome “hoped for” or “dreamed about” never materializes. Does anybodys circle of friends include burned-out leftists? RU feeling dat?

they are inherently non-politcal, but raves did become political as soon as the gov't (both us and uk) took notice. i think it may have been stated elsewhere on this thread that it is incorrect to conflate the music with the culture itself although this is easier said than done.

Change "revolutions" to "revivals, mostly, with the occasional rare revolution", and this poster is OTM.

I define "old" here as "old enough in age to have been musically conscious around the period of time in music the Rapture is drawing from, and also have listened to more music in a compact enough amount of time to burn myself out and accelerate my age of 'musical innocence' to the Curmudgeon level".

Hardcore for the headstrong!!!!!!!!!!

Great, rock critics making rock. Ex Lion Tamers to thread.

* the house beat with the open hat on the off-beat is sounding very tired.

* as regards the slightly more complex electro beat, nothing much has changed since about 1989. Still stuck on Star Wars.

* Breaks - give me a break. Tired, so tired - easily the fourth time around (only blander each time) for this style of rhythm construction since 1988.

* drum & bass/Jungle - so stylistically constrained, too many boys, too much testosterone, no humour. A small number of good ideas, done to death over five years ago. Simon Reynolds has said it all. Can't move on, won't move on.

* miscellaneous (grime, bhangra, brokenbeat, woo electronics, electroclash, heavy silicon, dancehall etc) - well, here we're talking about styles that haven't made much of a global impact in the clubs we're talking about, more's the pity. Even if these styles are just as closed off and conservative in their own way, to have them mixed into the usual house or breaks boredom would break up the monotony! It may be different in London or NY, I don't know.

* DJs are largely incapable of changing speed, rhythm, or style even once during their set. Beatmixing encourages this lack of variation.

* DJs don't usually play acetates, burns etc from producers who come to their night; but this synergy between producers and club DJs has always kickstarted new directions in club music (as it always has, eg in Jamaica, Detroit, Chicago, Berlin and Sheffield).

I could go on. Most club music you'll hear going out these days is a minor, so minor, variant on disco or funk. If you've been going out for 10 years or more, you won't normally hear anything unusual or fresh.

There are thousands of rhythm and melodic permutations available to the modern producer. These are largely unheard in clubs. If the producer tries these permutations, they can forget about the track being played. More of the same is required by the average DJ (and they are very, very average) - yet, everyone is becoming bored with more of the same.

So... no new musical directions, as none permitted by the cannula-thin sensibilities of the modern DJ. Anyone who wants to try some new musical approach is advised to forget about electronic dance music. They will be blocked by the muthaf***in' DJs. They're better off looking into playing live, so they're not censored by the DJs - and organising their own events.

* DJs/producers seemingly unable to "assimilate" any of these "other" musics (grime, bhangra, brokenbeat, woo electronics, electroclash, heavy silicon, dancehall etc) aside from on the most basic textural level, making any much feted hybrids just the same old same old in a given genre with some new sounds on top.

* the house beat with the open hat on the off-beat is sounding very tired.

some think this has been true since about 1976. I know you mean it in a new context, but it's a critique which has never held up.

This especially is OTM. I don't think beatmatching is a bad thing st all, but having it be a cardinal rule for every single song segue is just really one-dimensional.. as are many of the tired song-insertion show-off techniques.

not heard 'American Girls', 'Bandwagon Poos' and other c21 John B nuggets then? granted there needs to be more of that kinda stuff perhaps

thousands of rhythmic permutations not heard in clubs? i'm not convinced - live i've heard 5/4, shuffletech and IDM where no one bar is the same as the previous one but not in clubs but that's because they're a bit tougher to dance to no?

-- stevem (bluesk...) (webmail), March 11th, 2004. (blueski)

Yeah, that's it Steve - harder to dance to. But as you get to be a good dancer, you know, you start to crave challenges.

So the solution as I see it is a new kind of 'Simon says' dance music (not that Simon, the one in the kid's game) which stabilises on a familiar 4/4 pattern such as house or electro, whatever... then goes off on a slight tangent for a couple of bars- then back to the familiar pattern to reassure the nervous - then off on a slightly more complex augmentation of the first tangent, just for four bars this time... and, in effect, patiently teaches a new rhythm to the dancers. This music would be primarily percussive, with the kick drum being the teacher, or 'Siomon'. Geez I hope I haven't lost you here. I've been drinking a lot of coffee.

As always I can't speak from personal experience on these issues really because up to a certain point the less "straight" a dance groove is the easier I find it to dance to.

I don't think the specific rhythmic pattern is so much what needs to be challenged so much as the overall monolithism of the grooves whereby the bassline, the synth patterns, the riffs etc. etc. all correspond perfectly to a basic 4/4 beat (again, this is done for ease of beatmixing, and is why so much tech-house esp. is reduced to the level of being a DJ tool). Something like John Spring's "Do You Like That" is a superlative example of a track where the beat, the bassline and the riffs aren't so much matching as interlocking, following their own muses but in tandemn with eachother.

As always I can't speak from personal experience on these issues really because up to a certain point the less "straight" a dance groove is the easier I find it to dance to.

I don't think the specific rhythmic pattern is what needs to be challenged so much as the overall monolithism of the grooves whereby the bassline, the synth patterns, the riffs etc. etc. all correspond perfectly to a basic 4/4 beat (again, this is done for ease of beatmixing, and is why so much tech-house esp. is reduced to the level of being a DJ tool). Something like John Spring's "Do You Like That" is a superlative example of a track where the beat, the bassline and the riffs aren't so much matching as interlocking, following their own muses but in tandemn with eachother.

Polyrhythm, is that what you're referring to? I don't hear enough polyrhythms in clubs.

Sometimes you hear them on acid tracks or other tracks where there's more than one sequencer, each set to different time signatures (eg, FUSE - F.U.; Hardfloor - Hardtrance Acperience).

Tim, I did some scouting around for a definition of polyrhythm and found this:

Some Definitions of Poly rhythms:
First definition:
To qualify as a poly rhythm, the contributing rhythms should be chosen such that the numbers denoting their rhythmic relation, are relatively prime to each other.
Second definition:
If the sum of two (or more) simultaneously sounding rhythms results in a subdivision of the beat that is not present in either of the constituting rhythms, we call this resultant rhythm poly rhythmic.
Third definition:
Two different rhythmic patterns do not result in a poly rhythm (when played simultaneously), when one of those rhythms can be contained in the subdivision of the beat that is implied by the other rhythm.

From the Polyrhythm Page:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~marcz/Polyrhythm.html

I mean, if anything the big DJs are more likely than *ever* to vary styles and tempos in their sets. There's almost too much of that "it's the vibe" approach among DJs, who champion an international language of good taste without seeking to locate or challenge the underlying uniting presumptions behind their selections. I'd rather a DJ whose selections have a level of meaningful consistency (which doesn't *necessarily* mean that their set operates within the parameters of a single genre) than one who goes "oh yeah it doesn't matter if its house, techno, broken beat - if I'm feelin' it I'll spin it."

(note: I go out once every two months, so I'm just gonna shut up now haha.)

I disagree completely. Not to drain the term 'politics' of all meaning entirely, but just because a social movement or musical subculture is not contained within a political institution doesn't make it some kind of failure; without the ability of producing real social effects.

I think that it's simply the case that 'rave' related movements simply aren't resonating socially anymore, for a variety of reasons.

I do like donutbitch's point about the ghetto-mentality that has emerged of late though - a definite swing away from rhizomatic global flows to close-gated communities: the MC/celebrity/vocalist as a fortess of identity and locality; rather than the instrumental, faceless beatscape of techno - free-floating and fluid.

x-post: well haha on saturday i will be going out for the first time in almost two years. this is mostly down to a. where i live/have been living, and b. there's been not much to get me to make the 3-4-5-6 hour trip to see someone spin.

well, Richard D. James has been slagging "IDM" for ages (or at least hinting at it at a pace become less subtle every time), and, sadly, not only was there no comment, no rush, but it sure hasn't caused IDM to become less stale... (or less dead, if you really want to quaff the cynicism potion)

(That is, if what people are saying is true, and since for the last five years nearly all my exposure to dance music has come via MP3s and CDs, I'm not really in a position to agree or disagree.)

Jess, I'm only $5000 worth of equipment and some essential skillzor away from making life-changing history-making trackz!

(no seriously, I actually have ideas for tunes all the time. Don't know if they're life-changing etc. though...)

WTF is this?? did i miss a microgenre??

On the dancefloor! Dance music should generally (not exclusively) sound like it was composed, dreamed, thought up, felt on the dancefloor. Of course it can have other functions but I think the big thing i'd be conscious of if I was making dance music in my bedroom would be to keep the visceral physicality component while still playing around with all sorts of ideas. I reckon it'd be pretty hard and i respect people who can pull it off easily - even in my head a lot of my own ideas start veering towards IDM or something.

(the indie kid thing wasn't directed at you or about you scissors!)

xp

-- vahid (vfoz...) (webmail), March 11th, 2004. (vahid)

This is an Australian/NZ one only I think. It's basically heavy metal with electronics and ropck beats for the dance floor. Not industrial, more melodic and song oriented, but yeah, heavy and electronic with rock beats and melodic robot vocals singing about hell and satan. We love it.

There's a microgenre in Bristol called Sludge, did you know that?

OK i'm biting - what is SLUDGE?? slowed-down grime??

(my microgenre knowledge stops with "black country" and "brighton sound")

So let it be written, so let it be done!

http://www.overloadmedia.co.uk/reviews/reviews.php?label=Deathtrap%20Recordings

!! i know i'm a bit late on this one, but this is madness!

(i am now 30mins late for work due to hunting for that john b trance n bass cd...)

also, at the risk of making a tit of myself...didn't you argue for this elsewhere with limited results? sounds a bit "australia council" verion of cool. you'll be telling me that Dissociatives record is heavy sil next!!!

maybe i'm wrong, though.

IDM was shit from the moment some elitist idiot decided to name it that.

Fucking hell I feel like Peter Pan or something. Most of this thread is true though, but there's always that conflicting side of me which thinks "erm...well I guess I'll go out next week and stay up all night and it'll be great anyway". I must confess I've been listening to so much old stuff lately, not for want of looking for new good stuff either.

I was looking for a CD in my brothers old bedroom recently and I found a copy of Muzik from 1998, like an end of year review. It was just phenomenally better than the jaded stuff now. The music writing was more enthused, there was just this total focus on tunes, this total quipping almost exclusive joking about all the records which were huge that year, and not only that but the entire tone had the lifestyle locked down aswell, for young people.

Reading mags now it's like "oh those halcyon days". It really is, and that must be a big reason why they're failing. I agree the music may not be roping in as many enthusiastic youngsters but it's a problem as much with the profession aswell.

Jesus I should really dig out that issue of Muzik, I was actually enthused reading it, and it's now what, 6 years old. BAH.

why is this so difficult?? like ronan says, you just replace the drugs with getting really really dressed up. then you dance less like mc hammer and more like david bowie.

x-post: jeez i know! i caught the flu that night!

-- vahid (vfoz...) (webmail), March 11th, 2004. (vahid)d.

How true, yet how depressing - for Mr Bowie is the worst dancer in the world.

I want to know why electronci dance culture can't make a bigger attempt to keep its older members. You go into a Spanish club, for example, and it's literally on for young and old.

I work in clubs so I'm about twice the age of the youngsters. Everybody gets into it with the first flush of discovering it all. So everyone will have a golden period corresponding to the first 4 years or so of dicovering the wealth of music out there.

I'm 36 and so I've seen a lot of, well, microgenerations come and go since I started working in clubs about 15 years ago. Where do they go? Probably on to cocktail bars then dinner parties. The only people I know from the early days are what you might call the workers - DJs, producers, club owners, label managers etc.

The tragedy is that staying in touch with dancing and dance music is a great therapy and joy in life - everyone discovers it, but not many people keep it. A shame. I reckon they're bored out of the clubs by the musical stasis instigated by the DJs. The drug taking is a parallel compensation action to Reynolds' Zone of Fruitless Intensification: a short term attempt to cope with boredom that fails.

One thing not touched on - the importance of conversation and exchange: a good club requires a place where ideas may be exchanged. Shouting over music is not on. There must be a little area where people can talk to each other at normal volume. Innovation is furthered by collaborations which arise spontanously at clubs when the temperature and sound level is correct.

Um yeah anyway DANCE MUSIC PLEASE.

I should've made it clear - I'm a producer - so any club that'll have me, haha. In Sydney, Australia.

I'd be happy to have my own freak controlled club however.

The last two posts were a very local joke with a very local flavour - from a couple of drongoes on the Aussie sheepfucker thread. Ignore them.

But I dunno if it's that dance music itself is dead, but rather that people want something different from the broader electronic music.... which is best symbolized by the success of the iPod. Bad IDM is the worst end of it, but at the moment I guess there's a stronger desire to spin records with friends or listen to something on your individual iPod rather than experience the communal dancefloor experience.

So, for me, the highlights of Miami were (ILM touchstones, ironically enough) Dizzee Rascal - especially his freestyle over the backing track of "Tipsy" - and Michael Mayer/Superpitcher. The latter in particular really sold me that Kompakt is for real. Was totally exhausted and had no desire to move that last night... but it was hands down one of the smoothest, most engaging sets I've ever heard. Kompakt is successful because they combine the best parts of techno, house & trance without falling into any of the pitfalls. The music never really sped past 100 bpm or so (if that means anything), which made it more of a cerebral rather than physical experience... Just basically getting lost in the music and the melodic twists and turns without having to dance around like a whirling dervish (interesting that it was the night of my least intoxication, and also the most enjoyable).

I think maybe dance music as Simon Renyolds experienced it during the peak of rave is dead, and has been for a long time, and was never really "alive" in the States. But that's welcome. Because while some of the mutations are crap, the strain of music which SR says is "still worth checking out" IS enganging and will stand the test of time.

While overwhelmed by the volume of music out there, I find all the cross-pollinations of out there interesting (which is why I find straight rock & roll so dull right now - it's the conservative strain of "let's get back to basics" which never really goes anywhere), and historically musical vacuums are followed by booms. Pretty much inevitable.

To Aaron: Yes, dance music may be dying, but this rock revival, unless it has something new to add, is deader than dead.

Innovation is furthered by collaborations which arise spontanously at clubs when the temperature and sound level is correct.

this is the best quote ever.

i've been going out to clubs since i was 15, had a really heavy period where i went out probably 5 nights of the week every week for a few more years than i care to admit, got burnt out, got back into it, etc, etc, now i'm really picky about where i go because i tend to have more interesting ways to spend my time!

Okay, sorry to turn this into ANOTHER Kompakt thread for a sec there... back to dance music.

Anyway,
That is cool you met Ollie Colin some of that stuff used to pop my head off. I used to do some writing for a dance mag in London and by running my mouth I was able to get some of the Psy-Harmonics stuff licensed for release in the UK. It was awesome and no one knew it was out there.

Sorry about the cross posts but what kind of music do you write now?

This is the cd my mate Paul put together for Transient

http://www.third-eye.org.uk/trip/oz.html

Third eye is an "organization" that I used to do tons of parties with there is a member named Jason who actually lives in Sydney right now. Great Bloke.

The guys that runs the label day to day is nice too, cant remember his name but i knew his brother too I met them in the UK
when they were staying at a friends house. He has a big psychic cross on his arm.

What does this have to say about the "state of dance music" today? Not sure, really, except that what they're doing does speak to a will-to-rave that is very obviously alive, and that's enough for me.

For the record, I'm 32, don't do drugs (well, nothing snorted or encapsulated, anyway), and don't have too much trouble staying up all night. That may have to do with the fact that I only have the opportunity to do so a few times a year, seeing as dance IS, in fact, dead in San Francisco.

Times change though, all that time was celebrating freedom every day anything seemed possible.

Now the world is a much heavier place. Bush in the whitehouse, fear being pumped into our brains 24/7. Kinda makes it hard to feel that carefree all the time. Very reminicent of the change from the 70s to the 80s when disco was declared dead, but it didnt really die, it just mutated, as it will again.
There are still great parties going on in the desert around LA, people still 'avin it and losing their minds. I know I lost it when I saw Voight and Mayer here in Jan, one of the first times I had that much fun on nothing really at all.

There is no definitive answer, just change, some things die and some things are born out of that.

There were clubs popping up all over the place in semi-legal venues where you could hear amateurish djs play any-old stuff to crowds of (young) people off their faces. One place I used to see a guy barging through the crowd waving a plastic bag of e's over his head and shouting "pills, pills, get your pills here".

You could hear Kompakt next to detroit classics next to Adult in one room and then go next door and hear someone scratching up mid-90s jump up jungle with modern bling-hop and go into a third room where somebody was singing live over early 80s dancehall version cuts.

YOu could go out into the countryside and see 6-soundsystem raves that went on all night and didn't get busted, or pop into any one of at least 3 warehouse parties in East London any night of the week.

You could go to loft-type private parties where 100-200 people would be dancing enthusiastically to anything from house to bhangra to dnb (and I still find the poppy High Contrast style dnb kind of exciting).

Any one of these places you could see scene veterans, musos, druggies, youngsters, italian tourists and insane homeless people in equal measure. You could strike up a conversation with a total stranger and get all enthusiastic over something stupid (in a way that for me personally hasn't seemed possible since around '95 or so).

The drugs are good, the people are friendly, the music is interesting and it's all being done for love rather than money. Writing about it almost makes me wish I was back there.

And from this side of the world you have techno being truly massive in Indonesia just now, in a scene that mostly revolves around local djs. I don't know what they sound like... The Thai/Singaporean electro is truly dreadful, but people are into it, and excited about it.

So nothing in particular to contribute to the debate, but anybody saying microgenres and local scenes are going to contribute to great stuff in the near future is otm. And as a late 20-something, I'd love to be 18 now and experiencing this stuff for the first time - I think it'd be just as exciting as it was for me back in '94...

Jacob, your comments about Indonesia are corroborated by my brother, who came back from there with loads of local techno. It's a bit daggy sounding still, but encouragingly there's a definite local flavour to it, something sort of gamelan going on (excuse my musicological ignorance). Funnily enough, there's a great deal of influence in that music from one particular track, 'Plastic Dreams' by Jaydee. It must'v been a huge track over there.

But I wonder if there was a lack of feedback between say mainland Europe and London on a music making level that marred any chance of jungle becoming anything more than a sub genre. Obviously jungle could never compete over here with gabber or trance, then garaga/twostep comes along, some people change sides or stay with jungle and some (like me say fuck ‘em both and become microhouse junkies). And so the fragmentation goes on & on. So hypotheses: Dance as meta-scene had been dead since I dunno, pick a year 1992? 1993? I don’t see how it ever could…ahem…come together again, other than through the appearance of a radical new technology. Yes? No?

-- Omar (dubaandemach...) (webmail), March 12th, 2004. (Omar)

Yes, with a couple of minor caveats.

First, in order to catch hold in the world of club-oriented production, the technology must be fairly cheap (eg, compare the cost of the AKAI sampler series with the Fairlight CMI series of a decade earlier - the latter was too expensive for most producers and therefore did not really revolutionise music in the way the former samplers did)

Second, the technology may well turn out to be a less-than-entirely-new instrument or program that has lost its value and never sold well in the first instance, but has been picked up and used in a way that is unprecedented (I'm thinking of course of the early Roland gear).

not a problem thanks to smart soft synths and p2p sharing, both improving all the time

i can't see the teaching of old kit new tricks happening really tho

True, but at the moment it all seems like people are just spending their time using Reaktor (or other programs) to create better Synth emulators. Reynolds most OTM moment was when he described how he winced when he heard about Vibert's album.

I mean surely acid hasn't really been mined that heavily, how many acts actually went down the hardfloor route in the last god knows how many years, Josh Wink? Pah!

To look at things really generally you have HOUSE (basslines, discofied) and techno (pounding, tracky). But the idea of house as something actually banging or truly druggy is kind of lost, I guess the actual acid thing. I was quite surprised to read SR saying that about acid house, I mean I'd have thought it was an area that could do with a decent re-take from someone with a few good ideas.

yes, I guess that would be better and also maybe not so much on the production side (although that would great) but esp. on the consumption side, something that would change the dancing/listening experience.

Also problematic about Vibert's album is it seems to be an intellectualising of the retro process - it's as if he said: "Based on previous historical patterns, retro sounds come around 20 years after the event, I'll chop a couple years out of this cycle, see what was happening 15 years ago and imitate that. Then I'll look like I'm cutting edge/ahead of schedule". When the true acid revival occurs it will be done (like all revivals) by people who were teenagers or younger in 88-91.

Of course all of the second paragraph is based off a vibe, so feel free to ignore the statement (but I still think it's true).

Xpost x 2

Unfair on LFO - that's just a group/Bell continuing what they've always done. And true new technology allows new things to be done - for an obvious example the use of polyphony when using soft synth emulators of old mono synths. Or to use a friend's rock group example - sending his guitar signal through a laptop emulating a 303 (being tweaked a lot) and back out through a distortion pedal - creating a great sound.

+ Ronan, don't mock golf which is great fun: taking a leisurely walk with friends through a manufactured landscape hitting things with sticks.

1994 --> 2004, baby!

Vibert on the other hand, was born in the early seventies (I think - maybe very late sixties) - and was around to experience the scene first hand as an adult - putting him in a different position.

I was just badly trying to make the point that the people involved in say electroclash, were not 19-20 when "Nasty Girl" or "Don't You Want Me" came out - but probably 9-11.

haha, I'm guessing many of them were listening to classic or college rock between 9 and 20.

golf rave is genius, where do i get my plaid pants.

i really liked luke vibert's "yoseph". if it's a simple throwback, it's a highly idiosyncratic and warped one.

If there's any one thing that I'll take away from this thread, it's that many of us are too old to pass judgement on the "is dance dead or not" question. My clubbing days are 8-10 years past their prime. Let's find a new clubbing crop of 18-20 year olds and ask them what they think.

Actually, the 101 version came out in 1988, and the Lisa M./Kevin Saunderson version came out in 1989. NOW, perhaps there was an earlier version of the song before either that was done by just Saunderson that 101 happened to cover first. Or maybe I just own a later reissue of the Lisa M./Saunderson 12" that never bothered listing the original copyright date. So who knows.

"New Beat" was basically an extension of mid 80s Euro-disco EBM taken to silly/porn-style proportions. The idea was to be this slightly sluggish tawdry dirty beat. Most songs were really hokey and stupid. However some did more with it.

Lords Of Acid's "I Sit On Acid" became really popular in industrial/EBM dance clubs across the world, and later became a Praga Khan/Jade 4 U collaboration which added a lot of humor and variety and hence in 1994 Voodoo-U.

Technotronic took the basic musical principle, added soulful vocals, and make a few kick-ass memorable charting dance singles. (Or at least memorable enough for somebody on this board to start all these Ya Kid K threads)

The rest in between mostly stayed on the Acid House side of things, still clutching to 303's all over the place and sounding rather good and wicked, while the rest was forgotten for good reason. Sadly, the former was forgotten because New Beat quickly became a taboo term once the 90s hit.

Kinda analogous to Electroclash, in many ways.. except not nearly as many people started caring for New Beat outside the dance circles. If fact, New Beat is what reinforced the non-dance crowd to continue thinking dance music was "lame", if anything. (and in many cases, understandably. A lot of it was really really boring.)

I can't be critical of this stance, which seems quite legitimate, but there may be other ways to address and conquer one's boredom with a current sound.

just because there are far fewer clubs in the uk playing dance music, and they are emptier, and the magazines are closing, and the sales are diminished, doesnt mean i dont like a lot of the new dance music being made. on the contrary, i am very enthused about dance music at the moment, as always

but, on the flipside, my personal love for dance music still, doesnt fill those clubs, doesnt alter the fact that dance music is shrinking

im not even saying this is a bad thing, but i see no benefit in pretending that dance music is the sociocultural force it once was, it seems very head stuck in sand to me. i think it might be better if we were able to acknowledge the role dance music plays today, and how that role is different from the days when it swept all before it. it is arguable that it is better in smaller form anyway, who knows...

eminem, 2002: "nobody listens to techno and disco"

so what happened in betweem? yea, what else happened?

in between Will Smith and Eminem is BRITPOP, nothing else

presumably that must be, what 99.4 percent of the people who go to restaurants? the extension of that argument is that no one could have a valid opinion on trends in cuisine or the state of the catering industry if they hadn't attempted to cook a soufle themselves

that said, when i look at the people i know who were crazy about dance music a few years ago, most are bored with the output or disenchanted, the ones who are still engaged are the ones who became amateur djs. (i stopped short at buying one Technics!) i guess if you're a dj it gives you a motivation to wade through the crap in the stores, and also gives you more of an appreciation for mediocrity -- don't mean that as bitchy as it sounds, i mean that djs are looking at tracks and seeing oh i could combine this good bit of that so-so track with this good bit on this basically not-amazing track, and make something exciting. even amateur djs are thinking about the mix, whereas your punters like me are pining for anthems.

and that's what struck me -- nobody's making anthems anymore. not talking about big vocal tunes, cos even instrumentals can be anthems --- think 'chime', 'energy flash', 'plastic dreams', jungle things like 'terrorist'. they're ralling cries, but i guess when a culture is in retreat it doesn't generate rallying cries anymore.

The beginning of the Fuse set is easily the most exciting thing in the last 2 or 3 years, especially to come from mostly 4/4 techno/electro ideas. It's all very simple really, something which the whole Legowelt/Hacker/Oxia axis seem to be trying to reintroduce to techno, that disco feel, the sense of it being energy music, e music.

None of the above do it quite as well as Vitalic though, just sounds so dangerous! But one man won't resurrect the whole scene or anything, to be honest he should have made the album ages ago. Who knows what sort of crossover potential it'd have, it is very gripping and not obtuse but at the same time there's a really European feel to it all which I think will prevent it ever going really big in Britain, if there ever is an album.

he didn't play

Ronan Golf Raver - "I'll Never Be Like You Mix (I'm 20!! Mix)"

though

Interestingly enough, I think many mainstream artists have been crashing/obfuscating this culture party that you claim has retreated.. I have been hearing a lot of "anthemic sounding" dance tracks recently (which I base upon hearing at the local gym, my only source for hearing what the latest mainstream dance music is), and many of them are big sounding trance/4/4 remixes of pop songs like Aguilera's "Beautiful" or whatever is one the charts.. at least stateside. Granted, these aren't original songs. They are remixes.

Perhaps very slightly influenced by the flurry of mashups starting in '02, but I think the "anthem" has slightly transmogrified into the "anthemic remix" to some degree... In fact, the whole concept of "the remix" has become just a bigger entity since the mid to late 90s overall. What does that suggest? Cultures has crossed fingers with each other too comfortably and maybe not necessarily retreated altogether perhaps?

(all of the above is me brainstorming, btw.. feel free to pick apart and destroy any B.S. stated above, as surely some of it is B.S... I just woke up and need to take more painkillers for my wisdom teeth recovery here.. )

I'd say "Ultravisitor" but I'll only get shouted at...

Are all the brand new amateur DJs everyone is mentioning here actually going out and buying turntables and then vinyl and shit like that? (cuz turntables have definitely gone down in price, I've noticed.. at least in Seattle and Vancouver) or are they just Mp3 djs? Not to underplay either... the term "amateur DJ" just seems very very flexible to me these days, that's all.

Laughed at is more like it.

Yeah, but the original was already an anthem. I dunno if it is strictly true than nobody is making anthems ('One More Time' comes to mind, UR even had two on one 12 with 'Inspiration'/'Transistion', 'Black Water', 'So Much Love' obviously) but what seems to be the "problem" in that regard is that the anthems aren't crossing over scene bounderies a la 'Doom's Night' or 'Knights of the Jaguar'.

btw Ronan, if heard some rumours about Vitalic finally releasing that album this year. :)

Have you heard the set where Miss Kittin comes on the mic midway through La Rock and says "la rock does not sound like zat, la rock sounds like zees" and twiddles some knobs or something and it comes out all mangled and different and sort of well, rockier. Then Vitalic starts screaming "I do love you Miss Kittin" in time to the beat of the next track. Fucking weird!

"I DO LOVE YOU MISS KITTIIIIIIIIN!" is being shouted way too often by my friends and I in Ukraine style voices when something good happens. Or after a few drinks for no reason.

you could even say not turning up (which more and people are clearly doing) is a contribution in so far as it's a form of feedback that the djs really ought to be listening to! voting with their feet etc

amateur djs -- i guess someone who has decks and a mixer, buys a lot of tracks, plays for nowt at friends parties, makes mixes and gives them away, maybe occasionally does a paying gig for a pittance -- but is a long long way from making a living from it.

one thing i noticed in american dance specialist stores -- this has always been the case but more so now i think -- if you're in the store looking for tracks, they just assume you're a dj.

We need ideas and discussion on the levels that move from the studio to the club, and all the spots in between: what do we want to hear? What do we want to see? Why? How? You don't need to be a DJ or producer to have this discussion, though you do need to have some kind of interest in that area.

Regarding the Indonesian techno discussion upthread: I spoke to my brother - he told me he had a tape by Soekarno's son (!), Gunter Soekarno, called NT-XTC (you heard right). The style was very much in the realm of Jaydee's 'Plastic Dreams' with a distinct preference for south-east Asian melodies.The tape is from several years ago however, and things may have moved on...

As one of the entry points to the culture it's no wonder it's fading when people who are interested in it don't enjoy or feel excluded from the retail experience, nevermind those with a less partisan interest in it.

hmm. that doesn't sound a million miles off from technasia or ken ishii or dj shufflemaster in their more derivative moments. thx for the info, i'll start looking for that sukarno tape!

That said, Zion's Gate in Seattle (which I still feel is the best dance record store ever, and also has smaller offshoots in Portland and Vancouver) takes care of that niche very well for the non-DJs too, while more than just satisfying am and pro DJs. They have a huge and very accessible selection of dance CDs from all forms... especially Trojan records material.. as Zion's Gate's main specialty has always been dub, reggae, etc. Hell I plugged them enough in word.. might as well give you their link here.

My main point being... as I repeated above: I think, Simon, it just so happens your perspective of receding dance culture is just coinciding with your surroundings and your recent experiences. I'm not necessarily seeing the same thing. (I'm DEFINITELY not seeing the same thing in Vancouver, althought the am-DJ-to-rock-musician ratio in Vancouver has skyrocketed in the past few years). And I'll also second the rather buried but cogent comment above that the economy is making almost all forms of music seem "more dead" lately..

The RIAA's recent actions haven't exactly helped promote morale in any form of music creativity either.

I would say that from a strictly listening point of view in all things musical, since I don't perform or mix or anything like that, the mid-part of this decade brings more to home Tico's note a couple of years back about how there's so much stuff out there, so omnipresent and now so easily accessible, that everything feels like a pool to dip into and out of as desired. Dance culture is arguably I think something like, I dunno, stoner culture in an American sense. I get the idea that there's always going to be mixing and mash-ups and this and that and reactions to it the same way that there's always going to be those guys in the corner who just discovered weed and Master of Reality.

Also, I think Billy is OTM about dance music stores being intimidating to the casual fan. So much of the culture and mood in these stores is knowing about all the coolest labels and the very latest records. Thus, it can appear that you need to be an "expert" in your musical field to get by in these stores, which surely drives some people away because they're afraid of asking a question to the staff and looking like a dumbass (although this is certainly true in certain indie shops whose staff specialize in so-called "asshole chic", but still, there's a point to be made ...)

question#1: are there as many new people coming in as previously?

question#2: are there enough new people coming into dance music every day for it to count as an expanding or a receding genre?

This is the point I've been trying to make. I could try to expand further, but I think it'd just be idle speculation based on the reasons I've given.

however,there are still great parties and things going on,and still people going out every weekend and taking their first pill,going to their first rave,etc,kids who don't even know how dance music works and suddenly find themselves drawn in to the culture...

i think its easy to forget how genuinely weird,and,i suppose,subversive dance culture is when you first get into it,even now when i talk to people in work or whatever the idea of staying up all night seems so weird to them,and i remember when i first got into techno (im only 21,so this was at a stage when dance had been "dead"
for years) it all seemed so different,even now at parties there are people my age who have never been to a rave or even a house party going on all night with people mixing or whatever who are amazed by it...

having said that i haven't been going out as much as i used to,and last summer wasn't as good as the summer before for outdoor parties and so on (both objectively and subjectively)

(side note-the best rave i was at last summer was part-funded by the british national lottery!god knows what this says about dance culture)

free parties in europe still seem to be huge as well,i think the culture is always there,and it is easy to portray it as being stagnent or whatever but there are still so many people so into it that they don't give a fuck what objective criticism thinks of it,and i suppose on one level who gives a fuck about objective criticism at six in the morning when youre running around having the time of your life...

as i said i haven't been going out as much,partly cause techno does seem to be going downhill,all umek style tricks and really similar tracks,but then last week we all went to see steve rachmad and he was just playing straight up dancefloor techno,but there was something about the way he was playing and the atmoshpere in the club that made it amazing,the best thing ive seen in ages,and it wasn't startlingly original or whatever but when you're there you don't worry about it

(hmmm....thats actually a shit arguement,since there are still kids getting into rock and listening to all that stuff id dismiss as boring,retro crap,and it obviously means something to them as well i suppose-i suppose maybe what im getting at is that dance culture is still worth getting enthusiastic about merely by virtue of the fact that it is based around fun,around doing something different,and the whole make your own fun fuck it lets have a laugh in a field attitute is still great,even if the tunes may not be breaking much new ground)

to be honsest a lot of what i like about dance culture isn't directly related to the music,i love going out and hearing great music and dancing and so on,but im also just in it for the laugh-i love being up the next morning drinking,playing football,talking shite,etc...all the fun is to be had after five in the morning as far as im concerned,and the music is a big part of it but only a part-there's more to it than that)

ronan there are great golf raves on donabate beach during the summer!

reading this thread and a few other things recently (steve rachmad,it being bright when im going to bed again,slightly better weather) have
made me realise i should make more of an effort to go out to see djs in town,go to as many free parties as i can while its still feasible,etc

i think the phase of being slightly fed up with dance music is one everyone goes through,and im sure a lot has to do with back in the day nostalgia and also drugs,but all it takes is one good night and people are suddenly more enthusiastic...

it can kind of become a routine,but with summer starting again my enthusiasm has returned...

you can even see this sort of enthusiasm in simon reynolds account seeing that d'n'b dj on blissblog a while ago,i'm sure there'll be other things that'll remind him why he loved this stuff in the first place,and probably everyone else on this thread as well,even the refined retirement techno of kompakt (not a diss,i fucking love kompakt) which everyone has gotten into is still music to party to and get enthusiastic about,obviously you're not going to spend all your life going out the way you do when you're eighteen but i'm sure dance music will stay with people on some level their whole lives

did you hear michael mayer is playing in july (to make this thread a typical Dublin minutiae thing)

I just got a phonecall asking if I want to go to a party, it's now 5.51, my credentials are glimmering right now! I'm actually thinking "yeah why not".

This idea, aired earlier, that you exercise creativity through what you consume is very Coca Cola, very Nike. Perpetuating the myth that some people in a creative field are producers by nature, while others are consumers by nature, may be one of the reasons a previously vibrant scene falls stagnant.

My evidence for that claim is pretty basic, so I don't wish to overstate the case. However, I do wish to make a case for it. My instinct is that scenes in music are vibrant when there's a palpable sense that everyone can do it - and that sense is also a reality: everyone _is_ doing it! You look around - my god, your useless mates who've never done a day's work are suddenly cranking out tracks and releasing them around the world! This other friend of yours has started a label or a clothing store, your partner has got the Singer out and is running up crazy looking dress designs and selling them at the local record shop, and getting orders in from all other the place; someone else is making a film or some videoclips, all on a shoestring, and they look great... I'm not just talking about techno here, as I am old enough to recall the same thing happening around 1976 in the UK around punk.

Now, I could be wrong about this, my mind is open. I'm just airing my impression: a scene dies when people stop contributing ideas from all directions and fall into two camps - the superstars who produce, and the cattle, who consume. This arrangement is dissatisfying to both parties.

ronan what is this set???

check out fluxblog by the way he's got up some of the new superpitcher and new crackhause which is pretty cool

Now let's see (2000-present): "Doom's Night", "Satisfaction", "Loneliness", "La Rock", "Knights Of The Jaguar", "Gatex", "Strange World 2000", "The Man With The Red Face", "Love Story", "Airwave", "So Much Love To Give", "Emerge", "Sunglasses At Night", "At Night"...all bona fide anthems.

I actually kind of agree with the remarks on Kompakt, it is a sophisticates sound and going with the theme of generation ecstasy the sound of the sophisticates is the sound of creative doom.
Although I can see how it would fail to bring new young punters in I'll be damned if I can't like what is pleasing to my ear.

Some of the other comments he makes about black music being the Russian army stike me as a little much as well. There have been some great things released and of course big respect to Timbaland ect. but on the whole rap is not in its most creative apex either.

Again the whole argument seems like a fun one and intellectually stimulating, but only an argument that a writer would start in the first place. A statement to shock and awe but without a lot of good back up.

as usual I have gone on and on blathering away..

Regarding this bit:

"On ILM I said rather metaphysically that dance isn’t generating anthems cos a culture in retreat isn’t going to have much call for rallying cries.
The real explanation, though, is more prosaic. The kind of music being made now is made by and made for people who have been in this for a while; they’ve grown with the music, they don’t want to hear crass riffs and obvious hooks."

Maybe I'm running against the grain, but the older I get, the more my craving for crass riffs and obvious hooks intensifies. It's like an old man who can't shake his sweet tooth. Becoming a bit of a snob about such things seems common among young men aged about 19-28 (I was no exception).

Rap is at it's creative apex as dance music, Hector. Nothing that Dizzee or Kompakt or Bassment Jaxx release is going to get any much at a club (except perhaps as a curio) while neps/timbaland/crunk/dancehall exist at even close to the level they do (this is in the states, I don't know how the former play in England or abroad, but I imagine ever their the cultural hegemony of the hip hop/r&b/dancehall nexus is pretty strong.)

Especially as Simon uses it as an opposing explodingly inventive force.

Perhaps my beef is with the analogy and not the argument that hip hop is more commercially successful than dance music. I didn't really see it as this opposing force waging war on the dance floor for the hearts and minds of america.

The point made much earlier about focusing on your own weird ideas on a local level and to hell with macro planning for the next global epiphany is just spot on. This hits at the real double-edged sword created by the apparent artisan's paradise of p2p and freeware. In a global melting-pot where anyone can pick over a perfectly preserved historiography spanning half a century of ANY music you can think of, its going to be that much harder for folks to come up with ideas that aren't retrospective in some way. I also agree that many of dance's values will far outlast it's aesthetics, but I'd go further.

It's a given that young people people for the foreseeable future will gather in numbers around things that excite them. But to fuss over whether or not there are any more cool sounds yet to be imagined is not only wrong (possible combinations and permutations with currently available equipment are by now, well past infinity, so they ARE out there), but it really misses the point. I prefer to believe it'll be many decades yet before feet cease to be set alight by raw sonic and thematic tension played loud across a sound system. Just simple, captivating ideas - that it's still known as "dance music" in 1 year, 5 years or 10 will be irellevant. And as long as each of us is born unique and the world keeps changing, it follows there'll be no shortage of new paradigms, learning, attitudes - and music.

but now simons clarification seems to point that his original point was a worry about dance musics creative health rather than social/cultural centrality (ok, i know he intertwines them), in which case, i cant really agree with the original premise, as my take is primarily concerened with dances musics retreat from centrality.

i believe hip hop to be creatively at a total peak at the moment, certainly it is an extended golden age, and i see no sign of drop off, last year was undoubtedly a golden year for hip hop

what made last year golden for hip hop specifically?

dance and hip-hop are capable of sustenance because people will always want to dance to that kind of thing i think, but it continues to feel weird that the scenes i grew up with are passing/have passed into history, tho inevitable of course.

Wow, Lee Perry and Farrell Puff were there. Two of my favourite artists.

The dance culture around here is definitely in retreat but I agree with Tim that as long as producers somewhere are creating music drawn directly from the fire of the dancefloor, there'll be no real crisis in quality/creativity even if the precursors for a bubbling subculture aren't really there in your neck of the woods.

I reckon the social future of the up-for-it PARTY organism is going to depend on it completely renegotiating pop. As in completely turning it on its head. And nothing the likes of what's happening with that ultra-slick, lacquered hip-hop/r'n'b pimp daddy's dance either. There's not a lot in its arrogant, bloated vibe unless you're an aspiring millenial new-jack. And that ground's really a bit well-trodden to be considered much of a flag-bearer for new ideas in dance music.

But then I'm not American.

I mean I have friends really into tech-house, not minimal tech but full on banging angry tech, I saw Phil Kieran support Felix Da Housecat on Wednesday and it was pretty effective. I found it harder to write it off to the same friends afterwards, at one point he dropped a remix of Murderous by Nitzer Ebb, and it truly was the definition of tearing shit up. Smoke, and strobe lights and a gang of young people screaming "where is the youth".

That said I'm not entirely comfortable with the whole tearing shit up thing meaning the music has to be full on or aggressive, if a crowd is going mad I'd consider the DJ to be tearing it up, that's his job.

Also I don't think people see Kompakt/micro-house as a populist movement anyway, it's difficult to imagine it as being anything other than a niche genre. I don't think anyone's claimed or hoped otherwise.

Another striking point in current 'dance music is dead' assessments is how being a commercialized, self-centered, arrogant form of music is considered a bad thing for dance, but apparently a good thing for hip hop. You can only take scene paradigm relativism so far...

seeing sxsw first hand this year completely changed my mind about dance music and electronics. 1988 part deux is just around the corner and I know which side I am on.

send me your address mike!

A wise conclusion. You couldn't drag me to SXSW no matter how much money you paid me and no matter who was playing. Kevin Shields could play a three-hour-set of pure noisebliss and I'd just wait for the DVD because it would be cheaper and less horrid to experience.

and by the way i never went to sxsw while i lived there its just a cause of traffic congestion

i'm sure it's a race thing. it usually seems to be.

No wonder mega-raves like Melbourne's Two Tribes and Summa Dayze are described as a "fashion statement" by those still interested enough to fork out the money. It would be fun if smaller, specialised clubs and bedroom producers were keen to reconnect adventurous, unpollished music to large numbers of people, but new-breaks, rare groove and electro-clash clubs seem more than happy to maintain homogeny and nurture their own hipster/gatekeeper aspirations.

Not to say that music hasn't continuously gotten better over the years. Some of the gear I've heard recently has been easily as charged as that from any nominated Golden Era. I wouldn't be surprised to see much of today's bomb-toons fulfill their real social potential in future contexts. And by then we'll probably reassure each other that the early to mid 00's were still the Salad Days while 'others' continued to shake their heads over dance's decline. But with any luck, some 17yr old somewhere will already be doing something even better by then.

This looks a bit silly now. :) At least from an electro-house bobbins viewpoint (which might as well be renamed anthem house.) (Quite amazing really that electro-house fulfilled this pipedream of mine: crossing over and creating something like meta-rave. Within a year and without any obvious tech/drug shift.)

I didn't fully understand this comment, particularly the "deep house" bit. Can someone shed a little light on this? Is deep house the type of dance music people tend to move toward after they've been around the scene for a while? After they get tired of "epic" trance, dnb, hardcore etc? What about the "deep house purist mansion in the sky" concept? Is there a sense of elitism surrounding deep house or something?

Sorry, totally ignorant on the subject!

I have never heard micro house in LA unless I go to see a very specific DJ. Peaches is the only person who plays it at hipster parties.

yeah I never hear microhouse here. it's still all about the deep house and downtempo. and every coffeehouse owns a couple of Zero 7 CDs.

Maybe I couldn't live in LA after all!

Adam, are there specific micro/glitch whatever nights in SF? Also, I mostly go to parties that tend to feature the same DJs, so maybe it's not completely Khia vs Bloc Party here.