MSTRKRFT - The Looks

I would like to hear this, but I hope it is not too rocky.

One track, Street Justice, has an axe solo, but I predict you'll like it Lex.

There's a compilation already, it was in their playlist this week but I forget the title. The Klaxons and that lot are on it.

I have a MSTRKRFT remix of the new Gossip single to my right, pretty decent. Haven't heard this though

digitalism are the only one of these acts that are any good, but in any case I can't stand this happy go lucky indie dance, it makes me want to play the most repetetive "go nowhere" minimal I can find for several hours.

The second Death From Above single has a Girls Are Short remix on, which I was under the impression was also Jesse's work. It's a wholly unabashed and thus enjoyable Daft Punk homage

"and I've never even heard mstrkrft"??

(maybe the album'll be good, who knows)

I'm pretty sure MSTRKRFT is the only act out of this whole scene that I like at all, but I just can't resist a couple of their songs (and don't actively hate the rest).

Plus I hate the way alot of this stuff veers close to "let's all jump up and down and shout and dance! hooray!" organised fun-indie.

It's crept up on me, probably with the way the whole electrohouse scene has kind of split, but I really am starting to go beyond just dislike for all this stuff, it's just so so horribly studenty and awful.

Haha. Dance music Lex! In fairness I think you probably wouldn't like it, except maybe Paris and a couple of the more French sounding tracks.

I don't understand where this split is supposed to have occurred. Every time I've been out recently this stuff has been there in the same nights as the techier end of electrohouse - different points in the night maybe. And everything goes minimal past about 4 anyway.

It's crept up on me, probably with the way the whole electrohouse scene has kind of split, but I really am starting to go beyond just dislike for all this stuff, it's just so so horribly studenty and awful.

OTM. I had to play two student-heavy parties last weekend and I found it infinitely frustrating that Justice and MSTRKRFT would fill the floor with pogoing indie-twats who left at the first sign of anything techy (admittedly this says as much about me as them). Bizzarely the same crowd was going mad for dubstep.

Justice/Simian/MSTRKRFT are to electrohouse/minimal as Pendulum are to drum&bass.

This means t minus 12 months to ELECTROHOUSE FATBOY SLIM hahaha.

I hate it becase it's all just an excuse for people to listen to shit rock music!

Plus I hate the way alot of this stuff veers close to "let's all jump up and down and shout and dance! hooray!" organised fun-indie.

- Ronan

What else do you hate, hater?

i checked that MSTRKRFT video and remain mystified. what is the appeal of that track again?

(*DFA doesn't count, that's indie music for dance kids)

NEVER ENOUGH HANDCLAPS

daft punk innit. sub-braxe but still fun. summertime.

(xpost)

erm....what? ELECTROHOUSE ahoy!

it is the ultimate dance music for indie kids, surely the most succesful dance music for indie kids to date, that's where this stuff has come from. I think it goes beyond being dance music for indie kids too, it's something new, neither dance nor indie, like music for people who like going out and doing drugs but do not like dance music....something more along these lines.

the thing is I have no problems with actual guitars or whatever, I love loads of rocky house tracks, I just think this sound is just "a bit of a laugh" for people who'd probably rather you were playing indie rock all night anyhow.

MSTRKRFT ain't electro-house; if you call it that then stop.

Yeah I agree, it's bad rock music.

what else do you hate, hater

Bad rock music.

[take me seriously at yr own peril.]

I'm going to get annihilated for this aren't I?

i've been defending this shit here since i first heard it, and i'm still not tired of it. i saw mstrkrft dj on friday night of last week, and i actually found it refreshing that they were playing more or less minimal, repetitive, techy very german tracks (not songs) and people (i.e., hipsters) were dancing to it like there was no tomorrow. there were of course a few jump up and down moments, notably when they played their own remix of metric, but relatively few considering how often you guys malign it that way (maybe jumping up and down is more of a euro thing? i rarely see it done here for any prolonged period of time).

as for justice, i remain steadfastly in awe of them. the reason this stuff is getting so much attention is because it sounds totally NEW. the reason that it's getting so much hate is because it sounds totally NEW and thereby is attracting NEW people to the clubs. it's just purism, which i detest. especially with regard to something as arbitrary as genre.

by the way, stir, i don't know if you saw the thing i posted on the justice thread, but their p.r. had optimo touting the 'waters of nazareth' 12". i wondered if maybe you had just been polite in your feedback form, or if they had the wrong impression or were just plain lying?

Actually I always think that the indie/dance crossover is overstated, most people I know who are bona fide indie fans have never heard of Justice etc and never will. I don't know how to describe the taste of people who like this stuff, it just seems like people who go clubbing alot but seemingly don't like dance music.

Also what's wrong with purism? I like different genres but not at the same time. genre is only arbitrary if you're listening to the acts being discussed on this thread.

somewhere in the nexus between dfa's rockier production, the neptunes/timbaland's reinvention of hip hop beats (*ducks tomato*), and the post-punk revival, a lot of people who maybe went out before have probably been buying more (or at least downloading more) dance music, and more of them have been getting into production, which has probably come out somehow more indie friendly. their sensibility comes from a particular place, and indie bands can hear it in their sound, so they wind up remixing indie bands. that act's cache then leads passive indie-ish clubgoers to feel more proactive about what's happening.

as for minimal being depressing... certainly there's quite a bit of melancholy there in villalobos/luciano/melchoir/etc, no? and don't a lot of good dj sets have a wide range of emotions anyway? and beyond all this, it's probably (again, not to keep coming back to this whole global split, but...) because i'm here, but it doesn't happen often that you'd have a dj playing super super minimal stuff and then another dj playing justice immediately after.

I don't really mean by "studenty" that it's too clever for its own good, more literal, that it's just that kind of middle of a few genres happy go lucky sound that students, who "like all kinds of music" seem to love.

I don't know, I really like some electroey stuff, as I said I can see Digitalism's appeal and I like them alot when they are less rocky, cos at least it sounds like house music and there is some connection there.

I guess I just don't see any connection to "dance music" with the others.

I mean I am perturbed, and I can't be the only one, sometimes by the way alot of the people who like electrohouse could concievably have never liked any other dance music, and even though I don't have much time for US house nowadays it kind of makes me think "what the fuck" when on our forums people are like "oh I hate all that vocal shit" and stuff, cos it's like "NO, SOME DEEP HOUSE MUSIC IS GOOD"

Or at the very least "house music" as a concept is a really strong one, and "pogo go team indie" is just music for people who never liked that to begin with. I just can't get over that, how can music for people who can't actually get into house/techno actually be any good! I realise that's completely prejudiced but that's how I feel.

I guess I am being purist, but the only thing I see connecting this stuff to the ideals of dance (and I hate sounding so old fashioned with this, but you can fit with house history and still be completely radical) is the fact that people DJ it.

Doesn't it freak anyone out that this really popular thing in dance music has zero to do with the records that are kind of sacrosanct?

I am seriously bordering on "the kids have no respect" territory, I'm only 23. But seriously, wtf have these indie hipsters got to do with dance music, these are people who would probably call "Promised Land" 'gay' or something. THEY ARE.

i never got into US house music. my trajectory went from sonic youth/new wave to aphex twin/autechre to basement jaxx to luomo (drastic simplification probably, but...) to micro stuff to dfa to now. maybe i've come full circle with the spectre of a dance beat? i don't know. the thing i dislike most in dance music is the homogeneity of it sometimes, and i also hate smooth jazz guitars, smooth sax solos, flute jams, etc... all that stuff is just noise that i have never been able to relate to.

i have always felt like the best way to approach music is in a punk way. to constantly re-invent, strip down, reassemble, to (whenever possible) never sound like someone else (which is where a bunch of this stuff goes wrong)... though it should be worth noting that justice's upcoming album supposedly sounds nothing like their recorded output so far, in that it apparently has a much more 'disco' sound and they called it 'sunday music for girls that you can listen to in the club.' or some such thing.

house and techno have been bankrupt of true formal invention for a while now. the sound pallette has evolved at the same pace that software releases upgrades, the sounds get smaller as it becomes easier and easier to randomize/variablize/chop samples and design synth envelopes. as far as complete utter invention though, not much has happened. so i guess what you dislike most about this new stuff, is what i like most about it. maybe it's mp3 culture, maybe it's moore's law, who knows? i do go through music a lot more quickly now, but when something's good, it definitely sticks around. there are songs i have been playing out in my dj sets since i began 3 1/2 years ago, so it's not like i'm that shallow in the way i listen to/judge music.

and i should probably also point out that it's pretty rare that the people i play to don't generally react all that crazily to the french stuff/mstrkrft/all of this newness... yet... and maybe i'm being a dick, but i think it's honestly that they're just not ready for it yet here. they don't hate it though, so i do keep playing it.

I also think that house/techno/minimal is at a pretty boring place right now; and i think i've been paying attention for a while now.

by the way, stir, i don't know if you saw the thing i posted on the justice thread, but their p.r. had optimo touting the 'waters of nazareth' 12". i wondered if maybe you had just been polite in your feedback form, or if they had the wrong impression or were just plain lying?

i cannot abide it . apart from that, i was never even sent it to begin with so didn't ever have a feedback form to fill! how odd that they would say that.

i don't know why i always feel the need to defend justice. it seems deeper than just the fact that i do genuinely like their music, and have from the very first note of the very first tune of theirs i heard. i think that when i try to defend justice i'm really trying to defend producers and dj's my age-ish (i'm 24), and arguing for the, ahem, old guard to give some young kids the time to learn to breathe before letting them suffocate in their pillows.

our priorities may be a little different from, ahem (again), yours. inevitably though, as history gets longer, the things that the new kids draw from disperses from whatever 'purity' the 'originals' identified with. seemingly unrelated pop culture resources inform our tastes in ways 'we' can't avoid, and that there's very little likelihood that 'you' would understand. i don't need to explicate this sort of split any further, because it's been done to death.

but the area where justice, the ed banger crew, baile, modern commercial hip hop, re-appropriations of classic house stuff, the decent stuff that emerged from electroclash, post-post-post-post-pospunk, mashups, fashion, haircuts, drugs and myspace converge into some sort of new-not-new zeitgeist, seems to be the very beginning of something (that i'm sure is cyclic and has come and gone many times) which promises to make a lot of really interesting culture.

there's of course the simple issue of just plain not liking the way that justice sound. but i think it is deeper than that for some people. i think that many people don't like what justice means because to them it sounds like a trend. the get physical sound or the bpitch sound or the kompakt sound is so much more studied and reverential to the elders (not a bad thing, imo), and it's easier to relate to for people who have cultivated an appreciation for the "classics".

i found the classics much later than i found the new stuff, certainly much later after electroclash. so for me, these newer things represented a trapdoor out of the room that was steadily drowning me in a pool of aphex beats and autechre algorithms. not only that, there was (at least superficially) attractive people who were a part of it, it's seductive and enticing. of course the momentum didn't last because there was absolutely no substance to it, and there wasn't much in the way of community because there was no personal signifiers in the music.

i'm still looking for those signifiers in this new crop of stuff, but i think what i relate to most immediately is the 'newness' of it. the fact that so much of it doesn't seem to rely upon what's come before it, or at the very least, the older things that it's drawing from seem more or less unrelated to the typical canon.

sorry for the rambling. i've said enough for now, but hopefully someone finds something to respond to.

i simply don't like their sound, end of story. it has nothing to do with my age, being part of an 'old guard' or being in fear of some new movement or even some notion of newness. i don't think their sound could have existed without oizo though, so there IS some sort of precedent.

ha, open fire.....

It's the punk rock of dance dude and you deep house people are gonna get run over like ELP in '77!

(Although really it's like the emo-fication of dance or something. 12" white labels don't matter any more, the MySpace player does. And crappy indie remixes of the type that the YSI threads used to thrive on--half way crap that pleases no-one. It's kinda parasitical on the regular indie scene and will thrive as long as that does in the same way as it is doing now.) (Somebody write an Ultagrrrl style blog post about old folks getting out the way bcz this is this generations Nirvana.) (I also like the fact that this thread started on the day that a really old thread with Ronan giving props to Spacemen 3 did!)

(I don't know why I bracketed everything.)

xposts galore!

xpost

This age argument just doesn't work. You have at least two DJs and/or producers here that are younger than you (I'm 23, same as Ronan), and we're arguing against Justice/MSTRKRFT. Maybe we're fogeys before our time, or maybe iso is right and it is a US vs Euro thing.

i resent patrick's argument on the basis that i listen to almost no (typically) "indie" music. all i really listen to anymore is dance music of a bunch of different stripes, ambient sad classical-ish stuff, and noisy experimental-ish stuff. if my argument came off as ultragrrrl like, then i wrote it poorly because that's not what i meant at all... it's not a question of people needing to get out of the way, it's a question of simply not being able to find to identify with because of having certain ingrained signifiers or (as i suggested could be the case at first, and then as stir said), simply because you just don't like the sound of it.

I must say though, theres is something of a "F the smooth & clean sounds of most dance music" going on with it, and i love that. I like that its music that sounds good on a four track again, making it fun again, instead of fodder for licensing and promotion of some product. ( like most shit ends up after time )

and if someone does'nt liek the sound of it, then its totally working as it should, to get to the ppl who want it, just liek punk did.

I would in fact like to write the Ultragrrl type thing then I can get a thousand word thread on ILM.

mstrkrft/justice = sounds fresh to me, thats about all that can really be true i guess

jergins - i can say i know at least 10, but i'm with you on that

?

tylero - your structure description is every kind of electronic music ever, and i LOVE alot of old stuff, more than new stuff even. the distortion just makes it sound less like europes dance disasters & more like punkrock

I love what I have heard so far from Justice.

I definitively don't like trad house/techno.

i have always felt like the best way to approach music is in a punk way. to constantly re-invent, strip down, reassemble, to (whenever possible) never sound like someone else (which is where a bunch of this stuff goes wrong)... though it should be worth noting that justice's upcoming album supposedly sounds nothing like their recorded output so far, in that it apparently has a much more 'disco' sound and they called it 'sunday music for girls that you can listen to in the club.' or some such thing.

house and techno have been bankrupt of true formal invention for a while now. the sound pallette has evolved at the same pace that software releases upgrades, the sounds get smaller as it becomes easier and easier to randomize/variablize/chop samples and design synth envelopes. as far as complete utter invention though, not much has happened. so i guess what you dislike most about this new stuff, is what i like most about it. maybe it's mp3 culture, maybe it's moore's law, who knows? i do go through music a lot more quickly now, but when something's good, it definitely sticks around. there are songs i have been playing out in my dj sets since i began 3 1/2 years ago, so it's not like i'm that shallow in the way i listen to/judge music.

... just smacks of the old "Andre 3000 is boldly reinventing hip-hop" nonsense. If anything, house music has evolved more in the last 3-4 years than it did over the previous 5 or 6.

On the other hand, I don't agree with Ronan's "I guess I just don't see any connection to "dance music" with the others" - especially with a tune like, say, Hustler, let along something like Zdarlight. Surely the joy of house music is that, as long as you've got a 4/4 kick and a basic structure in there you can shoehorn any sound you want in there? Even Waters Of Nazareth has that ('real' drum sound or not), regardless as to whether you like the noise it makes?

(My real point is, what exactly is the difference between all this and, say, Vitalic or Black Strobe?)

and it's a bit prickish, really, to say i sound like i've never set foot on a dancefloor, to be honest, especially considering i've spent 4-7 nights a week in a club for the last few years... and the rest of the time dancing in my room... with the blinds drawn... quietly...

and blackstorbe and vitalic are like godafathers to this stuff, by relative timeline, and we all def. know that. and we have also been playing/buying it since like 2000 (but i also know i am in no way well versed when i read ilm stuff)

(xpost - Iso's point maybe makes sense in that context)

"Ugh. Now I know how Jess feels when he looks back in disgust at what he's created."

i guess i should have called his house and asked before i started talking about his music. And if he looks back and hates it ,why does he act like its the first time he's heard it when he performs it (xtra loose use of 'perform')

This is a real asshole thing to say, maybe, but If you can't find anything to respect and like in those aforementioned bits of house, I would say you still don't 'get' dance music yet.

and yeah, what iso says is illuminating, because when i open up mixmag it just looks like this big mishmash of shit that could never coexist here... not for the fact that there isn't a way to be (ugh) eclectic (ugh) here, but because we receive a lot of this stuff in polite little packages once you all have digested it thoroughly enough for us to have heard about it... granted the internet makes that a bit moot... i've suddenly found myself sucked dry of energy to keep talking about this. i've made my point i think.

dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock dance rock

ppl hate it??? as in ppl hate the fusion of it? or what is it that ppl don't like (

but i do agree that the MSTRKRFT releases are improvements on the originals, but thats also the entire spirit of a remix to me these days.

And now you must die.

No, I meant that MSTRKRFT's remix work is better than MSTRKRFT's original songs. And Freddie Mas is originally from Chicago.

i play music to share it with ppl, not to know anything special about it, so you may have to forgive me if my opinion seems offbase to you all...

and i often pray for deth, so don't you worry about that.

nancy - sorry bout the NY thing, i guess i just thot this was some avantguard wllmsbrg-better-than-all-the-world thing happening there...

there is no way blackstrobe and vitalic are godfathers to this stuff. blackstrobe and vitalic are french techno, but done with a leaner and slightly newer twist than the hacker or whatever.

also justice dj sets are like party central 40 tunes a minute, and blackstrobe dj sets are decks and fx lfo re-edits and sisters of mercy. there isn't even a similarity.

this is the key thing, black strobe are HIGHLY rock sounding at their peak and in their best moments, but no indie kids I know ever liked them!

I never denied being relatively purist on this. I'm going to read firstworldman's post now and think of a decent response to the interesting part of this thread.

This is interesting to me, I guess with me I never got into US house per se but I got into dance music by whatever was big when I first started clubbing about FIVE YEARS AGO (urgh). At that time I reckon most UK house stuff was kinda derivative of or at least linked to US house, in any case it kind of felt natural to me to listen to Chicago house and all these other things.

I dunno, I guess for me getting into this stuff was like "wow this is so good" for all these reasons, which formed the basis of years of listening, and none of these things feel present in justice etc.

Not really a lot of rock in there (apart from SY). I'm not trying to knock anyone for not liking the rock, I'm just sayin if the shoe fits...

US house is sort of irrelevant to this debate, I think. Whenever I'm out these days, whether they're playing electrohouse or minimal (or usually both), it really seems to cluster on either side of techno, with all the edges sanded off a bit. Justice and co are a step away from that, which makes me think the big beat parallel upthread is OTM.

(xpost)

Tho Blackstrobe are kind of a done deal at this point it seems, at least as far as production goes.

i sometimes think i am the only person in the world who isn't a daft punk fan.

stir- i am actually totally relieved that you dont like them, its a bit creepy that evryone from your lil sister to the president (as i localize myself) likes them

(xpost - London)

x post

none of us are actually playing justice etc, at least not to my knowledge anyway, I just know some of the crowd and one or two guys we've given a slot to have played that kind of sound.

the lifecycle of electrohouse has been pretty polarising for all of us though!

here's a little video of me playing tolfrey/sylvester on the first night in the new venue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYWk4Bv4IY&search=backlash

it's good cos we get an extra forty mins or so in the new place, plus the soundsystem is just infinitely better and you see that when you play. it's also alot hotter and sweatier without being on ground level.

i think that indie kids in the u.s. that go out to clubs really just want to here post punk stuff while they work on getting drunk, and then dance to really dark disco and house that's not too techy (e.g., headman, chicken lips, dfa, and a bunch of beardo stuff)

on the name:

"We wanted to call ourselves Mastercraft [after a line of power tools sold at Canadian Tire, a chain of hardware stores here] but Canadian Tire has every possible permutation of the name copyrighted. You can't copyright phonetics though. Vowels are overrated, anyway."

Jesse, interviewed in the Summer issue of Toro Magazine (www.toromagazine.ca). (full disclosure -- I work for the mag. It's real good though!)

of course they are; the contents of their own DJ sets is a red herring I think.

also I still reckon as heard on radio soulwax pt 2 (esp. the non-mashup bits) feels like it was the inspiration for the sound of much of this stuff, and what was one of the tracks that got wider exposure through that? 'la rock 01'. (I'm well aware it had been around for a while before being on that, before anyone starts up.) no doubt that'll wind you up ronan as it's like the ur-eclectic anti-purist party mix, but I think it opened up a lot of people to different sounds that they'd have not heard otherwise. and it's just taken a bit of time for that to filter through to people actually making stuff that branches off from it.

also the "these people have no respect for the classics" argument is rubbish, I went to a modular night with the presets and digitalism playing live plus some DJs, and there were as many people dancing to 'french kiss' and 'ride on time' and 'no way back' by adonis as there were to justice (who got palyed once IIRC) or 'the acid never lies' or that boys noize remix of 'frau' or whatever. would be VERY surprised if head-up-arse melbourne indie kids are any more knowledgeable on classic house and techno than their UK/US counterparts, but I've been wrong before.

when did anyone ever say "this is not ok to dance to". seriously how sanctimonious can you get, that's the most (and probably the first) patronising post on the entire thread

i hate all this shit unreservedly.

raw patrick very otm above about the "emo-fication" of dance music. myspace will destroy us all, you know.

all that said, i'm curious to actually know what vahid thinks of all this shit.

all of this "girls don't like justice!" "indie kids don't like black strobe!" "only hipsters like ed banger!" "justice and co are getting attention instead and at the expense of minimal house dudes!" - so many strawmen so little time.

i mean if there is ANY dance kid who should kneejerk loathe any aspect of disgusting indie or rock creeping into the genre it's me. and i don't loathe justice => justice is not rock qed.

i love gabriel ananda and ellen allien more, though.

all that said, i'm curious to actually know what vahid thinks of all this shit.

hahaha. I was thinking Vahid is probably monitoring this battle, with axe in hand ready to join in. But on which side!!?!!?

"emo-fication" is a good way to put it. let's just face it, some people will react WAY better to a track if you put a whiney straight white boy/girl over it. why? who knows! who cares!

would an indie rocker like this??

http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF139172-01-01-01.mp3
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF139172-01-02-01.mp3

i imagine they would, especially if you had, i dunno, the dude from electric six rapping on it or something. but they would probably LOATHE these

http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF199422-01-01-01.mp3
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF128148-01-01-01.mp3

even though all four are the same dude and the same basic constructions ... here's a couple that split the difference

http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF148642-01-01-01.mp3
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF148642-01-02-01.mp3

and i like those BEST out of the bunch

maybe i happen to prefer the van helden sound because i'm a greasy ali g looking motherfucker myself. (i once heard a guy call armand van helden "a towelhead who spins techno like a ni**er")

-- Bea Arthur - Lost COmic GEnius ? (wt...), June 24th, 2006 8:24 AM. (dubplatestyle) (later)

also since becoming a schoolteacher i've been trying to keep a zen-calm attitude towards cultural politics since the sort of ignorant shit most 12-17 year olds have running around in their brains will make your head explode if you can't roll w/ the punches.

but ... that said ... UFFIE makes me want to stab my eyeballs out w/ my thumbs.

big beat != rock-in-dance!!! (see: "ooh la la", "praise you" etc)

it's more a particular attitude towards the past: "we'll take some part of the musical past that's so WACK it's FRESH, so CRAZY it's DOPE (see: bentley rhythm ace) and we'll update it by using basic disco edit techniques, except to excess, chopping the song into such tight loops we have no choice but to call it dance" ... it feeds on a relationship w/ the past that takes some sort of beatific naivete as a starting point

dj harvey = andy weatherall = the holy fools
rub'n'tug = chemical brothers = new disciples
lindstrom = j saul kane = eclectic studio auteurs

"we're just doing the same thing we've always been doing, the only thing we know how, except now instead of playing to basements of 50 people we're playing to 1000s"

...

this new rock-dance stuff is the new french house. i like it ok, not as much as french house. french house w/ a crappy singer in front.

where can i listen to more of this stuff? picadilly?

1. nu morgan geist
2. hot chip
3. hard fi
4. spektrum
5. dj kaos (except for "feel like i feel")
6. mu (sorry maurice)
7. cut copy
8. digitalism
9. tiga
10. joakim
11. mylo
12. freeform five (about equal)
13. juan mclean (excepting the remixes)
14. soulwax (except their remix of DPIPAMY)
15. sebastien tellier

1) i prefer remixes of his work to the originals (i:cube + chateau flight killed it)
2) i prefer originals to his remixes (

i liked his remix of brooks "colour me badd" but i'm not sure if anything else really floated my boat. maybe his blend of annie + josh wink??

i dunno, steer me right.

i only liked track#1! and could have done without the vocals even then;)

didnt like #5 at all, is it one of those sampladelia type things?

who is it?

like i said. probably could've used, i dunno, someone talking about their ex on it.

all six tracks are by cajmere / green velvet.

you one of those clowns who claims not to like SNAP?

that's by cajmere???????????

i am, however, one of those clowns that claims not to like track#5

didn't know kaos was critically feted and as for tellier? what in the hell has he got to do with this, apart from Zdar mixing his album.

myspace will destroy us all, you know.
-- Bea Arthur - Lost COmic GEnius ? (wt...), June 24th, 2006 8:24 AM

oh please, if you're feeling the generation gap now, wait until the 8-12 y.o. set who are growing up on a diet of YOUTUBE get a hold of music, fashion, drugs and "interesting culture"

yes my point exactly!!

i feel sort of annoyed that i've been quoted out of context all over this thread.

1. nu morgan geist (maybe, probably not)
2. hot chip (if a remix, maybe)
4. spektrum
5. dj kaos (especially twitch's mix, and 'lessons in love')
6. mu (i love you maurice)
7. cut copy
9. tiga (especially move my body, and then, especially the boys noize mix)
10. joakim (especially his mix of sandwiches by detroit grand pubahs)
13. juan mclean (excepting the remixes-- if the cajmere mix, GMELT itself, or Tito's Way)
14. soulwax (nite versions)

these are all things i play or have played somewhat to very frequently...

I actually really like some of their stuff, but I guess it has the German Tiefschwarz thing going on a little too.

...and ronan, which boys noize stuff do you like?

YSI?

firstworldman which quotes did you mean? I felt a bit the same.

-- firstworldman (3...), June 23rd, 2006 6:01 PM. (firstworldman)

this is the most OTM thing in the whole thread!!!

and it pretty much explains my whole listening shift in the last few years from listening to stuff like tresor mixes and dave clarke to mostly listening to re-edits and dfa / beardo / bear funk / etc. it just about perfectly mirrors my transition from all-night raving to just going dancing at hipster bars.

And ate stones for breakfast.

=(

YES, YOU'RE MINIMAL, WE GET IT!

but the vocal stylings of mr brandon flowers make me want to kill!!

for what it's worth, i think ronan is way off base in thinking there's some massive difference between this stuff and vitalic/b.strobe/tiefschwarz/whatever. i mean this could BE a tiefschwarz remix really.

i like the sebastian rmx of it though, adds alil bit of rough to the weird pop sound.

Their DJ set *was* Vitalic, Tiefschwarz, etc.

but i am still sticking ot it as being tons of fun for a room full of ppl who know it.

x-post can you imagine Sven Vath playing Justice?

the debate was about their own music, not their dj sets. i've never heard the play out so wouldn't dream of passing comment on what they are like live.

without wanting to throw fuel to the flames, this being used as a line of defence makes me feel vindicated.

on loads of occasions acts I don't like can be good DJs, it's sort of difficult to comment on a set I didn't see, especially when we started off discussing their album.

this is really a tired debate though, if you like it great, if not great, either way they are credible and getting booked based on their material not their connection to whoever-has-the-coke-inthat-town.

ronan is, however.

we are just getting at the point that "justice rocked a fashionable midtown club where there's already a popular well-attended weekly night going on" isn't very impressive.

and it's sort of not-to-the-point on a thread where we're talking about their music

or should i start talking about how much "funnier" uffie's myspace page is than lil kim's or how iD and nylon are so smart (and creative!) or how cowboy boots / denim shorts / faded t-shirt is so much cuter than that trampy ghetto shit khia dresses up in???

I still hate that division though, it's like, "here is party, and here is art". The two things can go hand in hand, that's why I prefer deeper music, it's not in anyway fun at face value sometimes, but people still have lots of fun dancing to it. Music doesn't have to be explicitly fun for one to have fun with it.

But yeah all the old chestnuts like "you are pretending to like minimal/don't really care for it".......I don't even know what to say about those.

but i def. don't think of MSTRKRFT and justice as art, thats for sure.

I bet when it comes right down to it, we would be way into each others sets if we heard em, by sheer virtue of paying this mush attention to frivilous shit like what came out today , and how its influencing each other. I mean i wouldnt be opposed to hearing minimal/electrohouse any night, and i bet you wouldnt be opposed to hearing justice/mstrkrft if it was all well executed.

Regarding the comment about lack of pretension: they had no rock star attitude, that's all I meant.

if its hard dance music, i think thats been and gone somewhere

i've been hearing it called 'dancerock' for a few years now and thats seems to suffice, even though having the word "rock" in it kinda puts me off

will never catch on; makes me want to swallow my car keys.

not a bad thing! i like RATATAT!

-- jeffery (jef...), June 25th, 2006.

If that crowd is so open minded and down to get down, There are a million and one nights full of killer DJ's playing awesome stuff, just in this stupid podunk town (San Diego) that I live in, not to mention Los Angeles, and they could be full on raving five nights a week, but instead all these great DJ's play for nearly empty floors. Somehow I think something other than the music is getting all those folks to come out and party.

jess + crabbe + phillipe + boombass pls to clean the shit off the streets of paris!!

=(

this is more shocking than when surgeon went EBM!!!

My friend who spins at hipster dance clubs plays about 30% Braxe 30% JLC and 30% MSTRKRFT, so there ya go.

-- the fuckablity of late picasso (vfoz...), Today. (later)

you're not a hypocrite. braxe and ratatat are better, only we're in 2006. i'm all for forward motion and the arguments for forward motion, and i enjoyed mstrkrft out the other night, but justice and mstrkrft and the rest are no earthshakers and not any forward motion, as far as i can see. i'll dance to it but it won't be on my headphones in 6 months.

-- the fuckablity of late picasso (vfoz...), Today. (later)

you're not a hypocrite. braxe and ratatat are better, only we're in 2006. i'm all for forward motion and the arguments for forward motion, and i enjoyed mstrkrft out the other night, but justice and mstrkrft and the rest are no earthshakers and not any forward motion, as far as i can see. i'll dance to it, and enjoy it, and rep for it here, but it won't be on my headphones in 6 months.

I'm now listening to The Looks again in full from the first time since starting this thread. What still strikes me is how, structurally, it seems to match with 'proper' electrohouse perfectly, there's still a feeling of constant build and release. Where it differs is that while most house music is so intricate and multi-textured, this whole mini-scene is now painting with the broadest brush-strokes possible. I think my favourite tracks here might be 'Paris' and 'Neon Nights', where they go proper mid-90s techno, only in a very clumsy way. What I like how they make it sound so brutal that the clumsiness becomes a virtue.

JUST HOW I FEEL ABOUT ANGULAR-HAIRCUTTED HIPSTER CHICK IN DENIM CUTOFFS + BOOTS

Classic.

Here's my Robot Body Rock mix:

Dirty Lovin' - Map of Africa
Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes) - Beck
Robot Rock - Daft Punk
Element Of Danger (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Services
Little Girl (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Death From Above 1979
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
Black Sweat - Prince
Kill All Hippies - Primal Scream
Gold Lion (Nick Zinner Remix) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Seventeen Years - Ratatat
Nothing But Green Lights (Phones Remix) - Tom Vek
Future - Cut Copy
Over And Over - Hot Chip
Plug It In - Basement Jaxx
One Life To Leave - Out Hud
Glass Corridor - Lansing-Dreiden
Surfin On a Rocket - Air
Run Into Flowers - M83

This is one of those points where I'm happy I don't look cool so I can just listen to music or dance or glare at the bar in peace.

major x-post: The ratatat reference is probably more on-point than anything else. I saw them opening once and there were whatever the cutoff denim/boot equivalent was two years ago obviously trying to get the attention of the band dudes. The sexual attention, I think. I feel like I need to go take a shower now.

the more i think about it the more the 2manyDJs ref was spot on. it's just really really fun party music. and i like aesthetically too.

this is a link to a Justice dj set at Our Disco from 7-29-05. it's not quite the 60 records a minute that someone made it out to be upthread. the mixing's not always perfect, which could open up another whole argument here, but i like that in this instance because it sounds like they were probably having as much fun as the crowd. the only thing i would take points off for is for the inclusion of 'my sharona' which is basically an unpardonable offense, but that doesn't happen until like an hour and a half in i think.

http://store.redvsblue.com/catalog/zing-main.jpg

found this online and filled in a few of the gaps myself. tracklisting for the justice mix.

ps - i just realized today that DIPLO is totally big beat!

why does that phrase make me want to become a civil servant? i think this perfectly sums up the european vs. us divide. we (northern) europeans like a party with a bit of depth.

also, who the hell are ratatat???

ps- vahid - where's the shock in surgeon's ebm love?

out of all the groups mentioned on this thread I think I like them the least .... oh wait, nah, they're better than Uffie

other than the two albums they did a mixtape that got a lot of attention, using a bunch of hip-hop acapellas with new backing music

The two instances of "really" in this sentence are blowing my mind. Is this opposed to somewhat fun party music, or party music that you think about a little, robbing it of some fun? The idea of having dumb fun at a party reminds me of the kill wh1tie thread meltdown some time ago.

I'm not a complete hater on this stuff, though. Soft spot for grinding electro-rock and all that. That digitalism resident advisor mix was kind of fun to listen to while driving around last weekend.

i don't think that the divide between the u.s. and europe is anything more complicated than thoroughness of absorption of this (dance music) into the culture. you all have probably had the sort of debate we're having about this specific music about a few different incarnations of it by now. perhaps we have too, maybe it happened with disco, i don't/wouldn't know.

i do know that this is what i mean by the 'party' in 'party music' though: http://because.tv/public/justice/justice-releaseparty.mov

maybe move somewhere that gets a lil sun

open fire once again.....

all the lily allen hate = "i can't stand this annoying pretty hipster probably-vacuous probably-cokeslut girl look at the amount of personality traits i am projecting on to her!!!"

also, i think you are sort of overstating the importance of "fun to dance to".

what are you, a telletubby??

NYLPM PRO-POP URBAN DANCE SQUAD!!!

Haha, considering the sheer amount of music that tries and fails in this endeavour, I think it's impossible to understate the importance of "fun to dance to".

why are dance music fans such idiots. so bad and hated. etc etc etc

Hence the use of the phrase "TRIES and fails". The pro-pop stance has nothing to do with it - even some of the most austere and dry minimal can be fun to dance to.

i find this pretty ironic coming from you

seriously you guys, your laddish pro-pop buffoonery is as embarrassing as your provincial devotion to your little soccer tournament.

and i find this VERY ironic if it's referring to me!

Everywhere else in world except America = provincial?

http://www.atlantaillustrated.com/blogs/blog02/uploaded_images/footloose%20poster-708973.jpg

WHERE DO I SIGN?

Optimo sets are clearly better tho.

fuck that, it's like something I would have played circa 1997!

http://www.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drf000/f035/f03548snkw1.jpg

i would've thought stirmonster and frenchbloke (other known DP hater) would've gone for stuff like 'Rollin And Scratchin' or 'Rock n' Roll' from 'Homework' at the time at least. but then if you were up on UR, Clarke etc. at the time perhaps you jus wouldn't feel the need to bother.

i suppose there were some jeff mills-lovin' dudes quietly honouring the flame though yeah.

:D

vahid is a schoolteacher, and wouldn't you just know it?

I remember them trying to sell Daft Punk to Prodigy/Fatboy/Chems fans like me

daft punk are clearly closer to the chems and fatboy slim than the prodigy (right down to the spike jonze treatment) -- this is all just marketing mish-mash.

http://www.sushiesque.com/adorablog/images/image.jpg
?

i was going to say 'i dont mind, and perhaps even quite like *some of this stuff*', but this sounds different again to *some of this stuff*, whatever *this stuff* is

though, to be honest i'm not really the target audience for this stuff (plipplop music all night long for me). i know where stirmonster is coming from though, i think its nothing to do with harshness or noisyness or abrasiveness though...

...waters of nazereth is BLAREY, and i think you have to kind of like blaring things. i guess this is where sort of comparisons with big beat and the like come in, also blaring music

replace "hateropolis" with "plip-plop" and you can hear the sound of that dancing.

SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU, BIG FISH!

I was 13 in 1997 and still I can see how egregiously played out that set is.

*faux because it's still a relatively narrow concept of eclecticism, but understandable wrt their obvious intention to make people dance and keep them dancing

aka being from France?

that's quite patronising tho. but then you look at all the French producers and they all seemed to start off as indie kids/in punk bands. except maybe Zdar?

I like a bit of space in my DJ sets. It doesn't sound like there's any attempt to go with the mood of a dancefloor other than overloading them with snippets of dozens of songs everyone already knows.

understandablty but interesting then to consider someone like Jeff Mills who has been known to operate in a similar way, but with a narrower palette of material perhaps.

see comment about many of the most celebrated French producers (discounting that breed of disco/soul guys condemned to Hed Kandi purgatory e.g. Francois K, St Germain, Dimitri etc.) having background as indie rockers.

Also, OTT eclecticism like this (or 2ManyDJs really) just dulls the impact of everything that's being played. A burst of AC/DC dropped in at the right point in a house set can sound amazing. Surrounded by six other genres of music within ten minutes, it's just another student disco record.

i'm not terribly concerned with impeccable mixing... so that particular issue doesn't bug me. but matt, what about the optimo discs? certainly they're far-ranging eclectic, and they often don't stick with a particular song for very long (esp. on 'how to kill the dj'), though i guess that's more twitch. i saw him play in san francisco and it was absolutely incendiary. i guess it's maybe the impeccable mixing that makes the difference? sorry to embarass you if it does, stir.

you know what it is? it's the sort of thing where i wonder why i like what a lot of you like, but you don't like what i like. it's confusing. it's probably naivete, admittedly, but the utter spite and contempt is what i find most irritating and perplexing.

i think it's ok to have only a working familiarity with dance music and put a dj set together. some of the most brilliant innovations wind up coming from people who haven't been forced within a certain stricture of thought. of course there's also the notion that you have to know the rules to break them, but i don't think i believe that.

if their end goal was fun, it certainly worked for me. if there was something else they were going for, maybe something you were looking for, then i also didn't get it.

they're just grumpy old men. especially Ronan, who must be about 80 now!

i would definitely mostly agree with this - The narrower palette is everything though. I guess I just don't like self-conscious eclecticism much any more. It feels like an easy way out... got no faith in your track selection? Just whack a bit of everything in, there's bound to be something someone likes!

but, at the same time, i think it is possible to do a set that jumps between genres but still sounds coherent as long as the dj can link sonic similarities in his/her musical selection and knows how to maintain energy / flow. if a dj knows what they are doing, it is possible to go from 130 bpm to 100bpm without the dancefloor sudenly grinding to a crashing halt, but when it is done badly or purely for the sake of playing different types of music, it can be a disaster. i think i dj the way i do for two reasons. 1) i am ancient (but i hope not jaded!) and remember when this was simply how clubs were and 2) for ten years i pretty much played only house and techno records in the 118 - 133bpm range. i simply got bored. in the last few years dance music got a lot more interesting again and i am a lot happier dj'ing sets of all electronic dance music these days, and i tend to play a lot straighter (although perhaps not that straight) when i dj elsewhere. i am far more likely to leave the crazy experimentation for our actual optimo night where we have a loyal, open minded and crazily enthusuiastic crowd who are used to what we do. bear in mind that optimo is on a sunday night and a lot of our crowd have had a weekend of 4/4 freakout and are thus probably more open to hearing different things. if optimo had been a saturday night club, it would have been a very different beast.

at the end of the day, there is no right / wrong way to do it. if most of the crowd go home having had an amazing night out, that's all that matters and it will almost always be the handful of spotters who are moaning. the spotters tend not to dance anyway. but it should also be possible to totally rock any dancefloor anywhere without resorting to all the latest big tunes or classics. not easy, but definitely possible.

The other thing about such rapid-fire mixing is you lose all sense of slow build, that magical moment after a minute long intro when it slowly dawns across the room what's being played. This is even more urgent and key with the big tunes (ie various mixes of Body Language).

That's not a set in stone thing and needn't be the case at all. 2 Many DJs sets were pretty faithful to the CD template and everybody (inc. Ronan) seemed to love them four/five years ago. And series like DJ Kicks have always worked on the basis that that's what the DJ would do in the club. But of course trends and tastes naturally shift.

sorry, that was stupid.

-- firstworldman (3...), June 28th, 2006 2:33 AM. (firstworldman) (later)

dude ... i will break it down for you only ONE MORE TIME. nothing is wrong with fun. we like fun too.

of course "fun" is lots of different things to lots of different people, BTW. my parents think the symphony is "fun"! but lots of us like the same sort of "fun" that you do - jumping up and down in dark rooms to pounding dance music.

UNFORTUNATELY - this justice stuff is not fun. it is wack. it makes us sad with it's wackness!!

NO

which DJs were dropping a token rock/metal track into an otherwise largely dance set 4 years ago? i know 2 Many DJs and Alkan were - anyone else stand out for that gimmick?

Cut Copy - Fabriclive 29

01 - Joakim – I Wish You Were Gone – Versatile
02 - Cut Copy – Future Unlimited – Modular
03 - Munk – Disco Clown – Gomma
04 - Who Made Who – Hello Empty Room – Gomma
** - Cut Copy – Future Unlimited - Modular
05 - New Young Pony Club – Get Dancey – alt< Recordings
06 - In Flagranti – Bang Bang – Codek
07 - Goldfrapp – Slide In [DFA Remix] – Mute
08 - Severed Heads – Dead Eyes Opened [Extended Mix] – SevCom
09 - Who Made Who – Out The Door [Super Discount Remix] – Gomma
10 - Daft Punk – Face To Face – Virgin
11 - The Presets – Truth and Lies – Modular
12 - MSTRKRFT – Work On You – Last Gang
13 - B.W.H. – Stop – Radius
14 - The Faint – Your Retro Career Melted [Ursula 1000 Remix] – Saddle Creek
15 - Soulwax – E Talking [Tiga’s Disco Drama Remix] – PIAS
16 - Ciccone Youth – Into The Groovey – Ciccone Youth
17 - Justice – Waters of Nazareth [Erol’s Dur Dur Durrr Re-Edit] – Ed Banger
18 - Grauzone – Eisbär – Welt
19 - Riot In Belgium – The Acid Never Lies – Relish
20 - Midnight Juggernauts – Shadows – Cutters
21 - Fred Falke – Omega Man – Work It Baby
22 - Daniel Diamond – Champu – City Rockers
23 - Roxy Music – Angel Eyes – EMI
24 - Cut Copy – Going Nowhere [Whitey Remix] – Modular
25 - Cut Copy – Dream Sequence - Modular

FIND A NEW FUCKING DECADE, PLEASE!

"tired"

OOH BURN

FUCK THIS SHIT ONCE AND FOR ALL! tHE GO TEAM ARE DANCE-ROCK I CAN GET BEHIND!! OR AT LEAST I WILL WHEN I GET ROUND TO BUYING THEIR ALBUM...

god this stuff has really begun to PISS ME OFF.

-- Michael F Gill

blog consensus is the new 00's "alternative" music for shut-ins.

-- fandango (...), July 17th, 2006.

ding ding ding! except you can't avoid seeing these people/hearing this music out & about, believe me.

tho haha wrt/ YR NEW AUSTRALIAN OVERLORDS . . . did anyone see this coming? poor Avalanches . . .

WHY DID I GOOGLE WHY... FUCKING VOCODERS AGAIN!! CHER, I TAKE IT BACK!!

D+

The tune that no-one has mentioned in this thread, which strikes me as something of a forerunner as well, is "Where's Your Head At". That always got huge reactions at any not-altogther-dance-loving club night I ever went to. I've always thought that the rise of electroclash-->electrohouse and their emphasis on cold synth textures kind of derailed what appeared to be a logical development at the time.

None of the tracks in this new style I've heard have had as much songstructure as "I'm So Crazy" or "Where's Your Head At", despite the presence of rock vocals, distortion etc. It's mostly intro-build-up-bosh-bosh-bosh, yes?

yes. new digitalism single is EXACTLY this, f'rinstance. (+ no vocals.)

new digitalism single, if you mean 'jupiter room', is ACE.

Which is why INXS sampling "I'm So Crazy" is an unacknowledged forerunner!

I haven't actually listened to this album at all since the week I started the thread, although I've taken a bit of a break from dance music altogether without even realising it.

i've definitely turned on mstrkrft, but my enthusiasm for a lot of other stuff on this thread is mostly undiminished. that said, i've been playing less of it just because so many other people are playing it.

I certainly enjoyed the Essential Mix they did the other day, but I'm worried that I can't spot the elements in their music that are distinctly Canadian and therefore lame.

I can't believe I actually went to bat for these guys in 2006. :\

So years after the fact, I picked this up on John Justen's recommendation and fucking love it to death. I don't think I've bought anything exuding so much relentless, uncomplicated fun in years.