On Djing...

i'll admit to (maybe) having been guilty of that in the past, but trust that here i'm just asking questions, because i've never really been clear on what constitutes hi-nrg

i also think that ppl get very weird when supposed "genre nit-picking" happens. but we're not going to pretend that genres don't exist, are we? or that (other, non-ilx) people don't invest time and energy in deciding which genres they like and which genres they don't?

so for me, what you call "genre nit-picking" is actually not an exercise in trying to rigidly define what constitutes a certain genre. or, at least, that's not the *end goal*. instead i think it's useful to think about these things as if they're rigid (even though we know they're not!) as an analytical exercise, in order to figure out precisely what's *wrong* with those rigid definitions, and to maybe discover things about genres and songs that we may miss if we just accept received understandings of genres (whether broad or specific)

when i say "very weird" i mainly mean "weirdly defensive". i think it's weird mainly because there's just nothing to be defensive about, nobody is personally being attacked and genres (if they exist at all!) don't have feelings

i was accused of "gatekeeping psychedelic music" a couple weeks ago when i was just making some dumb jokes, jokes in response to someone saying "west coast psychedelic music isn't psychedelic enough" ... idk if it's my uber confident gigachad posting style or what, but who tf am i to keep gates? i'm just some rando on the internet with bad opinions and naive questions, don't let my dumb bs ruffle yr feathers!

imo genres are fluid because you can say you like X music because it's Y genre

this may or may not make sense to anyone beyond your immediate cohort, or perhaps yourself

I find genres and genre discussions helpful, especially if you have a very liberal idea of what these things mean and understand how fluid it and nebulous it is. Does it make sense to say Television made post-punk in 1975 or the best italo disco was from Quebec? It's all fun.

<3 you all, stay disco freaks forever please

nobody is personally being attacked

I think what it comes down to is that no one has this perfectly academic relationship with art. When you start trying to create strata and separate pens within art, it can feel reductive to people's personal interpretations and experiences. There's a rarefied, esoteric, and very noodley conversation to be had with the right tone and tenor, always - we're on ILM after all! - but that conversation to anyone who feels like an outsider can be perceived as personally invalidating to the perceptions mh describes.

Hard agree with dan overall too, esp w/r/t the liberal and fluid interpretations of these things.

ummm i guess so except that sounds like generally the opposite of how i approach the topic. the game is not exclusion (“mike dunn is not acid house because he doesn’t use 303s”) but inclusion (“is i feel love hi nrg?”)

i’m also not sure how it’s helpful to use loaded language like “strata” and “separate pens” to describe the process, esp when i pointed out my goal is to think critically abt genres by playing the genre game, not to actually create rigid definitons!

loaded language like “strata” and “separate pens”

Somewhat illustrative of my point that you consider those loaded terms rather than just categorical descriptions!

I agree that the game isn't exclusion, just pointing out why discussions like this sometimes end up heightened and accusations of gatekeeping can fly.

that’s fair. probably need to make my intent more clear, or apply sarcasm tags in earnest

i think with strata the problem is they’re arranged vertically to start with, so it implies a hierarchy. pens implies things are stuck inside genres, history of dance music illustrates well enough how the reality is quite the opposite! also means that the idea of strata is fraught even if you think of the strata as vertical only in the sense of time and history

genrestential drift

the best italo disco was from Quebec

otm

My take on this coming from the European side is that “Euro-disco” was an almost exclusively American umbrella term for all kinds of disco (‘classic’ non-electronic disco, space, italo, hi-nrg) that just happened to be made in Europe, and (certainly initially) had a slight derogatory angle - which it gradually lost when the global center of gravity for disco shifted to Europe post-1980.

Nearly all "euro," "japanese," "asian" etc. labelling of music by white folks, American or European, is reductive or derogatory. Nicheification (?) for personal benefit of control.

hmm well maybe not all to the same degree - stuff like “italo disco”, “britpop” or “eurodance” has come to mean a pretty distinctive sound, not so much in a derogatory way.

IIRC italo-disco rose to prominence as a self-label for Italian bands selling on the German market, yeah? Britpop was similarly coined by Brits. I guess I mean in terms of labelling of the other, not as self-differentiation. I may be wrong, but wasn't Eurodance a term that originated by European DJs, especially in Germany, to differentiate themselves as something other than Chicago/Detroit also-rans?

I feel like those are all self-labels in that regard.

Britpop yes, but Italo was definitely not a self-label - or at least, the book “The History of Italo Disco” by Verrina makes a big point of it, the interviewed producers are all amused by foreigners coining the name and say “it was just Disco to us”.

Also, because it wasn’t really self-coined, there’s always been that big debate around it, does “Italo Disco” simply mean all disco made in Italy including the older non-electronic stuff, or does it mean “that” typical synths/bass/drums sound & melodies, and can we include the non-italian soundalikes?

(personally, I am in the “Italo is a sound” camp, but I’m using dance music genres mainly from a utilitarian/DJ point of view where I need them as sonic descriptors, not so much from a cultural history pov).

just popping in to say, as I get very few opportunities in my life to do, how much I love GAZEBO, specifically "Wrap The Rock", simultaneously one of the goofiest and most transcendent songs ever produced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5GHGSMXn3Q

Nearly all "euro," "japanese," "asian" etc. labelling of music by white folks, American or European, is reductive or derogatory.

euro in particular has been used as a descriptor for decades for all sorts of things, from various strands of dance music (euro dance, eurobeat etc.) to the out there fringes, and definitely not in a derogatory way.

virgin megastore in edinburgh in the early 80s to have a big section simply labeled euro that included things such as roedelius, holger czukay, all the rock in opposition lot, zoviet france, les disques du crepuscule, peter baumann, the homosexuals, nww and associated acts etc. i don't really know what the thinking behind this wild grouping was but it felt intriguing, exciting, illusive and lots of other adjectives that are not reductive.

half the record stores I frequent still have sections labelled 'world music' and 'female artists' :/

Italo is a sound for sure, like it or not.

It was created in germany when ZYX started releasing comps.

Some of the earlier stuff I also call eurodisco, the stuff with live drums, big strings etc. It's just disco, from italy, in europe, so call it what you want.

I've always found it useful to split italo up into three eras.

1. the live band disco stuff, really no different from any other euro-disco in sound, Cerrone, Don Ray, Gino Soccio in canada. Eurodisco, space disco. Some people call Cerrone or Soccio italo-disco. That's fine with me, though inaccurate if you want to be pedantic. But like, when somebody who is not a record nerd asked me to dj an italo set 20 years ago, they weren't getting upset when I played Gino Soccio's Remember.

2. The electro period, this is closer to 1983. More DIY/lo-fi. Drum machines. Vocoders. This is the cool stuff. Spacer Woman. Wanexa. Sun La Shan. This has as much in common with electro-funk, new wave, minimal synth etc, depending on which records you're playing.

3. The big pop sound, 1984 and on the cheesier stuff, aiming for the charts. There's a little bit of crossover with the electro stuff but a lot of it I find pretty terrible, and for a lot of people, this is THE italo sound. And I know italo fans and DJs who play as much of this stuff as the other two. I don't. Maybe a song or two makes it.

That's my reductive take on italo-disco. I've been meaning to write my book on italo that would cover that but mostly focus on italo's import and influence in america, from the NY record labels that were pressing it in the early 80s to the chicago proto house labels pressing it in the mid 80s. It's going to be somewhere between a zine and a real book, but it will be my personal interests/perspective and will probably anger european pop fans.

wild grouping

Possibly a difference of opinion but I guess, to me, the description of that sounds like exoticization (due to perspective and life experience) and I consider exoticization reductive.

thread delivers, ty Dan

I’m fairly sure exoticising Europe /Europeans is not a thing!

half the record stores I frequent still have sections labelled 'world music' and 'female artists' :/

I’m fairly sure exoticising Europe /Europeans is not a thing!

I can speak to certain communities I was involved in in the 90s where "weird European" / exotic tone was used as a shield for borderline white supremecist views that were normalized through their "weirdness." Also (again, at least in America) non-mainline European cultures, especially nations that were in Eastern Europe and extra-especially Jewish music, were often rendered as exotic in the media I encountered.

Getting slightly off topic for the thread so I'll just leave this, but Paul Farmer wrote about this in the 90s, about how acknowledgment of suffering is reduced in people defined as distant and other. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027362

And more recently, Amanda Skocic wrote about how Eastern European women in the film industry were seen as "off-White" https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ghr/article/view/20161

Not all of Europe is Northern/Eastern Europe

I have a real issue with Americans imposing this stuff on us Europeans. It’s more USA cultural imperialism imo,
similar to that I have encountered with Americans trying to police language that is deeply embedded In my culture. We Europeans are very, very comfortable using Euro as a descriptor, and I say this as an avowed anti-white supremacist.

I respectfully agree to disagree on this issue. Not really a conversation for this thread, or board.

Well, you brought it up and I’d respectfully disagree and feel pretty strongly about non Europeans imposing their views on us. I can’t really see how it is not a form of cultural imperialism or at the very least cultural superiority and I am so, so tired of it.

As someone who's entire life exists in the shadow of eliminationism and colonization, I genuinely and respectfully disagree. I attempted to say "in America" several times, and questioned my interpretations because I wasn't sure but clearly that didn't ring true in my words. I apologize for offending you, but not for my sentiment. Can we, as I have suggested, let the thread proceed?

Yes. And I do understand your perspective now though, so apologise for any upset but do also continue to respectfully disagree about the use of Euro, also the name of a currency used by 350 million people.

Sorry, there goes my pedantry again! ;-)

map warned us

^^^

the circle of life, hakuna matata

3. The big pop sound, 1984 and on the cheesier stuff, aiming for the charts. There's a little bit of crossover with the electro stuff but a lot of it I find pretty terrible, and for a lot of people, this is THE italo sound. And I know italo fans and DJs who play as much of this stuff as the other two. I don't. Maybe a song or two makes it.

i've been playing "tarzan boy" lately for some reason. kind of want it to have a tik tok moment or something. i doubt very many young people in the us today have ever heard any of the charting italo tunes? drake or whoever isn't flipping them lol. everyone has moved on to the 90s.

My interpretation of the euro-disco thing was that it initially had a bit of a derogatory/gatekeeping aspect since Disco was American and now these Europeans were trying it too (Boney M etc), what do they know etc, but the quantity and quality increased so quickly that this take quickly disappeared, so what was left of the term was mainly a shorthand for “expensive import vinyl” and the odd silly accent.

This is just my interpretation, I don’t think I’ve heard “euro-disco” used as a derogatory term in decades.

you caught my boney m joke, impeccable dj cred

The discussion above could use its own thread really. It's largely agreed that tags like "world music" are reductive, but then people start reaching for other terms like "global" or "outernational" when they want to talk about non-Western, especially non-US/Northern European music, which kind of mean the same thing really

incursions in eurobient

euro as a descriptor is too broad and therefore irrelevant to my purposes (except when i'm trying to disparage huge swaths of people.) i usually make up genres to organize music for mixing, e.g. rude chuggers, moody cruisers, party goofers, mean disco, nice disco, etc. those may be offensive to peoples rude, moody, mean, or nice but fuck em!

mine are like "cunty" "love" and "heartbreak"

and of course the well-known genre "we are out at the club AND IT'S THE GREATEST THING EVER!!!"

Mine are:

Groovers
Ravers
Terrufnek

That last one is a portmanteau of the names of two nights I play, but is all somewhere in the dancehall/soca/Afrobeats/related area.
Groovers is anything from 90s hip hop to funk and soul.
Ravers is what it says on the tin - dance music, basically.

Those are the three genres

free jazz dj - you have to listen to the songs i didn’t play

I like all these personalized naming conventions. I tend to think of tracks as having particular types of personalities or moods, but I don't generally put specific words to them, it's somewhat nebulous for me, maybe more like playing with a bunch of paints or a big box of crayons and trying to work out what shades complement or offset each other.

my rekordbox playlists are broken up into different "genres" some of which are very obvious and not controversial. Like House Chicago. House Acid. Techno US. Techno Europe. Some are kinda grouped together, like Electro Freestyle. Club and Old School. DJ Minimal Synth Beat which is minimal synth, new beat, some more industrial new wave. Then I have more personal things like DJ NJ, which is like, Talking Heads, Liquid Liquid, Coati Mundi, Material. Or DJ Boogie which is boogie but also sorta proto house, early 80s club stuff.

Then there's DJ Balearic, which for me is balearic but also Cosmic and Loft classics. I actually put that into one giant playlist on spotify for listening pleasure and kept adding and adding:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bv9Fa4IfStJNwZW282yjb?si=77d1a3c868634c36

There is also DJ Euro (no offense intended) which grew out of my physical shelves, where there's even a fair amount of what is ostensibly italo, but italo was overflowing. Euro foldeer includes Azoto (really italo, but disco-y), Bagarre, Bamboo, Black Devil, Cerrone, Chilly, Don Ray, Donna Summer, Gino Soccio, Moroder, Hott City, Kongas, Martin Circus, Rinder and Lewis etc.

Some things can go in multiple playlists, or get broken up based on era. For instance, Vivien Vee's "Give Me a Break" is in euro, because sonically it's euro-disco to me. But Vivien Vee's "Blue Disease" goes in Italo.

I usually purchase tracks for specific mixes, so most of the tracks I have are in the playlists for those mixes. I tend to give the mixes evocative names, which helps me remember what the general blend of tracks are in each one. So it's not exactly genres but I know that I'll find particular songs in particular mixes and that they will be grouped with other songs that match up well in terms of mood and BPM.

Then there's DJ Balearic, which for me is balearic but also Cosmic and Loft classics. I actually put that into one giant playlist on spotify for listening pleasure and kept adding and adding:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bv9Fa4IfStJNwZW282yjb?si=77d1a3c868634c36

amazing playlist