So are house & techno just plain dead now?

house
techno
ambient crunk
booty swing

I WANNA MOVE WHEN I HEAR THIS FUNKY HOUSE GROOVE! *GIGANTIC OPEN HATS*

i don't know, every time i'm down the record shop, absolutely NO house/techno records appeal to me. i mean, love the old stuff, but i find it very hard to get into any of the current records. i still love new hip hop records, though, as i always have.

i typed without looking at the screen just then, i have decided to leave your name as it is,

something crazier out there for me?

(i dislike all armand van helden after 2000)

I... like it when it gets brainy/nerdy or post-2000 idm-ish :( shit. That's probably your answer right there. Until Vahid comes to the thread with a list of 200 great straight house records produced post-2000.

The walkaway success of that fecking awful Madonna record has got me wondering about the place of 'big' dance albums these days though. And that maybe there could still be one. Other than Mylo or Royksopp, both of which are very easy-listening efforts :/

Wondering if any current underground (well, it is by chart/UK standards) producers will ever manage to produce one in an environment (UK) basically completely hostile to anything not "bad enough (arctic, strokes is are examples)" existing in isolation.

I know the whole "dance album" thing is kinda contentious as a "does it even matter?" issue. But casting aside "dance for rock kids" snobbery... I don't know where I'm going with this really. Help.

- minimal
- more minimal minimal
- bloody hell its a minimal album
- clearly not minimal (i blame the noise ysi thread for this one)

ive never heard of any of those artists before. its a jungle out there!

Stuff from recent years that I would recommend:

1) V/A: Mei Lwun - Uno Records Mix (2004)
Probably my favourite predominantly-"vocal house" mix ever. Simultaneously commercially oriented and sonically audacious, and with the perfect mix of US and Euro influences.

2) V/A: M.A.N.D.Y. - Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Mix (2004)
Probably the best/most consistent electro-house mix even though it's all from the one label. Deep, dubby, buzzing, compulsive, epic... and a must for fans of Chicago house.

3) V/A: DJ Naughty - One Night In Berlin (2005)
Fantastic and fantastically sleazy mix of colourful, dynamic electro/italo/house old & new, veers expertly between pop drama and jacking intensity.

4) V/A: Tiefschwarz - Mish Masch (2004)
Not so much for the mix-cd which is just good, but definitely for the second CD of Tiefschwarz's mixes of other people's work. Muscular yet intricate, focused but widescreen, it's a great example of how current producers can hammer out an aesthetic which is immediately identifiable but also incredibly broad-ranging and unpredictable.

5) V/A: Johnny Rock & Matt Styles or something like that - See You @ the Party (2004)
Mix of tracks from Music For Freaks, makes a great case for the proposition that US house is actually more experimental and vital than European stuff (copyright Vahid 2004) - endlessly delightful, tightly coiled syncopated grooves, like Perlon for people with short attention spans (and I mean that in the best possible way).

More suggestions forthcoming! The above aren't necessarily "the best" of the last few years, just the first that started popping into my head.

I really love "Adventure", the third track on One Night In Berlin, that track is such brilliant brutal pop, it reminds me of some of the heavier vocal 2-step tracks.

Also there's an awesome DJ Naughty mix of Jean Winner's "Alive & Kicking" on Freeform Five's Misch Masch mix, which reminds me a lot of my imagined genre of epic post-acid house pop.

2001 - TRANSLLUSION - The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate
2002 - POLARIUS - Jams In The Key Of Smack
2003 - AGORIA - Blossom
2004 - BARTZ, Richard - Midnight Man
2005 - MIDIMILIZ - Non Standards

Aaron Carl seconded.

This thread reminds me that I want Surgeon to make another album. "Force + Form" was both Proper Techno and righteous as an album.

But sadly it is tens of thousands of miles away! :(

Thanks for the info anyway.

need to buy it.

So, I sure as fuck won't second anybody's electrobobbins upthread *shudder*

http://s9.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3FMK2QH8WTNTV0VPCWE94GKUHQ

Gotta start (again) somewhere. Remember getting older has its benefits too.

This record came out in October and it is dope.

In terms of techno, I like some releases on bpitch (the recent Ellen Allien was suprisingly good) and Poker Flat. Also, the last Cristian Vogel (Dungeon Master) and Joey Beltram (The Rising Sun) records, both on Tresor, were pretty great.

Get Physical and The Glimmer Twins were already mentioned- what about Optimo?

Not exactly classic straight-up house, but refreshing in the same vein as DJ Naughty.....

(e.g. i've been thinking of doing a Beat Research post on current gay house e.g. the Faith Evans "Mesmerised" house remix and Inaya Day's "Glamourous Life", and how it differs from electrobobbinry, i.e. not by much. The main thing i think is that there's a lot of bobbinsy house e.g. Glimmers and DJ Naughty which is camp not homo, whereas most gay house these days is homo not camp. Idea needs expanding though)

Blunt, you (and Vahid! Still!) should listen to that Uno Records mix from early 2004, which is like the glorious resolution to all the house wars on ILM beamed back from the future Terminator-style.

-- Drew Daniel

OTFM.

Whenever I've thrown them into the house arena, I get no back-up.

Maybe most of you don't consider what they do to be house, but I'd say it is because 1.) house tracks are usually present in their sets, and 2.) they have a classic house "throw it all in there" approach, which was house before people recontextualized it into genres like electro-clash and mash-up.

Or maybe it's because Twitch is an ILM regular....

the homo vs camp thing is not actually that controversial I don't think - basically just that a lot of current house music not generally played in gay clubs is extremely camp (hence "Feel Like I Feel" sounding a bit like Sylvester or something) but contextualised in such a way that it doesn't sound like it's made by or for a gay scene (i.e. it's not by or for the gay scene, but appears to be about the gay scene, or at least some idea of it). Whereas stuff like Inaya Day is loved fiercely by the gay crowd yet also played with a straight face on commercial radio and at "top 40 pop and dance"-style clubs who are not at all concerned by any perceived gay resonances - but, most importantly, for the same reasons. This stuff is just so generally popular and anyway quite similar to R&B that it's loved straightforwardly on both sides of the fence.

But I'll try to address it anyway:

1) "fashionably faggy" does not equal "fashonable with fags". I've heard "You Gonna Want Me" played at gay clubs but no-one really dances to it, whereas middlebrow straight clubs love it. Electro-house is the very definition of "metrosexual music" really.

2) Inaya Day is huge in Australia at least. I think she's been involved in about four massive singles in the past year or so (some with Mr Timothy, who is an Australian producer, which helps, then also "Nasty Girl" and "Glamorous Life") all of which have been embraced massivel by gay clubs and commercial radio. Oddly a second house version of "Glamorous Life" was simultaneously released by a half-forgotten Australian TV star-turned-one-hit-wonder-in-early-90s Melissa Thkautz.

3)

4) No gay clubs in Australia play deep house, nor have they at any time in at least the last 5 yeats. And i've been to gay clubs in 7 of our 9 state capitals. It's all brassy vocal house/trance/hard house/electro-house. Deep House is for straights only over here.

"The binary was kinda inspired by the Uno Records mix actually, which I was thinking sounded less camp than say the DJ Naughty or Glimmers mixes, but more homo, as in, I could imagine the songs being played in gay clubs."

I've heard these sounds before is all, don't need a kickdrum thrown under ten thousand halfbaked copies, revamps, remixes, reissues. Just like when I was into jungle/drum&bass and it veered into techstep madness : industrial music all over again, with hyperchopped beats on top. Bye bye.

Tobias have you heard the Kaos album? Is it any good?

I'd get my boyfriend in to back me up but he wouldn't understand what I'm talking about it. OTOH he loves "Glamorous Life" and isn't so much into electro-house-proper, so he kind of exemplifies my point.

haha! Guilty as charged, I suppose. :/

This is horribly off the mark when applied to Los Angeles, and I'm inclined to say America on the whole. The last viable dance scene to exist in LA was during the whole electro-clash craze, and like it or not, electro-house is a growth from, or at least a sound relative to, that genre. Much like Peaches and Fischerspooner, who perp a sound and aesthetic tailor-made for the gay crowd, Tiga arrived in similar fashion- a little late (because LA is not a dance mecca, at all), but was immediately embraced by the young gay hipster crowd.

In LA, kids in middle-brow straight clubs have no idea what electro-house is, and if they're dancing at all, it's because someone is spinning Bloc Party, or Franz Ferdinand, or hip-hop.

But I really have to break it down th gay dance club tendencies into two scenes: the WeHo Boytown gays, and the Hollywood Hipster gays. Boytown gays will have no idea what any of this is about, because they like Britney and Christina. Hollywood gays actually do like electro-house, because it reminds them of when they used to listen to Coil and Front 242.

And that whole suggestion that electro-house is metrosexual seems way off to me. There may be a little Kompakt dabbling, since there's something soothing about their packaging in a Kiehl's sort of way, but metrosexuals in the US only step into the dance/electronica section to find the new Air release.....

I consider the "queer"/"art phag" scene to be a separate scene again, and much much smaller than the homo club scene. Yeah queer art phags tends to be into camp-not-homo music.

When I say "middle brow straight clubs" I mean "middlebrow straight dance music clubs - the ones who go a bit more upmarket than just Top 40 dance hits. The US is probably quite different because dance music just hasn't saturated the club scene like it has in Australia, where rock "clubs" are really the minority.

And when I say "electro-house" i don't mean reformed indie kids who like Kompakt, but predominantly fashionista straight boys who get mul-hawks and wear tight black jeans to stay abreast with their glamour girlfriends, and who generally look almost indistinguishable from the less effeminate gay boys right up to the point where you try to pick them up. They usually dance quite well though and tend to like things like "You're Gonna Want Me", "Drop The Pressure", "I Want You", "Candy Girl" and maybe "Rocker".

BUT

looking at my collection I notice I only bought the US artists on Classic. Either it's Derrick Carter (or remixed by him) or it's Sneak, or Timothy Shumaker outta NYC. Or it's Blaze's Lovelee Dae (but it's "just" a license, right) with Carl Craig remixes.

So I give you Markus Nikolai's Bushes and Isolée's Beau Mot Plage and maybe a LoSoul record. Those are the worthwile crossover tracks but it doesn't make Classic the grand unified theory of house.

Agreed. Tim I think the only contra definition we have is "metrosexual".

I know exactly what you mean by "electro-house" and we're on the same page. When you suggest, however, the predominantly fashionista straight boys who get mul-hawks and wear tight black jeans to stay abreast with their glamour girlfriends, and who generally look almost indistinguishable from the less effeminate gay boys right up to the point where you try to pick them up, I'm saying those kids (in America) don't listen to electro-house. They listen to Emo, Brit-Pop, and The Faint. And we don't call them metrosexuals, either. Those are hipsters, or scenesters. But they are affected and androgynous and would probably love "Rocker" if they heard it.

But metrosexuals are the jeans/blazer/Paul Smith shirt crowd over here, and they tend to dig bands played on KCRW like Air, Coldplay, Dido, Sigur Ros, Kinky, etc. The ones a little more curious will pick up a Kompakt release, or anything else in the "Recommends" bin at the local big indie record store....

I think his sound is a little too close to Bigod 20 (figuratively), and his image a little too close to Keoki. Plus he's hot in the toughest arena- the art phag scene is fastest on chasing down the next thing....

"the art phag scene is fastest on chasing down the next thing And though I really like Tiga, I do wonder how he's going to evolve five years down the road"

It also seems refreshingly frill-free next to most kompaktish electro/microhouse type of stuff, and hardly 'idm'.

Beautiful!

Loving it already, and as I'm in for a long night, I needed something like this.

Thank you!

I was trying to think of more recommendations for Adam and couldn't think of anything quite as extreme as the DJ Naughty mix!

I guess the other Glimmers mix to get would be the first Culture Club comp, probably their most populist mix to date.

The other one which comes to mind is Erol Alkan's One Louder mix for Muzik Magazine from 2003. Just look at this ace tracklisting:

1) Playgroup - Make It Happen (Zongamin Mix) (pasteurised disco funk!)
2) Mitsu - Hush (always loved this tune to death! Those vocals! Should have been on a double a-side with Annie's "The Greatest Hit")
3) Duran Duran - Girls On Film (Night Version) (best version of this classixor track!)
4) The Faint - The Conductor (Thin White Duke Mix) (melodrama! Although sadly not the whole track is played)
5) Codec & Flexor - Crazy Girls (big big favourite of mine from late '01 - blunt would hate this as it's slyly intoned robotic English male vocals over sexy stiff leather electro-house groove! By Germans! Oh no!)
6) Headman - It Rough (Chicken Lips Remix) (Rough dubbed out punk house, the weakest thing so far only by default! Check that jurassic house percussion!)
7) Goldfrapp - Train (Ewan Pearson Dub)/Benni Benassi - Satisfaction (Acapella) (you know it!)
8) Grand Popo Football Club - Men Are Not Nice Guys (Goldrun Remix) (this time they're not kidding! Every remix of this tune was ace)
9) Gilleron & McArthur - Now It's Dark (suddenly the lights went out and Timothy no longer knew where the door was! Whoosh!)
10) Kiko - Italiomatic (Kiko & The Hacker Remix)/Alex Gopher - Party People (Acapella) (The Atlas to Vitalic's Astroboy! Or should that be the other way round!)
11) Ferenc - Yes Sir I Can Hardcore (the hideous revenge of the spurned monster riff!)
12) Archigram - Doggystyle (You know it! Part 2)
13) Uminski - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Rock!)

(full disclosure: i'm a teensy bit drunk)

Laurent Garnier - The Man With The Red Face!

I second the recommendation for Glimmers DJ Kicks. That's what disco punk should sound like.

http://www.discogs.com/release/242763

Here's my question.

Take ANY group of heads. Hip-hop. Rock. Speed. Bebop.

Folks who've spent years doing the equivalent of digging through crates. Don't even focus on music...go to comic book readers, or romance writers.

The more music you're familiar with, the harder it is for new music to move you. Once you get to that saturation point, everything sounds rote. Only a few ways to come out of the other side of that:

* Make your own tracks.

* Stop listening to the music for a while. A LONG while.

* Start listening to a new genre.

* Only listen to music from period X.

As you were.....

LKS

http://www.igetrvng.com/shop_mx4.html

It's really good, if so. the rest looks good too.

http://www.discogs.com/release/330728

http://images.juno.co.uk/full/CS185749-01A-BIG.jpg

cuz its sleeve screamed at me white on black: BUY ME! I'M A DOPE RECORD!

i was spelled or something

juno claims it's deep house but sounds like pure good house

scene has gone the way of all aged scenes. back underground, diehard fans still loving it and making mad stuff for each other...

tracx liszt anyone?

-- Disco Nihilist

re-released on defected! heard it in HMV the other day, sandwiched awkwardly between some godawful poptrance & godawful Beck.

There hasn't been a post about Richard Humpty Vission on this messageboard in almost 5 years, so I thought I'd revive this thread for that express purpose:

Richard "Humpty" Vission!
Bad! Boy! Bill!

Just had to get that out of my system. Deej, you still listen to this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9yaEJ-bE4o

I have what may be a naïve question and didn’t think it was worth starting a new thread to ask it, so thought I’d put it here: I’ve been buying house and techno 12”s for over two decades without ever considering the economics of it (probably because I came to electronic music via punk). Now, I’m acquainted via work with several rock and indie artists, and from what I am told, to release a record on vinyl is something of an ordeal: it’s exorbitantly expensive, takes forever, and is generally a major pain in the ass. On the flipside, techno producers (and labels) seem to dispatch these singles practically overnight (I know it’s more complicated than that, which is why I wrote “seem to.”). I don’t think it’s a matter of it being cheaper to press a single (I’ve never pressed a record myself, but I know enough to know that plating is the same cost regardless of how much or how little music in on it, or what speed the record plays at). So how are these white label dance 12”s getting into shops (and on boomkat) so quickly, and how the hell are these guys and gals recouping their costs? (I guess the same question could apply to bootleg LPs). Is there a secret underground network of pressing plants who only deal with super limited runs and / or dance music?

There are guys out there that do lathe cuts that are pretty much like dubbing a tape, except straight into the vinyl. It's expensive as fxxx, but it is a way some people have cut DJ 12 inches (or any type of ultra small run records). For really small runs though, you can get out some of the more industrial arts part of pressing a record.

It takes forever as pretty much there is not enough capacity to handle the LP pressing boom. There are elements creating the stampers etc. that are fairly involved and those items have back logs, as sometimes other vendors do that part of the work.

Unless you can move a few hundred records, you can't make it work cost wise.

I think about this a lot too! In my very limited understanding, it's still expensive to press vinyl (even for a run of 250), no real shortcuts. The only thing that makes it make sense is that people actually buy dance music vinyl in the UK? That's just what I've gathered from anecdotal evidence though, that it's still possible to sell a couple hundred there and hope to get rid of the rest of the run via direct orders/distro. Would love to hear from anyone with direct experience.

From what I have experienced, you are going to spend probably around $2500 dollars for pressing 300 LPs (or 12 inch records) and getting the mastering done for the format. You can sometimes drop the cost a few hundred if you get a deal or simplify the packaging, but it's still going to be close to a couple of grand to do. The costs to setup the press and plating are the same either way. You are still going to be looking at anywhere from $6 to $9 dollars a unit.

Right. So how are there millions of teensy weensy dance labels putting out so much stuff? Is everyone behind these labels just independently wealthy and providing a public service (a service for which I am eternally thankful, in case there is any misunderstanding)?

Just looking online and finding places that are 3-4 bucks per for a 500 run

It must help that these dance records often have minimal expense outside of pressing the vinyl. Rock bands don't issue LPs without cover art or labels.

millions?

simple order of magnitude analysis. there are hundreds of dance labels active now. they put out less than 10 releases yearly in pressings of low hundreds. so there are literally millions of dance records being pressed, not millions of labels. there are 10s of serious vinyl DJs in my city of a few million, so i figure there are easily 10,000 serious vinyl DJs worldwide. that means 100,000 non serious vinyl collectors. (there are a million users on discogs) if they each buy 10-100 records a year then you have your millions of records.

that’s the scale of the phenomenon

but the thing is most of the hundreds of active labels are putting out 1-2 releases a year. the biggest labels in the scene can maybe manage 10 releases per year. and even the biggest labels are pressing things in runs under 1000.

also they’re barely recouping costs, nobody is getting rich off this game

oh and they’re not putting things out overnight. i mean, they are on beatport, but not on vinyl. in fact the release schedules for a lot of labels have been absurdly backed up for months, to the point where there was an article about it on resident advisor.