Electro-House? Micro-House? WTF? (noob question)

But if I missed something glaringly obvious, I apologize - do point it out.

Electro-house: search out Spektrum "Kinda New" (easy to find)

Micro-house: Broker/Dealer (slightly rare)

Better Propaganda: Broker/Dealer

Click the [LISTEN] link where it says "Selected MP3s". I know nothing about this site, it just came up with a quick search.

Obviously, actually hearing and discussing the music helps fill in most of the blank spots in "what a genre sounds like."

I only ask about that compilation in particular because that's what I've been listening to today.

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Electro-house mixes:

V/A: Ivan Smagghe - Suck My Deck
V/A: M.A.N.D.Y. - Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Mix
V/A: Tiga - DJ Kicks
V/A: Ewan Pearson - Sci-Fi Hifi

Microhouse: Luomo's Vocalcity, MRI's Rhythmnogenesis, Akufen, anything on Perlon, either of Isolee's albums, Ricardo Villalobos's Alcachofa, Farben's Textstar, Matthew Dear's Leave Luck To Heaven, Herbert's Secondhand Sounds

Microhouse mixes:

V/A: Michael Mayer - Immer
V/A: Triple R - Friends
V/A - SuPERLONgevity 2
V/A: Ricardo Villalobos - Taka Taka

2000
Luomo "Vocalcity"
Daniel Bell "The Button Down Mind of Daniel Bell"
Isolée "Rest"

2001
Andrew Weatherall "Hypercity"
V/A "Superlongevity"
V/A "Total 3"

2002
Michael Mayer "Immer"
Triple R "Friends"
Farben "Textstar"

2003
Ricardo Villalobos "Alcachofa"
Matthew Dear "Leave Luck To Heaven"
Michael Mayer "Fabric 13"

2004
Robag Wruhme "Wuzzelbud KK"
Luciano "Blind Behavior"
Akufen "Fabric 17"

2005
Superpitcher "Today"
Pier Bucci "Familia"
Isolee "Wearemonster"

(Maybe throw in Hawtin's "DE9: Variations")

Electrohouse:

2003
Ivan Smagghe "How To Kill The DJ"

2004
M.A.N.D.Y - "Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Mix"
Tiefschwarz - "Misch Masch"
Ivan Smagghe - "Suck My Deck"

2005
M.A.N.D.Y - "Body Language"
Dominik Eulberg - "Kreucht & Fleucht"
Ewan Pearson - "Sci-Fi Hifi"

I admire Wearemonster more than I enjoy it.

considering the inclusion of Get Physical for Electrohouse in both lists, are we going to call Metro Area proto-electro-house? i'm all for it!

Chelonis? DJ T?

alls i know is that i'm pretty sure i dig on the 'electrohouse' stuff a lot more. i'm such a sucker for bubbly synth lines and little melodies and breakdowns and stuff...

"...some of what is electrohouse moves closer to decent trance" Yeah, true.

I don't think this is a problem at all. It's probably better if it stays DJ/12-inch/mix based.

But, the Dominik Eulberg album was pretty good, certainly the Booka Shade album.

you hear stuff like "psych" or the shelburne-coined "ketamine-house", or even references to acid regarding trentemoller (which I also agree with). I personally have no issue describing a big part of his sound as "electro", if only because it seems to share a lot of sound with stuff like, say, bunker records, or tracks that really are just "electro" (ie, high frequency tweaking, specific drum machine sounds that are straight out of 80s electro - forgive me for not knowing the names of the machines!)

Rude 66 has an awesome track on that comp!

So, "mini" is microhouse? That's my favourite track on Total 6...

i thought the russians were gonna take over, then they disappeared

Electro-house as a term is problematic for me (electro as a term is now almost as damaged as industrial), but I haven't heard a better solution and most people tend to know what it entails.

Late '04/'05 Trentemoller is too pared down to be considered electro-house, I think.

Am I the only one repping for necrohouse (a-huh-huh)?

I've tended to bounce equally between it and 'Thrills' this year. But I think 'We Are Monster' is just more perfectly formed & completete. Enough to = better, even if it lacks the thump I usually crave like mad & lean more towards techno for.

and if it doesn't sound quite so fresh now (after an absolute caning) I'm pretty sure it will when I pick it up randomly after not hearing it in ages in 2006.

Now here's a little exposition. I grew up on the rap/rock tip, mostly rap to be honest until the "alternative/indie" explosion took over my young ears in the early 90's. Through the 90's it was mostly guitar-based music that kept my interest. I have always loved old soul and disco (love Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, etc stuff and all the Arthur Russell reissued stuff from last year) and gave techno/big beat stuff a whirl in the 90's. I also owned Roni Size's New Forms and all the Chemical Brothers stuff for a while. I listened to a bit of the Orb and enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed all of the bigger house-y stuff from the early 90's (Black Box, Technotronic, KLF, Deee-lite) that I heard in middle school. But none of it (except for the Chemical Brothers for about six months) really grabbed me and took hold for very long. I could totally just devote myself to my indie records and my rap records and my soul and disco and even some jazz, but never electronic music. Sure I enjoyed some early electro stuff and the Depeche Mode/Yazoo/Human League of my youth, but never fell in love with this strictly not-a-pop-song electronic music. But after hearing Fabric 13 and being led in to Superpitcher through some remixes, I absolutely cannot hear enough of this stuff. Koze, Isolee, Superpitcher, Michael Mayer, MANDY, Matias Aguayo, Ricardo Villalobos, Luomo, and so many more I want to hear. After listening to music so passionately for the past 15 years, it has been a long time since a particular genre(s) completely captured me like this stuff has.

So tell me, is it just that I've finally let go and opened my mind and ears or is it that this stuff is just this exciting because it's so good/innovative/new(and not just to my ears)? Is this music going in a genuinely new and exciting direction? I mean there it certainly must some retro elements but not like the current state of rock music which is in a continuous recycle mode it seems. Why has this stuff fulfilled my listening desires so thoroughly? (maybe I'm supposed to answer that, but you get the idea, don't you?) I guess another way to ask this is how new/innovative does this stuff sound to those who have followed electronic music for so much longer than I?

This is a good thread.

can this be true?

(i mean, obv it is the best song evar but is it microhouse??)

Now I find myself obsessing over all the electro/micro/tech-house that's been floating around here, even to the point of wanting to DJ again with this stuff. I do have a (very) irregular chance to do some fun DJ nights, but it's more of the indiedisco 'anything goes' variety, and now I want to play some of this HOTT AND DIRTY shit and see how it goes down on the dancefloor - which, given the right crowd, should be 'quite nicely'.

That should be "experiencing this music." And sorry for using the word "stuff" about 58 times in my first post when in most cases the words "music" or "songs" were probably more what I was looking for.

Ketamine-house (or, as my friend Omar dubbed it first, kosmische house) is a great new development, all those 12-minute epics. Everybody should know that Dominik Eulberg remix of Hell, the Steve Barnes records etc. I've never seen anybody mention "Surface Noise"/"Surface Dub" by Add Noise (on Ear Sugar). Don't know anything about them but it's one of the best in the genre" if you ask me. Funny how many of these records don't have much of housy beat, it often sounds more disco-derived to me.

I always like to keep an ear out for a nice Italo influence, like on the Mylo recent remix of Flatpack's "Sweet Child o' Mine" cover. See also Rex the Dog, who should release that massive crossover album next year, finally, hopefully.

However, stuff like Trentemoller, John Tejada, Dahlbeck, the Hug EP, Jesse Somfay, "Drug Queen" - it doesn't all sound the same, but does seem to tap into this rather "out", cutting aesthetic that absolutely does right by me. "kosmiche house" might be a decent name for it, though acid-house would have been better had it not already been taken. it's just very "hot" sounding stuff to my ears, full of bright colors and sharp edges. Might rejoice if the even "outer" stuff starts making it (anybody hear the Chicago Shags EP?), but really, what we read about in electro bobbins and here, it's just fine

So that should be both electro- and micro-house?

(If I have understood things correctly.)

But my mates from Manchester use it to mean crap. In a polite way. In front of your mum or whatever. 'It's bobbins!'

I'm upset "Neuromantic" never caught on!

wearemonster is one of my favorites albums from this year no question, but i understand why some folks might not like it.

Yeah I think this is the point. The hard part to understand if you're not already into this music is just how much the devil is in the detail. All electro-house records - regardless of their sub-sub-sub-category - are retro in one way or another, but it's almost as if the purpose of the retro components is to throw the modern production values into sharp relief. These are really immersive records. It's totally the sort of thing that i go crazy for if/when I'm on E, dancing to these big grooves and hearing all these amazing little details.

well, i was at a night on halloween at the reverb (scary goth/metal place normally, though), and 'the dukes' were djing with a couple other people who were all over this music... i think 'footwork' has a couple DJs who play it too. none of the 'main' clubs in clubland, natch. also maybe BOA...

as far as my experience, the latter is usually the case when I hear new music. this kind of techno (or house) hasn't been around in this exact form, but like Tim said above, the revolution is in very small details. It certainly would have been possible to listen to Villalobos and Justus Kohncke's "2 After 909" from 2002, and see a line to Trentemoller's productions now. And having said that, I have noticed a trend to follow minimal techno over the past few years - maybe this is a peak in popularity/exposure.

As far as the actual sound, this stuff *does* seem more fetching to me than, say, "microhouse". I can't say why exactly; the sounds used seem more alluring somehow, more hypnotic. Maybe it's the way the producers use extreme high frequencies in combination with bass bump - in that way, it's kind of like dub, it just sucks you in.

x-post
yeah, "Serenetti" is really good - Tmoller's most [whatever-we're-calling-this-music] record yet

I attempted to call the Steve Barnes style psych-house "Romance Drones" back at the beginning of the year.

http://www.heroesonline.com/Photos/hc04/images/hc04-electro-blurry.jpg

KOMPAKT 129

SCSI-9

ON THE EDGE

RELAX AND CHILL OUT DEEP DOWN INTO THE DEEPEST POINT OF YOUR SOUL. A SOOTHING TRIP INTO THE GOOD. TECHNO CAN BE SO WONDERFUL.

I'm an outsider to dance trends, picking up on most of them retrospectively through fora like this. That's fine, I've a job (and greying hairs) that no longer permit me to stay up to 3 am on the weekends, moreover my hometown is in brain-drain flyover country. So I'll never get the full cultural picture, just the curious artifacts. Perhaps I'll start a cargo cult someday.

This leads me to cul-de-sacs that are wholeheartedly disdained by dance cognoscenti (mind you, I visit their dead-end, eventually, as well). I spent the 90s ordering Goa trance CDs from Israel, where I guess the term "psy" would cause some of you to instinctively raise your fingers in a cruciform.

So, this thing called Electro House. I'm guessing its a bit like Psy was to last decade's dance intellectuals, smelly, but this time a stench of cheap musk perfume rather than patchouli and sandalwood. The album cover bikini models are as deeply embarassing as the neo-Hindu bias reliefs were.

I know the roots in Italo & Electro, and yes, have the Ivan Smagghe (etc) mixes for instruction, and I know that the modern variety of syncopated, reverbed monosynth basslines owes its popularity to Benny Benassi and FHM-style videos. I have a few well-reviewed comps/mixes.

But I still like it, and finding some sort of comprehensive picture of the structure and history of the modern genre is like pulling teeth. My usual sources like Resident Advisor seem to turn their noses up at the barest whiff, and (as in the early days of goa), the discourse on fansites is, well, lowbrow so far.

So, is anyone thinking about this stuff, and guiding outsiders on a history of the touchstones required for literacy?

Links will be fine, we're all busy people.