What is the sound of now?

I think the Minimal House thing is overrated. Interesting that the trend for subtlety in dance over the last five years has culminated in something so discreet and polite that it lacks tune or a decent beat means that this is a last frontier before we go back to the big basslines and mentalist loops of the early 90s.

anyway, the mid-2000s will obviously be best remembered for the dixie chicks. and paris hilton.

Without wanting to risk doing what you said, can you recommend me some minimal dance with these in? I just can't imagine what bright, fast, furious minimal would sound like. The only thing I've come across in dance music lately that really does take things up a notch is breaks and stuff like Pendulum who I've been told are really untrendy ;0)

I think minimalism is definitely affecting the alternative end of rock/pop though. The albums I mentioned upthread and also Thom Yorke's new one. I'd say this is a genre in itself - I liked the label "Haunted House" given to the Knife album by someone I Can't remember. I guess it's all subdued, creepy minimal electronic/orchestral pop rock??!

Minimal House is much too easily associated with being "discreet and polite" if you haven't heard it at say... Berghain club!! (not saying you haven't, I wouldn't know, but volume does make one hell of a difference).

i do agree with you that certain rhythmic techniques and timbral tendencies popularized (if not invented) by minimal are sneaking into all kinds of music, including yorke and the knife. (but then olof is doing his own, straight-up minimal techno productions as well, so i'm not sure you could entirely count them outside the phenom.) too bad yorke's beats aren't, uh, better.

How? You've said this a few times before. Electro I define as having a certain sound whereby there's a definite synthetic feel to the beats and melodies and a retro-futuristic vibe. Crisp 16-bit melodies, 80's aesthetic. That kind of thing. Drum'n'Bass and House are equally loose terms but just as effective. You're acting like Electro is the dance equivalent of Emo whereby it doesn't mean anything any more. I'd say that this might come from the fact that Electro prevails at the moment and since the rise of the Electroclash "fad" has influenced more and more producers from pop to r'n'b to hip hop to alt rock. It's because of it's ubiquity that it feels like it isn't there. Compare recent pop to that of the late 90s and you'll hear the difference in sound. Post-Britpop it was all about getting real musicians in and creating Bittersweet Symphonys. Everyone was at it, now everyone's about vintage synths and 808s.

AKAI

What a load of shit, what artists specifically do you even mean here?

The music people dismiss as "minimal house" is doing everything maximal house/deep house/techno/prog have ever done well all at once. Mostly people just want an end to minimal cos it does not deign to create crossover rock influenced dance music.

yeah i know that but geezer mentioned the neptunes!!

Surely the sound of timbaland 1999 was just as minimal as his current! minimal r'n'b sounds i can think of off top of head = 2-step garage'n'b, turn-of-millenium timbaland, neptunes, bubblecrunk. That sort of lush streamlined minimal sound in pop music isn't very specifically 00s so much as late-nineties-into-00s.

oh but it will - anyway I think the disdain for minimal comes mostly from people who like to call anything they haven't heard "just hipster music" and pretend that only 3 people in the world like it anyway, to make themselves feel better

OTM... but not a 'sound' i don't think.

where is nick southall to say 'overcompression'?

Shitty late-90's loop techno probably. Or Alexander Kowalski (which is hardly 'minimal'!) I think your ears are reaching & stretching to hear something from this sound that it just isn't going to give you in the way you're expecting.

my only exposure to minimal house is the stuff i get on the front of mixmag and while i do like it (i do) i just can't imagine dancing to it ever ever ever. so the idea is that it has to be played LOUD? i can see that. at the same time, shouldn't dance music make you at least want to jump around a bit whether you're listneing to it in your kitchen or in a 5-storey megaclub? isn't the whole point of minimalism that it is subtle and repetitive? as opposed to say, ragga-jungle or whatever?

if anything i think the first phase of minimal phase of dance music will be shortlived (much like Electroclash in 2001) but its influence will stay with us for years to come and define an era. We can already see that with the Knife and Thom Yorke.

this leads me to believe even more that your problem is with house music, not minimal

To steal (mangle) a quote from Mr. C - techminimal house is "techno for the girls, and house for the boys"

People seem to use "minimalist" to describe anything that isn't primarily and obviously based around samples of old records. Which is ironic b/c the move away from sampling tends to lead to records being busier.

Dog Latin if you go to the Minimal House Bobbins thread in 5 minutes I will have posted a list of 10 banging "minimal" tunes for you.

Hystereo :)

You've answered your own question there I think Tim.

Maybe I do have a minor problem with House, Ronan. Most of the stuff I get exposed to is absoultely volatile but I'll still advocate it as a genre as the mitigating circumstances I've had the opportunity to hear what I would say is decent House then I can safely say I've enjoyed it. That said, when I've enjoyed it it's normally prefixed with Electro- or Tech- or, yes Minimal- etc. I've just never really been exposed to being in a good club for the reasons I cite above - it's a world I just can't get to grips with. The few times I've been clubbing in London I've either hated every minute of it (Home in Leicester Square circa 1999) or just been left feeling a bit flat (something trendy in Hoxton where they played Discopunk circa 2003). Otherwise I've been to Electrowerkz and seen thigns but it's hardly a proper club is it?

I don't think of it this way, it really is just more of a sense of less happening in the foreground within a track that makes me think it's minimal. Either that or a sense of space and distance in a track, esp. within hip-hop, crunk etc. - sycnopation of beat etc. It's got nothing to do with whether samples are involved.

Funnily I don't really think of the latest Pet Shop Boys single as minimal (perhaps it IS, relatively, for a pop song).

ring the OTM alarm!

Arguably "Snap Yo Fingers" and "Boom! Shake The Room" are as minimal/maximal as one another - except one uses synths and programmed beats and one uses samples. Crunk doesn't "background" its sounds more.

And what is so wrong with wanting some banging chewns anyway? All this mincy house stuff is fine and dandy but every time I buy a new Fabric compilation by my favourite artist, I sit through the whole thing waiting for it to kick in and it never does. Even the Adam Beyer one was slow and limp. What's wrong with wanting to tear up the dancefloor a bit? Get people jumping? Or have we evolved beyond such Neanderthal tactics that we mustn't be seen having a great time, just as long as people spot us nodding our heads discreetly whilst propping up the bar with a £12 cocktail?

I know I'm being a bit OTT and generalistic here (I'm waiting for someone to leap down my throat with a dozen arguments) but is it really so right to say "boshing beats are passé now darlink, I just can't BEAR catchy melodies any more, they're vulgar". This isn't just house, or even dance music. I believe the absence of catchiness and boshability in many genres has been losing out in the last few years to something else - stuff that is more textured, more subtle - not necessarily worse, but just different. But I do miss the FUN associated with bouncy basslines, cheeky samples, memorable melody lines, big build-ups, false starts and endings... what happened to music like that?

but consider old Teddy Riley productions - he had no real inclination to use space as a feature itself rather than as something to fill in, so it seems, to the extent where a track like 'Poison' or 'Her' or 'She's Got That Vibe' might seem even 'clumsy' by today's standards. It was all a lot faster then as well which makes it seem bigger and busier too.

It depends on the examples often though I suppose. Three 6 Mafia 'Poppin' My Collar' has a LOT more going on within it compared to 'Drop It Like It's Hot'. En Vogue's 'Hold On' is pretty sparse compared with a lot of stuff like it at it's time. But if we're talking generally (always dangerous but often useful), the difference is clear as day to me/my ears.

With The Neptunes it was just something I really noticed immediately that I hadn't with producers before bar Timbaland. Not just because they weren't sampling like Dre or RZA or Combs, but their palette really did seem intentionally reduced. As a reaction against what the others were doing this makes perfect sense. You're right in saying (if you are!) that their productions do just as much as the ones by the others did, but in a different way. That was the aim but you can still refer to the sound as 'minimal' in relation to the other examples. How else to describe the change in style/approach? It's the easiest, most understandable term. And it's not a dirty word (or shouldn't be - even if you prefer one over the other generally).

yes, this is it. people be paying more attention to what's happening in the background these days. is it coke/ketamine that's doing it as opposed to E frenzy? I think this has been happening even before the millenium and the recent minimal dance movement is a trickle-up feature before it trickles back down into the rest of the musical spectrum. I feel there'll be a backlash waiting soon. No not Basement Jaxx maximalism, but something that references the Breakdance music of the eighties with it's catchy synth lines and driving beats; also referncing early 90s rave anthems with their use of frentic beats and cut-up samples; marrying the best bits of Jungle before the days of Coffeetable and Roni Size when basslines knew what they were doing; then putting a twist on these, melting them in with a new attitude. I know they're not so popular with the ILX dance-elite but look at the popularity of acts like Pendulum with younger generations - they're the new Prodigy and I'm not joking. The current crowd despises them, tells us they're cheesy and then puts it's head back down to listen to "Plunk Plunk Plunk Plunk Plunk Plunk Plunk Plunk Schpeee Plonk Plonk Plonk Plonk" loops with tiny bubbling noises and soft pads leaving the tiniest tracers of a tune.

And what is so wrong with wanting some banging chewns anyway?

Nothing! But the two are not nessacarily in opposition!

I know I mentioned this before but when I was at Berghain, Cassy played fucking "Energy Flash", and it wasn't like some jarring contrast in the set.

Hell, with my endless schilling for Bpitch Control and Ellen Allien (and dissapointment with the new Magda CD mix) I'm probably quite a bit closer to your POV than you realise :)

not necessarily worse, but just different.

Indeed!

But I do miss the FUN associated with bouncy basslines, cheeky samples, memorable melody lines, big build-ups, false starts and endings... what happened to music like that?

-- wogan lenin

It turned into "Breaks" and nobody noticed it was shite.

How we stop reverting to 'what IS minimal' talk does seem to be a problem though. I blame Tim.

x-post but surely old Dre productions were even more restrained than The Neptunes! Anything on The Chronic versus anything on Kaleidoscope.

And yeah you can blame me - there's not going to be a consensus answer to the thread question anyway.

It's this two legs good four legs bad picture that always seems to come up with minimal.

minimal=arty, polite, CAN NEVER BE FUN, ALWAYS INTELLECTUAL.

banging tunes=let's ave it, hooray, CAN NEVER BE ARTY.

it does a disservice to both sounds and paints a line that doesn't exist between the two. it's mostly about peoples definitions of themselves anyway.

It turned into "Breaks" and nobody noticed it was shite.
See, I rather like the recent Breaks stuff. It's bouncy and big and fun. Does everything Jungle used to do but the beats are punchier and boingier. Never really enjoyed previous stuff like... well I did like Tipper, but y'know stuff like that that isn't that.

It is tempting to go down the Ronan route, but this thread is being debated by people who CLEARLY know what they're talking about.

I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about when it comes to dance music as there's always some record-shop snob who's finger is constantly on the record groove and could shoot down my conception of new genres and the clubbing zeitgeist with three words. That doesn't make me any less of a fan of dancing and listening to dance music and playing dance music in my locale and often contemplating where things are and where they're going.

who is doing this? other than doglatin maybe?

but I tend to think of it is as just a general advancement in production sophistication

I agree with this entirely.

I dunno re Dre, it might be minimal in terms of the process of sampling p-funk and not adding a great deal to it bar vocals, but the source material always seemed 'heavy'.

Neptunes are odd cos they often kept 'big' echoey snares (esp. on Kaleidoscope) but no other sounds they used seemed to last for more than a second - guitar twangs or whatever sounded more abrupt than before, for hit records at least.

I also found a copy of The Horrorist's "One Night in NYC" record recently, and a lot of it is startlingly close to the darker end of minimal - the title track actually could easily be a minimal record and I reckon it would be ace to start a minimal DJ mix with it.

My point, I should hope, is obvious!

"I dunno re Dre, it might be minimal in terms of the process of sampling p-funk and not adding a great deal to it bar vocals, but the source material always seemed 'heavy'."

I get you now - though I feel that clipped vs heaviness issue is not quite the same as minimal vs maximal. This is why I always thought "micro-" was quite a useful prefix - for me it implied the use of small individual sounds which, yeah, has been pretty common across the board, for both minimalists and maximalists.

but you don't need to act so angry and militant about your music genre on these threads. we all know you're pretty smart at this kind of stuff so why not use ILX to educate rather than quash everyone with posts like "Oh jesus christ, FUCK ILM.". Not everyone here has the same opinion, or indeed the same access that you do to dance music. Remember your English teacher - show don't tell. I'm don't mean to pop at you specifically, it's something that many posters do on ILX and I'm sorry but it reeks of snobbery and it puts me off when people dissect others arguments without putting forward an actual example or opinion of their own, preferring to do a blanket shootdown of a poster or even a whole thread. I know I can appear pretty naive on certain subjects but I'm here to find out more about music and to ask questions as a representative of the less seasoned, provincial dance fan.

no they're not the same but the former is often an indication or characteristic of the latter, i've found. no doubt there are many exceptions tho (inc. some already mentioned on this thread). you're probably right that it's more a 'macro/micro' thing and we shouldn't use max/min when we mean the former really.

x-post I'm sorry wogan, but you have to understand that many threads recently just seem to be meta discussions of genres among posters who don't like these genres. if there was more discussion on the threads about the actual music, and I do contribute to these, I maybe wouldn't so pissed off with ILM lately, but also I am on a break from work at the moment so have more time to waste here.

Different people will remember different things innit. Huge websites and online magazines will talk about the big-selling hits, The Strokes and Libertines, Eminem and 50 Cent...not these 'dahnce' subgenres. The 'zeitgeist' thing is difficult to pin down because it seems different from place to place. To the point where you may well wonder why bother to ask such a question anymore?

ha ha sorry i was thinking of early-00s for some reason.

minimalism to me, in it's modern sense is not necessarily the opposite of Kish Kash. Kish Kash is maximal because it plays with a lot of instruments and genres whereas minimal takes things back to the more spaced out sound of IDM and Detroit Techno but adding a 00's veneer of sheen and sparkle. It's about using a minimal arrangement with a high-end production technique. Therefore, yeh it's more about what's happening in the background.

Can we still say that there is little music we could go back in time to 94 with to prove we come from the future? Is it still a matter of polishing up what we've already got? If anything is minimal the natural outcome of all the polishing so we're left with so much Brasso that it kind of clouds-up the actual door knocker? Extended metaphors by the bucketload, I know I'd better kick it.

Sort of like back in the bad old days when somone would start a thread each week saying "so do you people seriously like Britney Spears then? But she's a plastic mass-produced whore etc. etc."

To be fair to ILM though, it's not just posters on ILM who do this! It is a standard complaint by non-fans.

but wtf is 'the sound of 1995'? or 1967? or 1978?

Sorry to be pedantic, but I don't like this metaphor: it suggests that there's a clear distinction between "appearance" and "function" in music.

They're the same thing innit.

Ronan, fair do's your probably sick of misinformed people pretneding to be experts. Just remember that setting people straight on our terms and genres is better than actively getting pissed off. As I say, I'm no expert but I am interested and I'll lay my preconceptions about minimal or whatever out on the table because that's how I've seen it since I heard about it. I want to "get" it like with almost all genres of music but not having been in a club that plays it can make that difficult. Anyway, yeh back to the grind.

Well I'd like to forward - Britpop & Big Beat; Art-Pop and Psychedelia; Punk and Disco. But that's how these years work in my mind because they're big years for pop.

-- wogan lenin (doglati...), August 9th, 2006.

well, for lots of people, those years weren't about those things. and if they were, there isn't a whole lot of common ground that you can call a 'sound'.

I get a bit annoyed by this defence though because you might as well argue that you need to go to a classical concert to get the most out of that music. May well be true but doesn't mean the music can't/shouldn't be judged outside of it's primary environment and that that judgement is invalid.

Tho perhaps a bag of ecstasy would open some doors.

Enemy I strike you down. Sort of. You wouldn't watch a play on a Palmtop.

These bloody Justice kids, they want shooting...

Although I would agree that (in both cases) one needs to have a sense of how it would work on a dancefloor. I think more important than hearing a given style of dance music in a club is actually dancing to it. After going out dancing to hard house (about 5 years ago mind you) I didn't become a hard house convert but I did understand better how the music functioned.

What? Some people want to watch movies on their phones. They can still say it was a shit movie afterwards.

They can, but they're making a judgement based on taking something out of the context that it was meant to be viewed within. If you watch a movie on a phone you can't consider the use of the soundtrack fully, you're going to miss a whole load of visual details due to the compression of the file, you're going to be getting a headache from squinting at a tiny screen. If you're prepared to watcha movie ona phone or an iPod and then judge that movie as being great or shite, you're a fucking pillock. It's like saying Klimt is a shite artist based on seeing a B&W repro of one of his paintings in an article in The Sun. It demeans the art and it makes you look bloody stupid.

Yeh definitely. Maybe it needs to be heard in context first though. Number of times I've had the "dance music is shit cos it's all boom boom boom" conversation with people who've never gone out and danced to it or been to a club or a free party. Of course once you've done this it's likely you'll like it wherever you hear it.

I am listening to the Ricardo Villalobos album - is this minimalist?

well obviously a mobile phone isn't going to cut it, for movies.

but what about a big tv?

Well obviously that's what DVDs are designed to be played on, so that's fine. But a 14" portable is flawed, in the way that a 32" widescreen isn't.

The mid-00s will be remebered for people going gaga over the methods of consumption and not what is being consumed.

but films weren't designed to be shown on dvd...

Well yeah, anyone's gonna kick against that, because we're taught that freedom of choice is the most important thing in the world regarding culture, not quality of consumption.

But the fact remains, if you're playing music or watching a film or whatever via a format / player / whatever that does not fully express (or, at the least, express to as full an extent as possible) the actual music / film / etcetera, then you're missing a serious part of it. If you're watching Pan & Scan VHS cuts you're missing the mis-en-scene, if you're listening to low-bitrate mono-rips you're missing the mixing and frequency range, and if you're missing an integral part of the actual basic form and structure of the artifact in question you can't really fucking judge it, can you?

x-post - a lot these days probably are though, Henry, as you well know. Economic pressure. More money from DVD sales than cinema bums.

Nonsense. Consider the physical form of film itself. Hardly pure is it? All that dust, noise, the problems of projecting etc. People have put that past them for years and been able to enjoy or not enjoy a film for it's actual content, not how it's presented.

This is even more permissable with music because it's not a visual medium so that's one less 'constraint' (for want of better word).

Perhaps because the methods of consumption have been where there has been more sense of innovation in comparison to the material created for consumption?

I am now listening to a Clive Henry/Loco Dice mix I picked up for cheap. It's not unpleasant but (excuse me) I still can't imagine going nuts for this in a club, even if it was very loud although I'd like to hear it. Part of my complaint is that in my mind dance music should be memorable while this music kind of shuffles around quite nicely without really providing me with anything to focus on. Sure I could dance to it, and played loud enough I'm sure a sense of ambience could be applied to it. I'm just surprised that this is the hot new thing. It's like trying to suck up the dregs from the bottom of the juice carton when really you'd like to be gulping it from a pint glass - there is pleasure but where's the rush?

This is even more permissable with music because it's not a visual medium so that's one less 'constraint' (for want of better word).

No man, you're talking nonsense. Film is impure, audio tape is impure, canvas is impure, YES, but that does not mean that you can add any level of distortion you like into the equation and it still be acceptable. If you distort the form of the thing past a certain point, it is no longer the intended thing.

x-post - Charlie that first sentence is a nice sentiment but total and utter bullshit.

THEN AGAIN

films were always edited on a tiny fucking table-type thing.

food for thought.

YES, but that does not mean that you can add any level of distortion you like into the equation and it still be acceptable. If you distort the form of the thing past a certain point, it is no longer the intended thing.

Oh and you get to decide where that point is do you? Clearly everyone has their own idea of where the line is.

Yeah, everyone has the right to decide their own point, but that doesn't mean that everyone's picking a good point. Far from it. Everyone has the right to decide what they eat, which is why more people are obese than ever. If you let the public decide then the public generally fuck it up.

A better one would be "people shouldn't judge this food after leaving it out for three days and then microwaving it. It needs to be fresh and oven-roasted!"

I don't beleive for one second that music is less innovative or of less quality than in the past, or than the technology that plays it, particularly, or that music has become boring or dull or whatever. I think that society and the music industry has become more concerned with gadgets and gizmos than with music. Convenience over quality.

Also, is anyone else imagining that Tim thinks he's talking to the real Terry Wogan?

x-post. OK, stretch that further - people are eating a vacuum-packed, microwave korma and then claiming that all Indian food is shite / great / wahtever.

But many films the presentation and the content are bound up together. It might be possible to enjoy a documentary or a Hollywood comedy on a small screen, but for certain other kinds of movies, the content is more inextricably bound up in the cinematography, or the soundtrack, in other words films which harness the power of 35mm projected across 100ft (both of the Speilberg/Tarkovsky variety mind). Watch it on a plane and you're not getting the same experience.

The same goes for music, too. The bigger the system, the more effort producers can put into grappling with sound design, timbres, textures etc and that becomes the content of the track. It would sound shit on AM radio, other stuff which emphasizes different musical ideas (chords, melodies, song structure) sounds better there, and is made for that format. Not exactly the medium is the message, but the medium influences the message and it shouldn't be ignored.

I'm very unfashionable. I've done a number of mixes (made in Acid Pro - I am learning Ableton this week though) that can be found on the DJ's Post Your Mixes For Download thread and they tend to either be very eclectic or in more recent times focus on just one genre (recently did a mix of Border Community type stuff). When I DJ out I don't really care too much about what's trendy but then I'd probably get shot if I played anywhere near a clubbing capital.

The most popular mix I did (and it has been copied and distributed by so many people in the area I meet people in the pub who've heard it and really like it) is the tracklisting I'm about to post. When I first played it out the floor of the upstairs room I was playing in nearly collapsed. So yeh, this is what people like to hear where I live.

Spanners & Hooves mix 2004

01-intro
02-augustus pablo - park lane special
03-congo natty - rastafari he liveth in me
04-congo natty - police in helicopter
05-max romeo - chase the devil
06-prodigy - out of space
07-beastie boys - intergalactic (prisoners of technology mix)
08-shy fx - the wolf
09-jon b - blandwagon poos
10-sesame street - pinball tune
11-deerhoof - rainbow silhouette of the milky rain
12-marc smith vs safe n sound - identify the beat
13-andy c - body rock
14-adam beyer - wood carver (thomas krome mix)
15-chris the liberator - on night in hackney
16-praga khan - injected with the poison
17-drugface - fill me with drugs (the crow mix)
18-dj tim vs lock n load - access ya mind
19-deepack - prophecy
20-bad manners - the can can

More recently I've been enjoying the Rex the Dog remixes, various breaks and electrohouse stuff people have been playing, a bit of Hard dance but some of it sounds a bit orrible and tacky. Despite being an advocate for the melody/bosh styles I'm not so keen on European trance stuff like Sander Van Doorn - too juno-y and too cheesy even for me.

Isn't that like a literature teacher saying, "now i'm not really one for reading, I prefer a good movie to be honest"?

Newness, as well as bigness. My mates always take the piss out of my TV cos it's a Toshiba CRT and not some flatscreen plasma gizmo, but the picture on my CRT is WAY better than on their flatscreens.

Something like the Holden remix of "Safari" has a massive effect on the dancefloor actually, everyone goes mental. The way that some of these tunes veer on the edge of falling to pieces tends to focus the dancefloor's attention on the massive whump four-to-the-floor beat when it returns. It's really just a modern twist on the old build-up/breakdown process.

but you see the context better... across the street?

xpost

So yeh, it's not quite the tpyical path where your mates drag you to a "Deep Psy-Trance" thing and then that's what you like but then you get into "Melodic Psy-Trance" and see it as a big step.

Broadband and FLAC are beneficial to music quality as it means the easy transfer of high quality digital audio is more feasible. You can find examples to back up either side of the argument. The sound of now comes in both 128kbps and 5.1 surround. As long as the choice is there we're on the right track.

But actual sound innovations are much subtler now than they were, no? I always feel that things plateaued in this regard. Growing up I got off purely on sounds but now it's more about what's done with the sounds now the novelty has worn off.

yeah but you end up with wacky compositions... you can get the flash of anger by... cutting to a close-up!

Perhaps, but even with something like Holden's mix of "The Sky Was Pink" which is a legendary tune would likely clear a dancefloor where I played. It messed with my head when I first heard it because for me it was more of an IDM tune set to a soft 4/4 808 beat than what I perceived to be a dance anthem. I can see why it would work now in some contexts but I'm scared if I played it out, I'd be seen as self indulgent. Maybe? Well maybe I'll give it a go on the 19th and see how it goes.

They're different sides of the same coin, not separate genres in their own right.

Also, you guys just got pwned by Louis Jagger upthread. Hang your heads in shame.

(i wish i could watch Snakes On A Plane, on a plane. I'm sure this 'joke' has been made several times on that film's thread but I only just thought of it)

woah, bold thinking there: music might evolve over time?!?!

Well where is it? This doesn't really get mentioned in the dance mags or on ILM that much since the trend is minimal and that's what clubbers seem to be getting googly-eyed about these days. I admit, I'm not really an authority on this as my only sources are ILM and the mags but this is how I perceive it without going to a club to hear it.

What might be frustrating Ronan and others on threads like these are the twin assumptions that a) the gatekeepers are only allowing minimal techno these days and nothing else and b) this just consists of going plip-plop-plip in the dryest and most cerebral and unfun way. And then using this as the basis for a grand theory without the slightest actual experience to back it up.

(xpost - Tim OTM)

What might be frustrating Ronan and others on threads like these are the twin assumptions that a) the gatekeepers are only allowing minimal techno these days and nothing else

i think you got it the wrong way round; if we're straw-man hunting isn't it more like:

anyway I think the disdain for minimal comes mostly from people who like to call anything they haven't heard "just hipster music" and pretend that only 3 people in the world like it anyway, to make themselves feel better

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), August 9th, 2006.

not really. lots of minimal is highly edit intensive (and almost completely virtual, with nary a knob OR key involved). DBX-style minimal is all knob-turning, slow tweaks. but then again a lot of maximal is all knob-turning as well. the definition of minimal techno is elastic enough, and the possibilities vast enough, that there are any number of production methods to get you there. or take you far, far from it if that's yr preference.

wogan, you may simply not like most current minimal, to which i say "fair enough." i don't usually like big, brassy, bouncy, "fun" tracks. basement jaxx i enjoy in the car but it's hardly my choice of club listening. but i still think it's unfair and silly to pull out the strawman about fussy trendies holding up the bar with expensive drinks. when i go out, everyone is losing their shit to precisely this sort of minimal music.

of course, drugs help, but then when ISN'T that the case in dance music?

music by Madonna collaborators and sympathisers, bargain bootlegs, old school jukebox favourites plus hott new tracks & ridiculous remixes

this "big epic breakdown build up" house music thing is pretty problematic, as I say, I think wogan's biggest problem is that he doesn't like deep repetetive house music, I don't think the innovations which minimal has introduced matter in this regard one way or another.

Come to think of it I don't know anyone who likes minimal in a really big way who hasn't been into Detroit techno or US house music at some point.

What I do find kind of weird and interesting is how electrohouse has not really been mentioned here, it seemed like it would be huge in 2004, but then it just sort of fell away, and minimal came back even stronger in 2005 and again in 2006. Just seems such an illogical progression in alot of ways.

I never said there wasn't any other music being played in London though, that's taking what I'm saying well out of context. But I will say the trickling of minimal into other genres has in my mind muddied up a lot of music. Drum'n'Bass, a genre traditionally associated with breakneck beats, big basslines etc often sounds tepid and aimless (some exceptions, but I can't really remember anyone progressing from say, Body Rock which came out yonks ago now. Again, I'm no afficionado but I haven't heard anything that bombastic in dance for ages), it started with Roni Size's first album which whatever you say was a snooze-fest for people who wanted to listen to something trendy while driving their Mondeos through busy traffic and it's prevailed over the last ten years.

This is entirely subjective, like all opinions, but it's a trend I just don't get. Even pop music is more subtle these days. Where's the fucking Birdy Song? I mean, it's shit but it's an anthem in it's own way.

I'm just finding it hard to explain this while I'm at work.

Raises hand...

what "dance press" are you reading? i haven't seen that anywhere.

of course, drugs help, but then when ISN'T that the case in dance music?

Yes, it was unfair of me to call minimal "mincy" - I was being deliberately obtuse to emphasise a point. I would like to hear it in the correct context as often all I can imagine when listening to this is Nathan Barley types lounging around in impressive egg-shaped chairs, when obviously this genre has blown up in a big way and appeals to a lot more people than the poncy fashionistas I've been associating it with. I'm still just very confused as to how this would work on the dancefloor.

Crazy Frog?

but weren't you saying upthread that you didn't know much about minimal?! if you have only heard a small selection that really isn't enough to construct these sweeping genre theories around.

have just received an electronic mail, which i think should answer the thread title sufficiently:

music by Madonna collaborators and sympathisers, bargain bootlegs, old school jukebox favourites plus hott new tracks & ridiculous remixes

i hope to see you at it, henry

and now you sound like dom!

maybe if everyone accusing minimal house of being music-for-hipsters had actually danced at a london club in living memory (or indeed ever in dom's case) their arguments would maaaaybe hold a trickle of water

Unless they're 16 or so and haven't got round to backtracking yet.

But then again, why should they? It depends on the reasons why they don't like older house or techno perhaps.

In my experience it hasn't fallen away at all! What are Get Physical, Washing Up, Love Dose, Zdarlight, Trentemoller, Ivan Smagghe, half of Kitsune's output, Tiga etc etc if not electro-house?

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), August 9th, 2006.

haha.

(you'd have to specify clubs for this to work, mind. i'm not Mr Clubbing obviously but the clubs i have been to -- and not a millions miles from 93fte -- in the last few months have have beaucoup hipsters and pas de minimal, helas)

-- Konal Doddz (stevem7...), August 9th, 2006 4:28 PM. (blueski)

Got me. Then again I could raise you and say that Crazy Frog has no hook, it's just an annoying promotional novelty song. I'm not advocating the Birdy Song but everyone can whistle it whereas all I know the Crazy Frog song does is "DING DING DING DING" (bit like minimal house really - i joke, i joke). And didn't Crazy Frog's second track sample a very famous, very catchy tune from the 80s (Axel F)?

It's not. I like Autechre and mostly cos of the way the tiny nuances and sounds blend together to make a bigger picture. I love the Border Community stuff for that reason too. Neither of these would I really want to hear on the dancefloor though. In the future I'd like to see more tracks using the minimalist techniques of texture and detail within a bigger frame.

In my experience it hasn't fallen away at all! What are Get Physical, Washing Up, Love Dose, Zdarlight, Trentemoller, Ivan Smagghe, half of Kitsune's output, Tiga etc etc if not electro-house?

Oh yeh, I like this kind of stuff yeh. It's not that banging but at least something like Washing Up has a trace of a build up and hook.

yeah 93fe is not really one of those clubs where they play minimal, and anywhere on brick lane inevitably has hipsters. it's not so much the clubs as who various places have got in to dj, eg fabric on the 19th will be v minimal cos luciano's playing.

My experience of minimal nights is the crowd is not hipster at all. ordinary club crowds but maybe a bit more sloppy and ordinary looking. It's hardly the Justice contingent.

yeah, precisely my experience too.

I'm not advocating the Birdy Song but everyone can whistle it

i have never heard the birdy song!

(at this point i should hold my hands up and say that i don't really exactly know the official difference between minimal house and electrohouse) (AND NEITHER DO I CARE)

Get Physical: Somewhere between minimal and electrohouse.

"Washing Up": How old now?

"Zdarlight"/Kitsuné: Also quite old but also a lone star in the sky, Kitsuné is actually one of the few labels making 03 style electrohouse.

Ivan Smagghe: plays at stink, post fabric 23 is pretty much nailed his colours to the minimal mast I would say.

Tiga: One of the few electrohouse DJs, if he didn't use Ableton creatively he'd never find enough populist tunes to play.

Even if all of the above were electrohouse, it would be a paltry amount of people doing it in the LAST TWO YEARS! I think perhaps dance music, having emerged from its crisis of 2003, began to boom again, dipped its toe in the water of commercialism, and then ran back to shore.

So you know a big part of the reason for the popularity of minimal is that people go to the record store and THERE IS NOTHING ELSE GOOD TO BUY! Plus also it's great. Perhaps this is also a reason for the constant deflation from others, it has really taken over, if not in every club then certainly in other ways.

I actually am laughing now as I try to think of the last time I was in a club which played minimal, if there even is one that qualifies as this in Dublin. I haven't been out when I wasn't DJing myself for about 12 months, through illness. I am living proof you do not need to go to clubs to like this music!

As for wogan, I can't help but fear anything which is house music is "not banging".

x-post the minimal/electro thing is not that tricky is it? minimal is plip plop, electro is buzzsaw noises. end of!

Re: minimal taking over. Some clubbers love to be pummelled, and fair enough too. Minimal-y nights admittedly sometimes do not scratch that itch. Washing Up might bang but it doesn't pummel like hard house or hard techno... I've dragged a few hard dance peeps clubbers along to Luciano et al and they left early. It's not for everyone.

x-post kind of Good Dog, lots of old school Christian Smith techno and an occasional big gig with Magda or Richie Hawtin, minimal techno definitely not minimal house. Also it's often empty and our night is the same night.

can i come? i'll try not to ruin it for you.

i have never heard the birdy song!
you must have.

omg dog latin 'washing up' is TOTALLY banging
it's good fun, i like it, i've even played it out. i wouldn't call it banging in the way that say "Body Rock" or "Break & Enter" or "Identify The Beat" or "Tarantula" or anything (admittedly and by-default untrendy) is banging. I need the music to smack me in the face every so often and then woosh me around on a wave of sound. Washing Up is a very sparse arrangement. It doesn't make me want to jump up and down or move my limbs in a crazy way, but it will make me bop around a bit. It's very controlled. It is good though and I would dance to it if it came on, but I think most people (as in most people I know) would feel alienated by it, waiting for it to kick in PROPERLY.

Philip - Acid? I know what it is of course but I'm wondering what era and what tracks you mean as the only stuff I've heard recently is the stuff that was on a Soul Jazz retrospective (a bit old-fashioned for me) and the recent Aphex stuff which is more of an Acid derivative and not really representative.

Crisis, what crisis?! (really, were things that bad at that point?)

you need to come out raving with me and my rave crew and watch us jump up and down and completely lose our shit to 'washing up'

uh, thanks for that vital clarification...

i might have a go at this in mo but might be better to wait til tonight when i can look thru my 2003 folder at home.

can't we just start calling these genres Plip Plop and Buzzsaw - I prefer these terms and think I'd be more welcome to the genre.

2002-2003: ElectroClash & so-called Garage Rock revival. Williamsburg becomes overhyped.

2003-2004: Italo Disco, No Wave/Post Punk/art rock revival en masse. Some approach this with tokenism while being more into some new breed of Techno that people are now calling Electro. Some even try to pass this techno off as Disco (?!).

2004-2005: Straight White dudes discover (i.e. fetishize) gay black Paradise Garage while Grime (and its offshoots), Crunk, and Funk Carioca (mislabled Baile Funk) become fetishized by those not heavily into Disco. Thanks Diplo.

2005-2006: Those same White dudes formerly into paradise garage mix and make (i.e. edit old songs into endless intros) a whiter brand of Disco dubbed "beardo" while the rest of the world is wearing Crunk into the ground waiting for top 40 Hip-Hop to evolve another step it seems.

2006 sucks as bad as 1986, and 2002 was as fun as 1982.

I'm sure this is all wrong and just from my drunken NYC nightlife viewpoint.

(x-post 10x)

Any time dude. I'd love to. Oh yeh, btw what happened to you guys when we all went raving that one time for Gregg's leaving do?

Wasn't 2003 all about the discopunk thing? LCD Soundsystem and that? I only got into it properly after it had gone away.

Moloko - Forever More
Shakedown - Love Games
Bent - Magic love (Ashley Beedles black magic vocal mix)
Audio Bullys - The Snow
Justin Timberlake - Like I Love You (Basement Jaxx Acid Dub)
Dizzee Rascal - I Love U (4/4 mix)
Akufen - Deck The House (Herberts S#s Like This mix)
Data 80 - No More Lies (remix)
Grand Popo Football Club - Men Are Not Nice Guys
Lacquer - X
Jaimeson - True (original dub)
Ladytron - Blue Jeans (Winks Mixing Tool Interpretation)
Medicine 8 - Rock Music Pays Off
Tonetraeger - Welcome Back, Kotter
Saffron Hill - My Love is Always There
Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Princess Julia Punx Sound Check 2003)
Freeform Five - Perspex Sex
Pet Shop Boys - Time on My Hands
Darren Emerson (ft P Diddy & Kelis) - Lets Get Ill
Cassius (ft Ghostface Killa) - Thrilla
Crydajam - If You Give Me The Love IWant
Space Cowboy - Just Put Your Hand In Mine
Gus Gus - David (Medicine 8 mix)
Archigram - Doggystyle

Ronan - 2003 house = Ewan Pearson mixes, plus all that microhouse stuff you were deliberately not listening to? ;)

I think Ronan and I might hold slightly differing definitions of electrohouse anyway, mine is maybe in that hinterland between electro and minimal, rather than the big 2004-type anthems that have essentially disappeared. 2006 electrohouse (and 2005 to be fair) is more like a sleeker, more melodic and accessible version of techno. And yes, it's more minimal than Black Strobe etc.

I guess I like dance to engage me. If I'm on the dancefloor and I'm dancing but my mind is drifting, then it isn't engaging me. Other people would prefer to let their minds float away, concentrating on the feel and atmosphere being built up by a particular ambience and beat. Maybe I'm a fuddy-duddy in that I find "repetitive" beats a bit self indulgent, but after hearing the same tempo going all night I may as well be listening to anything or nothing. Even something as brutal as Gabba has sounded like a wash of ambient music at 4.30am in the past. And I remember the time I got bored of the IDM scene was when all these copycat kids came out making endless drill'n'bass wank exercises that had neither the melodic or conceptual element of Aphex and Autechre but still decided to plow down this route. I think I may be construed as very rockist but generally I need dance music to wack me in the face rather than flow through me I guess.

electroclash and rock meet in one forum months after they sat side by side. dfa rep'd the new sound of all the art rock revival hapening then to me.

hmm - i can't actually remember! marianna and i were, i believe, tired. shocking of us i know. next time we rave there will be no tired.

This is Rex the Dog really isn't it? I think his remixes for the Knife et al represent a brighter future for house and music in general rather than the long dark corridor of minimalism. for me at least.

I think my top tune that year was !!!-Me and Giuliani Down By The School Yard.

So OTM.

how are you defining what is important and/or memorable vs what is 'merely' good?

Alan Braxe & Fred Falke 'Rubicon'
Colder 'Crazy Love'
Ellen Allien 'Push'
Kraftwerk 'Chrono', 'Titanium'
The Rapture 'Sister Saviour (DFA mix)'
Richard X ft. Tiga 'You Better Let Me Love You'
Agoria 'Stereolove'
Chromeo 'Destination Overdrive (DFA mix)'
DJ Gregory 'Elle'
Fannypack 'Hey Mami'
Graffiti 'What Is The Problem'
Gus Gus 'David (Medicine 8 mix)'
Klonhertz 'Three Girl Rhumba'
The Juan Maclean 'Give Me Every Little Thing'
Justice vs Simian 'Never Be Alone'
The Knife 'Heartbeats (Rex The Dog mix)'
Kylie Minogue 'Slow (Chemical Brothers mix)'
Linus Loves 'The Terrace/Stand Back'
Madonna 'Hollywood (Thin White Duke mix)'
Man With Guitar 'Man With Guitar'
Max Sedgley 'Happy'
Moguai 'Get On (Legowelt mix)'
Saffron Hill 'My Love Is Always There'
The Silures 'Fishnets/21 Ghosts'
Spektrum 'Kinda New (Tiefschwarz mix)'
Tiga 'Hot In Herre'
Tiga vs Richard X 'Burnin' Down (original/TGV dub)'
Tonetraeger 'Welcome Back Kotter (Mayer/Thomas mix)'
Underdog Project vs Sunclub 'Summer Jam 03'
Zoot Woman 'It's Automatic (Paper Faces mix/Cosmos Acid dub)'

all good tracks from '03, several of them as important as anything else

so we should only ask questions like "Was Michael Anthony the drummer for Van Halen?"

Maybe I'm just jealous of their techno knowledge, I dunno. They seem to be having a good debate, but the issue is not with their debate, it is with the way it relates back to and consumes the original question.

'Scourage' implies that I'm going round ILM cleaning all the greasy surfaces, whereas in fact I prefer to keep my facial toiletries and my web-surfing separate.

Bit of a mess really, but there are some good posts in here regardless. About ten of them. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

especially since i do give a shit about electronic music, and yet, i did try to steer (fruitlessly) this convo in other areas...

and obv., my toungue was in cheek with loius, so it would be a stretch to say i was pissy.

but louis made a valid point - no one would cite that though, unless it was dan perry or something (I.L.LAME).

Now I'm pissy

b.) fandango otm

only on ilx, kids.

I'm guessing that the big minimal proponents on ILM were never real big fans of the real banging techno styles. I'm sad that they're pretty much gone though :( (although almost nobody has made a good record in those styles in a few years now)

I had good roffles at that post, too. Then I just figured he was Britishes.

For example:
http://www.discogs.com/release/204297 I own this CD and still give it a whirl occasionally, shakes the cobwebs off me on a slow morning.

Yeah, I bet that is the case for a majority of the population, hence the wide popularity of minimal techno amongst electronic music fans.

I remember the first time I went to a rave and there was a big room playing hard Millsian techno, and although I thought "yes I can understand how one would dance to this" the prospect of doing so was exhausting: it was just too relentlessly full on, my ears and my body couldn't identify any peaks and valleys to the music (which doesn't mean they weren't there - I just couldn't hear them).

Ths is RJG under a new username, aye? How exactly did I "destroy" about 50 posts of this thread, you fucking prick?

I haven't knowingly heard it, but I will definitely check it out.

Incidentally, where do you Techno/House guys find out about your stuff? Not just ILX surely?

I remember the first time I went to a rave and there was a big room playing hard Millsian techno, and although I thought "yes I can understand how one would dance to this" the prospect of doing so was exhausting: it was just too relentlessly full on, my ears and my body couldn't identify any peaks and valleys to the music (which doesn't mean they weren't there - I just couldn't hear them).

Yeh, often Mills is quite exhausting but I find the same thing with the majority of minimal techno is that the peaks and troughs remain the same. I am concerned that I may have the wrong conception of minimal dance. The stuff that was kindly recommended to me by Ronan and Philip on the Minimal House Bobbins thread is mostly in the style that I already know and really like (Ihre Person Gluckliche, What Else Is There etc) but I would see these as an extension of whatever Electroclash turned into rather than a new style. Minimal to me is the stuff Loco Dice plays out which really doesn't peak or trough, more just ride like a wave; lots of vocal murmurs (that often sound like the gibberings of a retard); plenty of plip plop etc. Like Akufen but with less going on or like The Sky Was Pink without any melodies. Have I got it all wrong?

So what is the sound of now as far as -
Metal
Indie/Alt
Psych/Noise
Urban (hate that word but it's effective for Reggaeton/Hiphop/R'n'B)
Pop

Anything else? Any new/resurrected styles coming through?

It's interesting that the mid-early 80s are more likely to be remembered for Renee and Renato than Gang Of Four, as far as telly goes. But you don't get people in music going on about how they were strongly influenced by Black Lace*. ITV audiences have a very different take on things to music fans and musicians and it's important not to get painted too far into either of these corners. As a self-proclaimed rockist I'm tempted to say that the "I Love 19--" is mere social commentary rather than anything aesthetic but I fear ILX's dissent.

*although that would be great - I want to start a thread about the lack of silly tunes in the charts e.g. Agadoo, Mouldy Old Dough, Popcorn etc that aren't tied into a big marketing campaign like with Tweenies/Power Rangers/Mr Blobby/Crazy Frog.

super-generic scott storch productions, formulaic polished-to-a-shine eastern strings, flutes and so on, done by people like 50 cent and pussycat dolls and chris brown. i love it.

But you don't get people in music going on about how they were strongly influenced by Black Lace

You do if you ask the right people. Just cos what you're listening to isn't claiming to be influenced by whatever, doens't mean that whatever's massive now isn't.

Just because it sells by the gobful doesn't mean it's going to define an era. Neither do novelty songs generally.

This just proves the frivalousness of the question further. Who DOES decide what defines the era? Narrow-minded rock critics with one foot constantly in the past i.e. when they were young and 'music still meant somthing'? Or do you measure it by whatever 'underground' movements spring up? None of the above seem satisfactory.

i have never knowingly heard renee and renato.

20 years ago... hell, 6 years ago, you'd say that the WHO is about 100 people in London who control the media. These days its... there's been a diaspora in some ways, a decentralisation of the written history, or it feels like there has been. And consensus has drifted because of that, possibly due to different places trying to secure more thoroughly target demographics, rather than go for mass appeal - i.e. NME's massive narrowing in scope of coverage.

Living in 60s London was, I would wager, absolutely FUCK ALL like our perceived cultural understanding of "Swinging London", exactly the same goes for mid-90s wherever and now mid-00s wherever, it's just that, in the past (and this may be erroneous, after-the-effectism) we seem to have been better at picking out the thing that would be remembered, because of the centralisation. History isn't written by the winners, but won by the writers, because everyone else forgets. And the writers now are all blogging to onyl half a dozen people each.

link letters to numbers for a cash prize.

a) southall
b) geir
c) ronan
d) dj martian
e) the lex

1) indie
2) minimal
3) compression
4) nme
5) melody

I think there's a different kind of synth noise that's popular mid-2000s - I realistically know zero here, so am ripe for correction, but there's this sound I mentally describe as digital-organic (bcz i am 1x pretentious). When I listen to 1994-era dance the synth sounds are somehow more analogue and more mechanical - they're bell-like, rounded, complete, but have the human-error analogue feel to them. The sound you get in e.g. booka shade, the new madonna single, is more like there's something living and moving and spongiform inside the note. It's, I dunno, the difference between a glockenspiel and a marimba? the difference between the mechanical turk and an android? okay i sound like a crazy person never miiiind.

nb i think the sound of the late eighties into early nineties is 'the guitar sound on the soundtrack of three men and a baby'.

Lex you hurt me in my hart.

no money though, i was kidding.

it's interesting because the metamorphosis into this becoming default-commercial-urban-sound was so sleek: timbaland experimenting with indian strings => EVERYONE using them, and then smoothing them out so much that the synthesised eastern feel on 'buttonz' or 'just a lil bit' is a different sound entirely.

'get ur freak on' => 'addictive' => 'buttonz'

a) dom
b) enrique
c) doglatin
d) grout
e) jess

1) any dance music not cooked up by american ghetto kids
2) fuck you, idiot
3) emo
4) not really into music
5) "pete doherty for celebrity big brother?"

This is otm, for sure, loads of GPM releases and lots of other good stuff, but the point stands that no one sound was really kicking off that year, if there's no scene to support that stuff it still makes for a bad year. Also I still reckon you have more good German records this year or last year, when it's really been huge.

I think Steve's list, while there is some good stuff, also has alot of scraping the barrel, 90 percent of those tunes would be just good backup in a genuinely strong year like 2004 or 2005. There should be about 200 tunes like GusGus-David in a really strong year, and about 20 or 30 like "Kinda New (Tiefschwarz Dub)" which is 2003 by about 2 weeks, and definitely more an 04 record except in name. That's the only genuine anthem on the entire list.

That's the only genuine anthem on the entire list.

The only genuine anthem at the time? Rubbish (and I can remember how much you raved about half the stuff on that list at the time - obv. it's fine to get bored of it all a few years later tho). The only genuine anthem now? Maybe, among producers and DJs you favour. But there's this whole other bunch of people who think of the 'Heartbeats' remix as more of an anthem (even now) than 'Kinda New'.

So no consensus on anthems from 03 and how they hold up now as well as no consensus on 'the sound of now' shockah?

There is TOTALLY minimalism in indie/rock. It's endemic. Less so in terms of sonics, which are kind of maximalist, but in terms of number of chords used, formulaic structure, fear of appearing self-indulgent or prog or whatever. The Strokes are very minimalist compared to Led Zeppelin or even Blur.

Early 00s = First Third of Decade 3 years 4 months - upto 2003 April 30th

Mid 00s [another 3 years 4 months] = ends 6 years 8 months into decade - 2006 August 31st

therefore mid 00s - may 1st 2003 - August 31st 2006
[the buzz of early may 2003 was M83]

Late 00s - [another 3 years 4 months] 2006 September till End of Decade

...at the end of the decade will Ned do a decade summary ? i.e can we expect The Top 136 Or So Albums Of The 00s

q: do people culturally think of decades split into 3 sections?

yes. but... this is so difft a kind of minimalism that i don't think 'minimalism' can be called a sound, and in this case even an 'approach'.

the relation between 'minimal' and 'formulaic structures' is interesting -- a lot of Actual MinimalismTM-type stuff is all about formulas.

but then so is 'classic songwriting', in a different sense.

I usually do yes although I try and resist coming out with things like 'the mid 90s sucked' or whatever as I remember good stuff from any period. Having said that, I do tend to think of the period from late '99 to late '01 as a bit of a lull but again it's tied to personal life so much rather than involvement in a scene or judgements based on what other people (in the press or on blogs or whatever) are saying.

But the others, some of which are good, I still think, are not big records, many of those would just be a (good) drop in the ocean most years. I remember enjoying plenty of them but if that's supposedly the top 20 then I maintain that proves my point.

I mean seriously if you don't believe 2004 was better then make a 2002 list, I mean to have to cite "Crazy Love" and stuff, 2003 was just a big long wait for something to happen, and of course at the time I enjoyed it, there was still good music, but after 2004 and 2005 I thought it was recieved wisdom that 2003 was an awful year for dance music.

Also it's not about difference of consumption, people overstate these things, I don't believe that if Steve made a genuine list of his favourite tunes from 2002 he would rate 2003 higher, or even if he did the same for 2004.

I actually think this is assumed to be me critiquing whatever music Steve likes, the pre-minimal sound, when actually what I'm saying is, that sound was great, but 2003 just wasn't a great year for it. I mean is anyone seriously arguing that that list above contains more than one or two tracks in the same league as......

Felix Da Housecat-Silver Screen Shower Scene (LRD Remix)
Cosmos-Take Me With You
Bangalter/Falcon-So Much Love To Give
Josh One-Contemplation (King Britte Mix)
Agoria-La Onzieme Marche (Rollercoaster Mix) (Stereolove just a weak version 2 of this)
Underground Resistance-Transition
Legowelt-Disco Rout
Archigram-Carnival
Shakedown-At Night

Etc etc etc, come off it FFS! I'm telling you, I won't be denied here, 2003 WAS THE WORST YEAR FOR DANCE MUSIC OUT OF THE LAST 5.

This is an interesting thing for me because three years ago we didn't seem quite so distant/different in this respect! But this is personal stuff we needn't go into (not to make it sound like it's big bad beef or anything!).

serious q.

i guess mandy's body language vol 1 mix would be as good as any?

x-post yeah I think body language volume 1 is a good bet.

its called 'friseusen-elektro' (hairdresser electro) in germany! maybe we shd do a s/d thread

Must this be the soundtrack to every lairy TV moment EVER EVER EVER?

OTM. This backs up my theory that 00 is the decade of restraint. It could even be argued that bands like Radiohead who are supposedly taking things to another level displayed more restraint on Kid A than they did on OK Computer. I don't know what the cause for the trend is (post-millenium release? MP3 formats? Disgust at what has come before?) though, but I've been noticing it more and more in many kinds of music.

There is no longer a call for bombast and grandiosity in pop music at the moment. We no longer have sprawling, epic albums like White Album or Mellon Collie or Giant Steps and we don't have a lot of commercial guitar-pop bands doing things like Parklife where a lot of instruments were used over a wide pallette. The trend in rock and pop is to be stripped down and so we have the Strokes, White Stripes, Jose Gonzales etc. Even the Grunge movement displayed a keener lean towards pomp and circumstance, take Vitalogy for instance.

And looking at the way commercial Urban music (a genre I'm no expert in but have noticed has done this) has changed, I remember "Get Your Freak On" sounding really weird when it came out because it was very basic and yet kept things interesting in a different way from the melodiousness of say, "Gangsta's Paradise". Then we've got "Milkshake" and "Holla Back Girl" and stuff which both took their queues from this rawness.

This has much to do with the relative ease of automating nearly every parameter of a synthesised sound these days.

So whereas in 1994 you may have a sequencer and synth churning out a few notes and with these notes a producer might play with, say, just the filter.

These days you can have complete control over every aspect of a syntheised sound. You can also have everything synced to the tempo of the song. So now we're at a stage where the synthesised sounds themselves, and what constitutes them, have really become as important as the notes coming out of the synths themselves. Its kindo f like a virtual orchestra, with wavetables, envelopes, filters and effects replacing instruments.

What I think is interesting about a lot of the music that gets called minimal these days, is that the producers making this sort of music seem to be informing a lot of pop music. The shuffle beat gets exploited, suddenly we hear it on the radio. Wasn't it rachel stevens or someone that used that kind of beat once?

In the same way that perhaps the underground rock music scenes have informed commercial rock. Or whatever. I don't really know enough about that side of music.

1) any dance music not cooked up by american ghetto kids
2) fuck you, idiot
3) emo
4) not really into music
5) "pete doherty for celebrity big brother?"

a) 5
b) 4
c) 3
d) 2
e) 1

err... whattage? I just can't recall a big psych record coming out this year whereas last year there seemed to be a new one every week. That might be a slightly rose-tinted view of things because I think I might have been discovering all these bands and quickly obtaining their back catalogues.

Plus I think the 00s will also be music by new acts rather than being nostalgic about the music of their youths, creating a whole new market for acts aimed at a somewhat older market, such as Coldplay, Travis, Keane, Norah Jones, Katie Melua and Dido.

But we've always had Adult-Oriented Pop, perhaps even more so in the 80s with Phil Collins, Chris De Burgh, Sting etc. I think there might have been a short period prehaps around the latter half of the 90s where I can't really recall much music that wasn't aimed at the under-18s being in the charts.

Look, can we just lock the thread and be done?

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/Dougq8/wm4match1.jpg

yes, and still spawning Indie-Dance & "Haircut House!"

Microhouse, Minimal and ...

NOOOO :X I dunno, perhaps my grasp on the history (and timeline of!) is shaky but isn't it more like two different. concurrent movements ((Minimal)Techno, (Electro)House) edging closer & closer together in their aims until it's become near-impossible to say how & where you can audibly divide them anymore? I mean can you really draw a line that leads from "Kittin and Thee Glitz" straight to "Immer"???

(many) xposts - I like banging techno.

I started this three years ago, but was thinking more of Sparks, TBMG, KLF rather than 'Birdie Song '06'.

I like the idea of a "why no silly songs on the charts anymore" thread...

You start it, for I fear pwnage after having sullied my good name with this one.

The sound of now, as we have firmly established on that other thread, is the Alarm (apropos "silly songs").

The Automatic, innit?

Yeh, I think you might be right. I may be biased in saying it was the IDM scene imploding on itself and then spawning genres like Clickhouse which led to Microhouse and stuff. A lot of early Electroclash I think was associated with IDM too (stuff like Adult. and I-F) I may be completely stilted in my view. But you are right, the two genres grew together and fed off each other til they may as well have been the same thing.

Hahaha, no. RJG != me. You "destroyed" them with your annoying crusade that almost no one cares about.

http://www.rearview.ca/myspaceplayer.jpg

* is a removable post which will use any padlock.

* will deter 20 tonne vehicles.

* will resist being pulled out or down by angle grinders.

* is easily fixed when damaged severely by abuse without needing to fit a new base - you just replace the top.

* is constantly marketable.

* is being used successfully NOW.

http://www.nobbler.org/

The removable post...with a difference

this is an excellent and well-argued thread with many thought-provoking ideas

then you've made an appropriate contribution

There is still really not typical sound of the noughties though. The 00s, more than any other decade, was the decade where people could - regardless of what is in the charts - just "shop" around on the Net and find whatever they like the most. Surely there are still dominating musical trends in the charts, but those are being ignored by a larger portion of the population than the chart hits of the 60s, 70s or even 80s were. Back then, the gaps were between the generations, but now you will not even find an act or a genre able to unite the youth generation. Yes, R&B has dominated at least the Billboard singles lists, but on the other hand, R&B acts hardly sell albums at all. And a larger number than ever of teenage kids prefer to buy (or download) old records by Iron Maiden or AC/DC rather than listen to the stuff in the singles list.

Another trend, that still doesn't have much to do with the "sound of now" is how a reissue of a classic album may actually manage to get into the album lists in very high positions. Examples of this from recent years are Traveling Wilburys and Michael Jackson, plus Dennis Wilson achieved considerably more chart success with his solo album than he ever did upon its original release.

In fact, it could be said that the real sound of the noughties is the mashed together, flat, undynamic and sometimes clipping sound that you get when a record is compressed way too heavy. But this goes for all kinds of genres.

Good fun here.

i don't have access to many clubs and the area i live in is so suburban that funky house is considered really trendy.

― wogan lenin (dog latin), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 11:15 (2 years ago)

How times change.

Low-fi C86-revivalist reverb-drenched psych-pop feels quite "sound of now", but I could be following a false trail.

I've penciled in the term 'landfill electro' for early 2010.

grime and dubstep. and, to a lesser extent, crunk.
― Jay-Kid (Jay-Kid), Wednesday, August 9, 2006 3:48 AM Bookmark

lol Britishes

lol @ "removable post"

a = fingerbangin