Electroclash - Efficacious or just plain Egotistical?

alas, Electroclash has taken off. Any comments?

Well, I suppose that it didn't happen until after the scene had faded into mediocrity. But nonetheless, I'm glad the Sisters are with us.

"electroklash just made it easy for hipsters to admit liking the 80s"

Here's some random mutterings about electroclash circa 01/02:

It never rang true to me why the media seemed to get this genre so bloody wrong all the time. I remember hacks foreseeing the death of electroclash the moment they acknowledged it's presence. The "it'll be over by Christmas, it's just a bunch of fags in lycra being pretentious" slant on things just seemed so very myopic that sometimes I had to question why these reviewers even had jobs.

This was one of the only times this decade I'd actually thought the pop charts were doing something interesting. There were some really great tracks coming out that were genuinely exciting with good beats and melodies. Most of these were greeted with snub-nosed snarkasm by the music press who couldn't seem to see past the spandex veneer.

Admittedly, a lot of it was very faddy and in-your-face but this was the brunt that kept it moving and sandpapered everything else into shape. This trickle-down effect made what was supposed to be, according to Mixmag, Jockey Slut et al, a 3 month bout of nostalgic silliness into a highly important development in dance and pop.

As pointed out earlier on in the thread, so much music being released at the moment has electroclash buried into it. Everyone from Legowelt to Girls Aloud have electroclash to thank for their sound.

What always struck me as strange is that all these acts doing the electroclash thing used the euro-camp schtick as their main reference point. I think this might have been why so many people were turned off by the initial wave (I must admit I always found Ms Kittin and Peaches rather embarassing, no matter how good the music sounded). Why did no-one get to grips with the tougher, more dance-based electro (the only ones I can think who did this were Keith Tenniswood and Michael Forshaw and perhaps a few others). Instead electroclash became a kind of Glam Rock with keyboards and I found that some of the original essence of 80s electro was missing.

I would also have liked to see people being influenced by hiphop based electro like Afrika Bambaataa, Man Parrish and Mantronix rather than the more teutonesque Kraftwerk and Cybotron. Why is this?

I think though that the reason the teutonic stuff struck such a chord is because the late 90s had been dominated by self-consciously "funky" dance music and people were looking for a change. Trance was a fashion disaster area and very old hat, so electroclash slotted in very nicely as a deliberately anti-funk sound. Hip-hop electro had no place in electroclash, one of the many reasons why the name electroclash is so spectacularly misinformative.

What bugs me about right now is that everything seems to be attempting to be pretentious, like why couldn't Felix make a record without James Murphy popping up and going "ah ah eh eh ah aha ah eh eh uh ah uh uh ah ah uh ah uh" for 6 minutes. No offence, I love LCD Soundsystem but the sense of everything being stuck together in dance is a little palpable.

Similarly, Black Strobe, Ewan Pearson, DFA, and the sheer glut of middlebrow electro-house tracks (some better than others I guess). There's certainly an over-abundance of the attitude which says "lets get a faintly pretentious vocal" onto this record. Ironically this trend which in my opinion bolstered and strengthened dance at a time when the "dance is dead" articles were really being wheeled out, now threatens it somewhat, makes it appear almost insecure.

I think there's alot of great stuff going on as a result of electro-clash, and yet at the same time I'd like less nuance, less self consciousness even? You listen to old dance tracks (be they from 02 or 88) and they sound blatantly functionalist and like they almost have a disregard for anything other than getting people moving in clubs. And that's not to say they're stupid.

Of course these sort of tracks are still being made but I'm not sure that the decline in popularity which dance has experienced isn't something to do with it becoming head music and not solely body music.

There's certainly an abundance of "character" around at the moment, and where this used to be a sort of over-ground phenomenon, like with your Chemical Brothers/etc/etc, has now become more underground, the trend for big remixers like Jacques or Ewan. I'm not sure this evolution is a good thing though.

Actually I made a kindof piss take track the other day called "Efficient Beat" where everything is on the on-beat but with a robot voice and an electro melody. I was quite pleased with it anyway.

Similarly, Black Strobe, Ewan Pearson, DFA, and the sheer glut of middlebrow electro-house tracks (some better than others I guess). There's certainly an over-abundance of the attitude which says "lets get a faintly pretentious vocal" onto this record. Ironically this trend which in my opinion bolstered and strengthened dance at a time when the "dance is dead" articles were really being wheeled out, now threatens it somewhat, makes it appear almost insecure.

Couldn't agree more. That lcd track where the guy just talks deadpan about music geekery is good fun and all, but i wouldn't want to hear it in a club or even have any of my friends hear it. The recent Fabric disc by Swayzak was great but also full of stuff like this. It just seems so purposefully restrained and London-ite, like it's afraid of making a big statement or if they made a big noise then the hacks would be released and then their artistic cred would vanish. It's pretty sad to be honest.

I mean techno seems to have assimilated electroclash quite well. I just think house is in something of a quandary.

Coming to dance quite late on after listening to Warp records for years, one would think all this arty microhouse and glitchcore and discopunk would really appeal to me but something about it really bugs me. whereas IDM was always quite unfashionable (nay, never TRIED to be fashionable), this stuff sounds like it's trying far too hard. It's the aural equivalent of a desperate fashion victim or even the snarky journalists who slagged off the scene in the first place.

There's something great about being able to like M Mayer's cover of Love Is Stronger Than Pride and hear it in the same mix as a faceless deep tech-house record. I mean I think if anything microhouse (or if it's not micro anymore perhaps we need a new name) is reviving that exciting sense that house music can devour a huge amount of stuff, albeit in a deeper way than populist DJ sets at their best (Felix, Jacques, Falcon, etc etc) That vocals can fit into house, and cover versions, and rock type riffs.

I mean the same things which make house a sort of problem for some people are what make it so great in a way, the sense that it is never ending. I think micro-house really does stand out as the natural continuation of everything house is about, and I say that as someone who got on board a little late since I only have access to lots of it in the last few months, but I think it's a true statement nonetheless.

Maybe this is all beside the point, but what I'm saying is that I attribute this reservedness that is popular amongst the higher echelons of dance to this inner-city attitude of "if I'm having fun, I don't want to know; if there's a hook, I ain't listening; if it isn't referencing Juan Atkins/Gang of Four/Thomas Dolby, then it's not cool enough". I am generalising here and I don't want to slag off Londoners per se.

Would anyone agree with this or am I utterly wrong?

It comes down to being spoiled for choice I suppose, and more discerning maybe, in a way. If it was in Dublin the chances are a DJ of Carter's stature wouldn't be here again for 6 months.

If people started making microtechno or microdnb for instance, and ten mixing that stuff in with electrotech or dnb with electro stylings, I think i'd find that a bit more suited to me. It wouldn't be a massive jump either. The first electroclash stuff, (if you can call it that in this case) that I remember hearing was the Two Lone Swordsmen's "Tiny Reminders" which was very eye-opening to me. It contains very few house elements to it. I think "Emerge" by Fischerspooner had more of a techno thing (maybe even a hardcore slant) than anything to do with house.

Maybe Monstertruckdriver to a lesser extent and perhaps Baby's On Fire. I mean yeah I can see the similarity in terms of there being an image and a coolness and this whole profile business, but in terms of the actual music I don't think there's a crossover. Kompakt has an extremely purist approach to DJing, if you ask me, which doesn't mean there aren't elements of eclecticism, I just think that the art of the mix and the sense of dance 12s as functionalist and made for DJing is most alive in Sami Koivikko's or Michael Mayer's or Superpitcher's sets.

As much as the idea and the marketing may appeal to Trash and Nag Nag Nag the music hasn't quite permeated that scene I don't think. And I don't think it will as long as it remains the way it is.

I mean, for me, being cool doesn't cross them into that area, I guess, because behind it they're still doing things in quite a strict way. Hell they play so many of their own records even, or their labelmates!

To be honest I think it's a welcome synthesis, the image and the coolness aswell as an almost old fashioned approach to making new music.

Coming from the sticks, I often find it very hard to explain these feelings to people who come from a London background. I once told a friend from London who is very clued-in on his stuff that I was working on a few mashups. His response: "Oh, isn't that a bit old-hat now?". This was about 2001 and I felt as though this attitude was quite typical of someone from the inner city. Sure, mashups were pretty big about then and that scene was dying, but for goodness sake they were (and still are in some ways) quite good fun - fuck what The Face says about it.

whereas kompakt too...i don't think they're trying to be commercial. and in fact a large part of their output seems to be very "faceless" still, very tracky. (just think of all that "neo-trance" stuff...if they really do succeed in making hipsters interested in trance, it will be the ultimate dance coup of the decade, i think.) but here you have a bunch of guys who basically spent a better part of the 90s making the blueprint for euro minimal techno and they're just bored now. (i mean, you hear mayer talk about it all the time in interviews.) so they started incorporating all the stuff from the 80s and 70s they loved (glam, pet shop boys, madonna...oddly enough all the stuff electroclash seems to disdain as too "obvious".) so there's been this odd bit of crossover where you could slot something like m. mayer's "amanda" into an electroclash set (even though it's a lot more dewy), even though you probably couldnt do the same for their earliest 12s (dettingers "puma" for instance.)

maybe the real difference between kompakt and electroclash is that germans, while they can be guarded and camp and funny, don't really do kitsch or irony.

It reminds me of a free party I went to a few months back where they played nothing but 4/4 techno all night. Nothing wrong with that, but this stuff was literally a bass drum echoing around the room non-stop for twelve hours. No melodies, the odd wooshing noise but there was absolutely nothing to get excited about. Oddly the London crowd were lapping it right up but by the end I did feel like there was some kind of practical joke being played.

Also - what good is a genre if the people listening to it and playing it are doing it simply out of irony rather than a genuine passion for what they do? I can understand one song or one band doing this - but a whole genre? For Pete's sake!

but of course it is. it's just that the people doing it are being very short-sighted. If the same thing had happened with, say Jungle in the ealry/mid 90s and people had just given up when they ran out of ragga samples to pilfer, we wouldn't have any D'n'B we have today. Electro mustn't die - it was just getting interesting - all it needs is an injection but instead artists are working in ever decreasing circles doing the same old beats and melodies, as if they're too afraid to try something new.

dl: fair enough...i mean i'm not saying i WANT electroclash to continue it's (let's face it) white washed stranglehold on current club music. but i think that doing anything "new" with it (especially inserting hip-hop ideas) would mean having to rebrand it totally, since i have a feeling (honest or not) that a lot of the (original) electroclash audience were hipsters turned off by the "blackness" of a lot of dance music.

(there's also the notion that "hip-hop flavored electro" is just dnb, garage, etc.)

haha xpost: but dnb DID get boring in the mid-90s.

drgs?

Brecht-Weill, Kraftwerk, Felix Kubin, Stereo Total, Der Plan, just about the whole Bungalow Records roster... irony was more or less invented here, and kitsch is a German word!

(Electroclash robot voice): Untenable thesis. Try again, earthling!

Dave: Yiddish Jewish culture is a part of German culture, whatever Hitler may have felt on the issue.

http://www.simonbookish.com/page2.html

http://www.nordic.mtve.com/shows/thisisit/start.asp

Donna Summer, Animal Collective, Clouddead... they all use the word 'folk' at some point in their self-descriptions, even if it's alongside 'hip hop' or some other genre.

oh it would have to be. they'd have had no chins left if it wasn't for that.

There was a time when I firmly believed in electroclash as a rallying cry of sorts, pretentiousness in dance as a fuck you to all the "dance is dead" hacks. As I said above I don't think this is the case anymore, and now it seems symptomatic of a lingering insecurity, but the fact is electroclash did have a certain importance.

And of course I live in Dublin, not London.

think the main reson this won't happen is that electro just isn't interesting or fun enough to have real mass appeal

See I don't think this is borne out by the facts/figures, electro DID permeate pop music and it did have as big an appeal as just about anything else in electronic music for what? 4 years or so? Since French house or UK Garage?

I want something NEW

Are we going to see anything new anytime soon?

If anything, the residue of electroclash is more difficult to believe in as a scene. While I really like Ewan Pearson or Black Strobe or Jacques Lu Cont or Tiefschwarz almost all of them are too nuanced and too much in character to ever be part of a movement or to ever make you really get behind all of them at once.

Initially when electroclash began getting column inches even those criticising it sounded like outsiders criticising dance music, "faceless eurotrash vox", "arpeggiated basslines", "bad haircuts", "over by christmas", "monotone pretentious vocals".

It WAS a movement, and it was faceless and all those things because at the same time people all over the world were doing their own spin on the same idea, rapidly, and firing them out. There was a glut of stuff to listen to because they were trying to beat each other.

Perhaps this is an oversight on my part, or I wasn't listening to the right stuff, but it certainly felt like its own scene at the time.

it was in fact WHY a lot of people were writing dance is dead pieces - dance music can't exist on its own, needs rock to make itself interesting again.

i am working on in - probably a ground-up populist movement involving dancehall, yiddish klezmer bands and acid sounds if my recent listening is anything to go by.

Your jobsworth gigging curcuit is full of what a lot of people call electroclash bands. The absolute musts are the eighties clothes, 909 beats (NO drummer), an equal portion of girls to guys, and songs about sex. It's very much Fischerspooner with the emo element replaced by the New York Dolls. I'm not hearing a lot if any innovation in these bands, the emphasis seems to be on gleaming the best of a style (in this case Duran Duran pop pre-SAW eighties) and approaching it from a punk DIY perspective. I think a lot of what it boils down to is that a lot of the technology at the time was too expensive for your students-with-3-chords-and-something-to-say. And unlike the 90's when everyone needed a 303, everyone's got one now. Music software and the enduring popularity of Roland and Yamaha's little boxes mean that electro is now affordable and not just for yer big studios and rich boys.

It's thriving in Manchester at the moment, for a number of reasons. A
I think a lot of why it's so popular in Manchester in particular is that for the last 10 years as these kids have been growing up in the shadow of Oasis, Starsailor et al. There's very much a rebellion against the guitar-as-REAL-music.

On top of that there's a big schism between the money'ed indies and those clawing underneath as your money'ed "indie" labels have financial deals with majors and as a result are under pressure to recoup rather than innovate. There's very conservative A&R policies at play (ok, yes, all labels are dependant on what demos come through the door, but still), we're getting nu-MOR singer-songwriters and Keane-a-likes signed with more readiness and developed with more intensity than some of the more interesting music that's around (cf. them all missing out on Performance who are definitely the "most-likely-to" but were well outside the A&R frame of reference which states that only Badly Drawn Boy or Mint Royale clones are where it's at, due to those two being the main "successes" of Manchester in the last few years).

Below these lumbering beasts of labels you've got plenty more young upstarts who are working together, putting on great club nights, going to each other gigs . . . . yes, kids, we have a "scene" (ugh). Electroclash seems to be a words used a lot around it, but its a hell of a lot more complex and diverse than that. For every Megarider or Motormark you've got Rockport'ed lads making ambient soundscapes (Roar of the Guns), Bomb the Bass / J-pop crossover (Shirokuma), 10 man art collectives (The Hi-fi Renaissance), Cocteau Twins and Bob Mould filtered through Warp (erm, Lynskey) and loads and loads and loads of others. Electroclash is the label thrown at it all very frequently, I suppose in the lack of any other neat term.

In fact, that's why I think the word Electroclash still has legs, at least from a journalistic perspective. Electroclash never really had too great a focus, no two world- or even UK-conquering bands to tie everyone else together with. And the stylistic elements of it, your 909 drums, your girls on Electribes, your grungeglam fashion is more down to the fact that these are readily accesible to students/gradutes/working class kids. And where intelligent people will be making music where they are looking to give themselves some sort of identity, they will keep on being used as none of it is in any danger of penetrating even the local indies-with-money, never mind the NME.

In some ways I embrace this as it'll be going back to the dance of the early 90s where fashion isn't really an option and practicality/drgs/having it are back but not in an Ibiza/townie way more in a hippie/raver way, which might be fun.

*the entirety of ILM winces*

Of course, the proof of the pudding... etc..

i was more wincing at this, to be honest.

sorry, why?

so momus, you are argung that kitsch is a german word because the Yiddish language is spoken in germany?

Yiddish incorporates German. Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and German, developed in Germany.

/Parenthesis

On the one hand it's influenced virtually every house record out there. On the other hand at the diy lo-fi end of the scene all the punks have traded in their basses and drums for boxes, as Lynskey references in Manchester. And it's not confined to Manchester - it stretches all the way to acts like Zircon Gov Pawn Stars here in singapore, or Futon in Bangkok or any number of similar acts globally.

I can't think of many club scenes in recent years that have had such a quick and comprehensive effect on rock and dance simultaneously...

The danger is the record label/club night overshadows the bands but to be honest if you want people at your gigs then you can't run it on the strength of bands alone (unless already very popular).

Best to integrate them into an regular there every 2nd Friday of the month night club night which gets a name on it's own, some people turn up for the dancing and social scene and some show up for the bands, both sets have a good night.

The choice of venue is very important you need a good balance between a club feel and a gig feel, to big and prominent a stage and it feels like an all out gig, too small and pokey a stage and you piss of the bands.

Completely agree Dave - this was kind of my point at the top of the thread.

Electroclash was the fashion/rock press name for a part of a scene they thought they could push. Lynskey makes a few good points as well - with Manchester, I guess Club Suicide is the one of the names in question. The name Electroclash attracts a certain sort of person, and is one I would personally avoid like the plague, mainly because it disuades many for exactly the same reason.

If I have to think what was Electroclash, I get Peaches, Fischerspooner, Tiga and....er....that's about all I can generate. It is more a front-person based subset of the electro genre - something you can sell to the indie kids.

There was the superficial and aesthethic influence coming from "electro" as in the electro-funk revival started in Detroit, Germany and England around 95, but it was more influenced by the electro into italo revival epitomized by I-F's Space Invaders are Smoking Grass in the late 80s and his Mixed Up at the Hague mix from 2000.

Sorry, what I'm trying to get at is electroclash as a distinctly seperate thing from the electro revival, perhaps.

I'll go with this! The Faint are a prime example. Depressing. Not necessarily the Italo influence, more the dredging through the Vince Clarke history an seeing what catches.

dopplereffekt - pornoviewer
the juan maclean - you cant have it both ways
w.i.t - ooh i like it
golden boy & miss kittin - rippin kittin
avenue d - do i look like a slut?
swayzak - i dance alone
westbam - oldschool baby
justus kohncke ~ ich versteck mich vor der wirklichkeit
legowelt ~ disco rout
dopplereffekt - pornoactress

Goldenboy & Miss Kittin: Rippin Kittin
Fischerspooner: Emerge
Adult.: Hand to Phone
I-F: Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass
Tiga & Zyntherius: Sunglasses at Night

and for some reason I'd like to stick Layo and Bushwacka's "Love Story" on there even if it isn't electroclash because it seemed to sit nicely at the time.

This pisses me off because a) it's probably why Twisted Nerve have become so frustrating
b) Joe from Performance was on my History course and one of a rare handful of Manchester Uni alumni from my year I think deserves to get somewhere with what he loves.

My electroclash top 10 forthcoming after work.

A couple more great ones:

-Bangkok impact "Junge Dame mit freundlicher Telefonstimme"

-Ural 13 Diktators "Name of the game" (this one also has a brilliant video by the same guys who did the video for "Disco rout")

-Sven Väth "Design music" (Legowelt remix)

I think "Emerge" is amazing myself, though I know alot of people who do think it's utter shit, like Dave, I think it's quite polarising.

"Hand To Phone" was also very good, and "Silver Screen Shower Scene" naturally.

Hey Rudolf have you heard the Legowelt mix of Junge Dame mit freundlicher Telefonstimme?

Ladytron - "Playgirl"
Peaches - "Fuck the pain away"
Miss Kittin & The Hacker - "Frank Sinatra"
Adult. - "Nausea (Restructured)"
Felix Da Housecat - "Madame Hollywood"
Toktok vs Soffy O - "Missy Queen's gonna die"
Chicks On Speed - "Kaltes Klares Wasser"
Vitalic - "La Rock 01"
Le Tigre - "Deceptacon" (both versions)
Dot Allison - "Substance (Felix Da Housecat Remix)"
The Faint - "Worked up so sexual"

Add the aformentioned Fischerspooner, Golden Boy, Swayzak, and Legowelt songs and that pretty much sums it up for me.

soviet - "marbleyzed"
bis - "love will tear us apart"
felix da housecat - "happy hour"
chicks on speed - "turn of the century"
stereo total - "l'amour de trois"
ladytron - "jet age"
kylie - "can't get you out of my head"
peaches - "fuck the pain away"

oh, and just a few months ago there was an "electroclash" fashion spread in Teen Vogue... featuring like diagonal striped off-the-shoulder dresses and etc.

Mount Sims - "Escape Hatch"

I know very, very little about electroclash, however, is Le Tigre electroclash? They just sound like ironic indie rock (which isn't to say I don't like them.)

no, not really.. but they played it every week at berliniamsburg

^ is this electroclash?

"that ewan remix is surely THE DEATH OF ELECTROCLASH, as in the ultimate moment where it basically became clear it had won."

Ha ha yes. Also it's hard to imagine a tune after it that might push the (sonic, not stylistic) aesthetic further. I mean Vitalic is harder and more punishing obv but in a much more technoid way.

Is that place still around?

While lists are fine and good, for easy coverage just see American Gigolo and then Futurism (which didn't see much love on ILM, but the pink comp. is the absolutely essential, definitive Electroclash CD).

And there was definitely two lines to the original 'scene' - the awesome tracky, druggy stuff on those records. And then, a bunch of bands that got swept up in the moment - W.I.T, Soviet, Le Tigre, Ladytron, etc. - which I never really got into in the same way. Seems like whatever energy is left has unfortunately gone along this second tangent. It's like all the ironic posturing is lost in a rock'n'roll context, or something.

Vice Magazine should be listed as another Electroclash 'Anthem'.

Physical reaction to rock: Martini Bros remix of "Missy Queen's Gonna Die," where they make it sound like good old grungey Stereolab!

My college friends, all 12 cd people strawmen and each more a rhetorical device than the last, all love Kittenz and Thee Glitz.

I don't see it this way...you can't say WIT and Soviet etc got swept up in the "movement" when Larry Tee coined the term. There was a zeitgeist thing going on and lots of totally nont-NYC stuff was key to it, but Larry Tee coined a term and had a 2 day festival feat. Peaches, WIT, Fischerspooner, Monotrona, Ladytron, Adult., Phiilip etc.

If you mean Chemical Bros in the sense of cracking America to some extent and pleasing dyed in the wool rock fans, I find it unlikely for much the same reasons as there not being a "Chemical Bros of French House" - the conditions of possibility are just not there when it comes to music so frequently effeminate. The closest thing to a Chemical Bros of French House is Daft Punk; Felix Da Housecat obv the Daft Punk of electroclash rather than the Chemical Bros.

(ha ha where do Basement Jaxx fit into such schemes? Or are they diachronic not synchronic?)

Vitalic - La Rock 01
Richard X - Rock Jacket
Fischerspooner - Emerge
Ladytron - Evil (Tony Senghore remix)
Basement Jaxx f. Siouxsie - Cish Cash
Sir Drew - Shemale (Black Strobe remix)
Freeform Five - Perspex Sex (Ewan remix)
JC Chasez - All Day Long I Dream About Sex
Chromeo - Destination: Overdrive (DFA remix)
Annie - The Greatest Hit (I don't feel this as an electroclash tune - it's where Madonna's 1st album was heading, more into the Italo realm - but hey)

Anyone heard Blandwagon Poos by John B? It totally disses the Electro styles ("rude name, same bassline, FUCK OFF!"), even though John B's done loads of electro in the past. Quite weird and self deprecating. A pretty slamming tune too.

yeah i am getting to this a bit late but wasn't the moment that electroclash won ACTUALLY april 2002 w/ no doubt's "hella good"??

"Hey Rudolf have you heard the Legowelt mix of Junge Dame mit freundlicher Telefonstimme?"

I've got it, but wasn't too thrilled about it. Someone else (forgotten who, I'm sure someone else will know) did another remix of that track at the same time and that was a lot better IMHO. Reminded me rather a lot of early 80s synthesizer stuff...

and its a pisstake of bandwagon blues isnt it? a dnb track

also, hasnt john b made taking the piss out of dnb his M.O?

listen to these, that should give you the context maybe

Does all that technoclash stuff count? Because it sort of does this...

What would you consider to be 'pure' electroclash Spencer? "Seventeen" or something?

*puts up hand*

Wishful thinking indeed.

BK

me? I miss the mod plastic furniture and just want to go to the clubs that Alain Delon frequents in Le Samurai and Le Cercle Rouge...

That's why I wrote 'moment' - the Larry Tee thing is an overdebated complaint anyway - I think we both agree it was Zeitgeist-y - not subcultural in the sense of a 'hardcore continuum'.

I guess I was commenting that I felt certain things that fell under the umbrella-term Electroclash (despite who coined (or hijacked) the mood) were simply more vital than others.

For purity's sake - certainly, Gigolo rates very high for me. Just for the 'I Hate You' attitude of the records, and the fact that it was years of work unleashed, or 'discovered' at once. Also, Peaches & Miss Kittin were definitely my faves - then, Cobrakiller and Chicks on Speed.

I think the move toward rock is a bit misguided - from what I've heard of the new Felix, Kittin and Silures. Slowly shedding any connection with Rave, and embracing more New Wave-ish tendancies means that the energy (and druggy trance elements) of the best Electroclash are lost in song-form.

I always thought that SReynolds' pre-Rave framework for Electroclash was a bit overplayed. Too many of tracks worked wonders on pills; the twisted alarm FX on La Rock, the pulsing trance of Stadtkind, the upward-tilt of Rippin. Plus that more general feeling - that dark mood merger between anxiety, panic and excitement that comes with the drug.

Well - we tried to revive some interest by having a party at the Pyramid for the

last two months - but it didn't seem to take. Not sure if you heard about that
one. Timeout, New York Magazine, New York Post, HX and Next all reported
on it. But I wasn't interested in losing money each week so that a handful of
people could party. The Pyramid club doesn't really support anyone. No drink
tickets or anything. And they're kind of square - so we looked for something
bigger. If you were in town for our Outsider Festival night, we had a lot of
support for that one so....

So Larry Tee and I cancelled the Rogue night. Now we're going for the grand
gesture: Thursday nights at CROBAR. We'll have the budget and the
resources to bring in anyone we can get our hands on. If you've read about
them, we'll probably be able to get them. We're talking about all those electro
artists that you love or love to hate. So don't fret. The grand opening is June
24th. I'll post our booking detail in about a week or two.

See you there!

conrad
www.electroclash.com

A very brief history of Electroclash on Rock History 101:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V1C8FQqFvo

I wonder if the truism that the fashion was more important than the music is now worth questioning. Those Fischerspooner tracks sound pretty good, in retrospect. In fact, most of it sounds pretty good.

seems less of a pejorative term than it did a year or two ago.

Comments that mark this thread as so May 2004:

Ron an: "If anything, the residue of electroclash is more difficult to believe in as a scene. While I really like Ewan Pearson or Black Strobe or Jacques Lu Cont or Tiefschwarz almost all of them are too nuanced and too much in character to ever be part of a movement or to ever make you really get behind all of them at once."

Tracer: "It sounds like Finney's saying it may reach "A Little Less Conversation" level and then fade, but I'm talking more about like, a Chemicals of electroclash, that college sophomores put on de rigeur at parties. I don't think Golden Boy really qualifies for that."

Me: "If you mean Chemical Bros in the sense of cracking America to some extent and pleasing dyed in the wool rock fans, I find it unlikely for much the same reasons as there not being a "Chemical Bros of French House" - the conditions of possibility are just not there when it comes to music so frequently effeminate. The closest thing to a Chemical Bros of French House is Daft Punk; Felix Da Housecat obv the Daft Punk of electroclash rather than the Chemical Bros."

Doesn't Mojo work at Union Pool now too?

This is before the start of the Get Physical thread, before the first electrohouse bobbins thread even. If anything this happened just on the cusp of that 04-05 period when electrohouse started to ditch the vocals and blur into techno and became so much more tracky and big-room and ultra-ravey. Still my favourite period of 00s dance music.

I suppose that was the point when it stopped having much to do with electroclash - Jacques Lu Cont really doesn't seem to fit with Tiefschwarz at all in retrospect.

Jacques Lu Cont really doesn't seem to fit with Tiefschwarz at all in retrospect.

hmmm not so sure about that, the Paper Faces remix all sat very well with Tiefschwarz. Also it didn't matter that stuff was sort of individually different, the point at the time was that there wasn't any overbearing sound to it all.

Paper Faces remixes...I meant

Yeah I think maybe part of the reason for that is that it feels easier to slot Tiefschwarz in with the later, darker, trackier stuff and JLC with, well, electroclash. If there wasn't an overbearing sound at the time of this thread there was not long after.

"This is before the start of the Get Physical thread, before the first electrohouse bobbins thread even."

The latter probably being my finest moment still. In that first 2004 thread people are listing stuff by Ewan Pearson, Black Strobe, Freeform Five, Tiga, Get Physical, Le Dust Sucker, Rex the Dog, Tiefschwarz... All of whom had already established their electro-house blueprints by the end of 2003 and yet (perhaps because the word itself wasn't used so commonly yet) it was somehow harder to see them as existing in the same interzone. And yet suddenly by the end of 2004 that's how it felt. Tiefschwarz's remixes are perhaps most key here in that it's hard to imagine them existing before the end of 2003 (which is when the "Kinda New" remix came out I think). That sense that they couldn't possibly be released before that point was the kinda thing that necessitated a terminological paradigm shift.

OTOH, this comment by Jacob re M.A.N.D.Y. and Sunsetpeople's "Our World (Our Music)" is also rather relevant here:

"The record that best epitomises electrohouse's 2004 shift from the sleazy faux-elitism and poncery of tracks like "Frank Sinatra" to big-room euphoria and classic rave peace and loveism. It's an unholy marriage of electrohouse rhythm, disco guitar and strings and hippiefied sentiment of one-world under an (electrohouse) groove."

Jacob also started this thread in December 2004: 2004: the year electro ate dance music and spat out the 'black' bits - discuss

Early uses of the phrase "electro-house" on ILM:

1) Sterling re Sarai in June 2003

"Why do white girls always hit the electro-house sound best?"

2) Me re Rex the Dog and "Rubicon" on 30 May 2004:

"I actually think Koehncke tracks like "Lucienne" and *especially* "Station 18" are more Metro Area-like than "2 After 909" and "Timecode", both of which strike me as attempts to take the sound of the former tracks and fuse them with a big, bold and kinda french electro-house sound somewhere between Rex The Dog and "Rubicon" (actually they wouldn't sound out of place on a Daft Punk album either). What makes these tracks so special is that they're so uncompromisingly pleasure-focused, combining quite a few of the most melody-centric, blatantly anthemic strands of house music over the last few years."

3) Me re the Mei Lwun Uno Records mix in August 2004:

"Towards the end it veers closer to proper electro-house (like a more subtle version of the transition on the first disc of Le Future Le Funk) but after the divatronics of the first two thirds it works magically, a really anthemic finish."

So by August i was acting like it was really obvious and widely understood and historically established what this term referred to.

The more electro and the less clash, the better.
Thus Fischerspooner >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Green Velvet.

no

hell no

I kinda miss it.

Yeah, me too. In Australia it never really went away completely though... it's still sort of here, only it's divided into two strands - one slicker and housier than it should be and the other much more punk, cheap, 8 bit and deranged than it used to be, eg Bad Art:

http://www.myspace.com/baaaadaaart

Listen to 'I Wed Myself'

sample lyrics - "Hello Lydia. This is Bruce Devastator. You may know me from the group, 'Bruce Devastator and the Teenage Stonehenge?'"

So this was the one electroclash thread I never posted to?

In terms of recent history, this all roots back - as most interesting things in modern dance music do - to electroclash.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/to_anyone_who_came_of.html

have to say, it was the so called electroclash scene that got me re-listening to electronic dance music, which now makes up for 75%+ of my listening pattern these days, so i'd agree with that statement.

After all this, I still listen to "Day Job" by The Fitness.

In terms of recent history, this all roots back - as most interesting things in modern dance music do - to electroclash.

This is the truism that isn't true anymore.

It wasn't true in the first place!

It was true a few years ago for definite.

The part that interests me is how electroclash, despite getting a lot of knocking from indie and rock types, kind of wound up setting the stylistic tone for craploads of indie and rock all decade long.

Ronan so wrong.

The part that interests me is how electroclash Electronic instruments, despite getting a lot of knocking from indie and rock types, kind of wound up setting the stylistic tone for craploads of indie and rock all decade long.

teh fix

How so wrong?

Actually Mackro I'm not even thinking of instruments or sounds -- I'm thinking of peoples in skinny jeans and Vans and American Apparel asymmetrical dresses pulling hipster-trash looks at basement parties, or the way the audience at a CSS or LCD show kinda looks/feels more like a 2001 electro-night crowd than anyone would have guessed back at the time

I.e., if I were trying to imagine a general "indie" vibe to shorthand the decade, it wouldn't look that different from electroclash 01. Especially M.I.A.

I think Ronan is talking about dance music (specifically house and techno) which I has (in its more respectable forms) finally thrown off the electroclash influence in the last 18 months or so.

Mind you a lot of current dance music is still in this lineage.

10 We chew.
20 We digest.
30 We shit it out.
40 We retain a little.
50 We move on.
60 Goto 10.

Actually Mackro I'm not even thinking of instruments or sounds -- I'm thinking of peoples in skinny jeans and Vans and American Apparel asymmetrical dresses pulling hipster-trash looks at basement parties, or the way the audience at a CSS or LCD show kinda looks/feels more like a 2001 electro-night crowd than anyone would have guessed back at the time

Well, again, this can be more generalized in other genres too. Fashion and music are becoming less respectively tied to each other, in the context of genre.

If you removed everyone from, say, a Justice show and put them all in a blank warehouse, would you be able to guess what music they were into (early tour-shirt wearers aside)?

I guess my point is, since the complete dissolution of actual raves in this country, the ravers are now just mixing in with the other folks, so it's harder to guess what a dance crowd "looks like" anymore, if we're forking into this side-thread.

xposts. The most interesting things in dance music in the 21st Century have absolutely nothing to do with electrohouse and this is certainly no new development.

electroclash even, lol, freudian slip.

The most interesting things in dance music in the 21st Century

such as?

http://www.rwdmag.com/upload/t2300.jpg
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-04-05/music_vibes-1.jpg
http://www.crisco-connection.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/retardo.jpg

http://www.outlar.com/images/artists/TheoParrish1.jpg

http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/31023.efdemin.jpg

http://a818.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/13/l_8970beef56be272fd56eeb27966f2ef9.jpg

http://medias.ados.fr/people/7/6/7669/Reinhard-Voigt/photos/11432.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioassets/photos/2007/1/4/12434_2.jpg

http://www.dissonanze.it/images/foto_luciano.jpg

The chap three pictures up looks a lot like Mike D.

Ah, tis Reinhard Voigt. Not that I actually thought it was Mike D.

If you want to keep posting pics of people who defined dance music post 2003/2004 by all means go ahead, but don't think that contradicts anyone. I mean, Efdemin? We're talking one year of "influence" at best and that's one average album and some great DJ sets.

Also Nabisco otm. And anyone denying Kompakt met electrohouse/electroclash halfway at times is closing their ears....

"and that's one average album"

Finally someone admits it.

Hell, I'm even hatin' on his universally recognized hit.

I never liked "Just A Track", not because I think it's heresy or whatever, I just don't think it's a GREAT attempt at what it's trying to do. "Lohn and Brot" is amazing but I'm sort of mystified as to how the rest of the Efdemin record (and Pantha Du Prince for that matter) was so popular last year when it kinda seems exactly what Dial have been doing for as long as I can remember.

I don't mean that in a snobby way either, just it says something odd about 2007.

from that linked Guardian blog:

feminism (Chicks on Speed)

bwahahahahaha

anybody else think the current lumpen "haircut house" and "up front house" owes something to the fact that electroclash upped the "liveness" stakes in dance music? even if programmed in a blisteringly banal way, all those drumkit sounds have a kind of live rockness to them that i can't imagine pre-electroclash

of course electroclash also (somehow) includes people like dj hell, who doesn't ever sound "live" so eh

to my mind, electroclash's innovation was that it was the first post-rave dance music that explicitly used old sounds rather than new ones (note this is different from trad new york house, for instance, which never STOPPED using old sounds in the first place). this is not to say that electroclash wasn't future-oriented because i think it was, but that retro pastiche became a strategy for a whole galaxy of barely connected people, sounds, scenes; what was so thrilling for me was that if everything is current again, if every sound of the recent past is fair game, you get way more eclectic DJ sets and way more mixed-up stuff. this was necessarily futuristic in a dance music world that had become so specialized and segregated. of course electroclash quickly adopted its own narrow touchstones but the energy of it had a really positive impact i think.

jim, a text-based list would've been fine. only recognised one of them anyway - and interesting tho he may be i can barely stand to listen to his stuff most of the time.

includes people like dj hell, who doesn't ever sound "live" so eh

altho a lot of his 90s stuff kinda does (at least in terms of roughness and some unpredictability in the sequencing) no?

oh.. i wouldn't know!!

If you want to keep posting pics of people who defined dance music post 2003/2004 by all means go ahead

The point was that the people in the pictures were releasing music before and during electroclash and had nothing to do with it, or were parts of strains of music that have nothing to do with electroclash (e.g. UK garage).

I can't be bothered having this discussion again.

Cool, I wasn't really doing anything beyond wtfing at there being people on the planet who still think the word electroclash can have anything but a pejorative sense.

This was like the 2001 Justice and Uffie for me.

"on the planet"