Simon Reynolds disengagement from dance culture/the only people he says care about dance are deejays, druggers, and those with a business interest(incl. journalists)

I'll leave it to others who know more about and who may have been more heavily invested in dance culture one way or another to comment or respond to some of the more specific points about the state of electronic dance that he makes.

the problem here is that it's implied there actually are still new head-rearranging sounds waiting to be created but i'm not sure that's actually possible

try the Palms Of Goa in Soho matey

i'm 26 and i feel about the same as he does.

I think it's brave of Reynolds to admit he's losing interest in dance culture since he wrote one of the defining books at the subject. He lets go of dance culture at the risk of minimizing his own relevance, and that take some guts.

*it's always been a leisure option to me so I wouldn't know!

now i'm not sure where simon is coming from, but personally i find it hard to get excited about sparsely-attended events, gloomy club nights, the sense of defeat from my dj friends, etc.

i'm very interested in why the people have gone elsewhere - my first instinct isn't that dance music sucks so much as it is that other music (rap in particular) has just gotten much, much better than it used to be.

also i think phillip sherburne's comments of 17 february (scroll down a bit) are also spot-on, in any case they explain why (round here) people have ditched the electro nights just as the djs got brave enough to start throwing more house and techno into the mix.

Sometimes I think the reason why people like myself and Simon are reluctant to give up on dance music totally is the fact that, well, what else is there? It's not just dance, is it? When was the last time you could look at any one genre, survey the (broad whole of it), and say "yes, I am a fan of this." Not all of it, obviously (I mean, I never really rated tribal house or Autechre-style IDM or or or), but when you could call yourself a "[blank] fan" when someone asked what you were into. (Actually I am still more than likely to call myself a "dance fan", when prodded. I dunno if Simon does or not. I wonder if you get more funny looks at this point calling yourself a dance fan in England or America.) Even as late as 2000, I could have looked at the whole and enjoyed at least 50% of it: UK garage, IDM during its first putsch of Kid606-style tomfoolery (then a briefly helpful corrective to autechre anal-ness), the aftermath of Modulation & Transformation 4, the first flush of micro-house (ditto electroclash), house still seemed pretty revitalized ala B Jaxx, random stuff like the early Recloose 12"s on Planet E, the early stirrings of the disco-punk-funk revival with the Disco (Not Disco) comp and the Larry Levan reissue and the Loft comps...hell, even breaks seemed like a moderately good idea.

But seriously...what else is there, on the whole? Rap? Even if we break it down to "one populist choice, one semi-popular choice, and one obscurantist choice" as (an admittedly lopsided) representation we get, say, Young Gunz, MF Doom, and Clouddead. Rock? Fountains of Wayne, The Shins, and Wolf Eyes. I think at this point I'll still take Bangalter & Falcon, Herbert, and Villalobos, thanks. (And yes, no need to re-order those ballots and give me David Banner, Madvillian, and . Or Linkin Park, Ted Leo, & Animal Collective. I'm happy with my rhetorical strawmen, thanks.)

Though just barely. And if those names seem slightly more on the "semi-popular" side now, well, that's probably due to dance music imploding, no? Six (jesus!) years ago Bangalter was responsible for the biggest club hit of the year, and now he'd probably have a hard time packing out the babybox at Ministry of Sound. (T-minus five seconds until Ronan emails me telling me I'm up my ass...) Does anyone even listen to that Herbert big band album at this point? And I'll cherish Alcachofa til the day I die (and Villalobos may well be packing them in down in Ibizia), but he's doomed to be playing tiny clubs here alongside Mayer et al. Are there even really "name" DJs in America now that the average bridge & tunnel punter could recognize? Or is that "parasitic massive" (pace Simon) just going to hip-hop/R&B/pop nights? Ten years ago "clubbing" in America at least meant going out to hear bad trance and hard house mixes of pop hits rather than the actual pop hits. (Maybe this is a knock-on side effect of pop/hip-hop/r&b getting faster and appropriating so much dance science themselves...) With EFA going bankrupt, clubs closing, stores downsizing, indie rock kids barely able to focus their fruitfly attentions on anything for more than five minutes, the "regular folks" not even remotely interestd...well, what's keeping this whole thing alive other than journalists, bloggers, and the tiny but comitted hardcore massive?

The problem for the punter is not just that the stuff isn't being covered in the press or that you can't find it anywhere. It's that there's (as always) too damn much of it. (And I'm just talking CDs...I shudder at the very idea of 12" buying these days.) This is the across the board problem, the reason why its impossible to call yourself a fan of anything these days other than a tiny sliver of a micro-micro scene. If anything I heard TOO MUCH good music last year. But it was spread out across dozens of genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres. And at the end of the day, much like in 2002, there were probably only about five albums I loved without reserve, no questions asked. The other five spaces were a total crap shoot, the last two only picked maybe a day or two before my P&J ballot was due.

[unfinished, obv]

of course, this all goes back to the raging dillytant vs. hardcore soulja arguments of 2002-2003...

There is a lot to listen to, but if it was always like that, why pick now to fall behind?

I got the impression that while things aren't as big as they were it's still rather a big scene. As I've said before on this subject, I think it's easy to forget, as we all get older and gravitate towards the deep house purist mansion in the sky, that lots of young people aren't exposed to dance at all. If it's less popular then that's even more the case. Clubbing and the atmosphere and the drugs aren't something I ever had any impression of until hitting 17 or so. It's not solely about the music, and it never was I guess.

I think dance won't really die until that atmosphere is lost, until there aren't places to go which are dark and sweaty and full of people, to some extent, and I can't believe I'm saying this, the music can be an irrelevence. Surely what made it a "movement" or makes it one now isn't the music but the lifestyle?

Jess's last paragraph is ENTIRELY otm, and for me I think you can see this trend reflected by the DJs who are the popular ones these days, your Felix Da Housecat's or 2manyDJs type blokes. There's no real clear public face of dance music anymore or idea of what it is, just the residue of french house and perhaps a smattering of electroclash in manufactured pop, or in the charts.

I think SR is wrong on one count, the idea that the fashionistas have left dance. I'm not sure what others think and maybe I'm not around long enough to judge an increase or a decrease but dance clubs are the only place I ever see fashionistas. Bear in mind I live in Dublin so perhaps my entire perspective on what's conservative and what isn't is ruined forever! This may taint my argument also.

In Dublin dance seems to be just rebuilding, I don't think it's just wistful thinking on my part suggesting it will boom again, perhaps not as big or even in the same way as before but my earlier point about the scene and the atmosphere having a universal appeal to kids is what makes me believe this.

Having said all that I must say that I think a big reason for dance not being such a public phenomenon anymore is that house really sucks for the last 18 months. I still maintain that 02 was a fucking killer year for house, I'll list off 40 records I think are as good as anything I've heard from any other year. But last year? Awful. House has always been the seller I guess.

(Re:Bangalter, Jess I think maybe the link between hot production and hot DJ isn't made in alot of house peoples heads, afterall you go to see someone spin based on hearing their ace, not on the records they've made)

But my friends and I have reduced this sentiment to an in-joke catchphrase that just gets irritatingly funnier every year since 1997, especially when delivered with tongue-clucking tsk tsk-ery:

"The Metalheadz scene isn't what it used to be."

I think dance, though, maybe more than any other artistic movement/genre or whatever, suffers from the speed at which it progressed. The expectations we have of it are exceedingly high, and since it has only been around (in the current electronic form starting with techno/house) for about 20-25 years (and it was not ubiquitous for 5-10 of those years for many), it becomes much easier to accuse the music of losing the plot, or exhausting its creative energies, especially in relation to rock. In rock, those formal or aural innovations that only lasted a few years are still treated as important, and dont sound dated. Shoegaze only lasted a few years, and yet people still love "Loveless", and I dont think its many fans (or even its detrtactors) hear it as being just an artifact from the early 90s, and I dont see anyone lamenting the moevement's death in the same way that one could lament the short hypercreative lifespan of jungle (and you could insert any micr-scene in the place of shoegaze and jungle). Additionally, a jungle record from 1994 holds more potential as an artifact than "Loveless". In other words, "Original Nuttah" sounds more like 1994 than "Loveless" sounds like 1991. Something about the ubiquity of rock, and its culture and attitudes, makes it sound less dated (of course, rock rarely proclaims to be the future, or at least not in the same shiny, plastic sort of way).

I think the "death of dance" or whatever really can be ascribed to the failure to implant certain aspects of its culture into minds and media. The anti-rockism of singles, of anonymous DJs in dark spaces simply playing records, of club profiles, experience profiles in magaazines instead of artist features, has collapsed under the weight of branded mix cds. Local scenes, like the one in DC, barely seem to exist, because so many people have become used to looking in the paper to see what names are coming to town, even their local DJs have the same records, the same mixing ability, etc. I read once that Kenny Larkin's "Azymuth" from 1994 was the first techno album to feature the creator on the cover, which still astounds me.

I am tempted to say that club culture needs to go back to basics, needs to codify all of the unspoken assumptions that underly the culture, and to try to figure out what can be done in practical terms to ensure their continuation, their obviousness to everyone involved. People coming into the scene now dont even know there was ever anything more to it than what they are doing now, which is simple going out and getting fucked up, and maybe trying to pull. and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. I dont want the music and its fans to be all overserious urban connoisseurs, but i think there needs to be a better balance than what now exists. In the past, the scene seemed to be a mix of technerds and druggers, but it was a community, whereas now it feels to me more like a schism.

Of course, what has to come before any "back to basics" movement is a way to figure out how to do it with out being reactionary, without being preservationist. Simon made fun of people who felt there was something at stake in the music in GE (techno purists who hated rave were guilty), but I think he and they are right only partially. The only way dance music can still be viable as a community and an aesthetic is to only concern itself with preserving its beliefs but not its aesthetics. In a larger scheme, listening to breakbeat hardcore or +8 techno was the same thing, becuase, at least for me, the whole experience of being into dance music in its larger sense (since it is a proactive choice) should transcend the limitations of biology and birth, which seem to have much more affect on people's choices in other genres (i think rock, rap, classical, jazz, etc., for whatever reason, still dont have the felxibility to be "everyone's" music in the same way).

I wonder sometimes whether the attitudes towards Detroit have affected perceptions negatively sometimes (god that is bad diction). Reynolds and his fans are not necessarily anti-Detroit obviously, but the harshest criticism seems to be directed there, though sometimes it is totally warranted (just the name "true people" makes me want to throw up). I still think, though, that some of the values of Detroit are worthwhile. There is an awareness there that they are part of a scene, part of a community, and that there is an importance to their project. Yeah, the actualy music gets complacent sometimes, but somehow I feel that if someone or some scene were to understand the attitudes of Detroit without sharing any of its aesthetic assupmtions, there would be the possibility of magic.

I also wonder if it isnt time for another hardcore to come around. I dont know if it could have any impact in such a fragmented scene, but it might be worth a try. Something needs to happen to get people out of their complacency, to say "this is what you need to be listening to, or else you dont know what the fuck you are talking about". Incidentally, isnt hardcore, the retreat into darkness, its own kind of "true people" sort of attitude? (who knows. when i get my synths, i am going to make the nastiest, darkest micro/electro records i can, all at 140 bpm).

Lastly, I do wonder if the generational thing is an issue. Anyone who was into rave in its golden era (the early 90s in the UK, anytime before Fatboy slim in the US) saw the scene at its best, when the quality of music and community were exceptionally high. sure microhouse isnt as exciting in pusre novelty terms as darkcore, but i think there are people my age (23) who will find it really revelatory, might decide to pick up some synths, and might come up with something amazing. I still really believe that the smartest people right now are making dance music. And it seems odd to basically ascribe the death of the music to the fact that only people who care about it care about it.

one more fragment: After all is said and done, dance music as a whole still holds the potential of more active participation, more democracy, more inclusivity than any other music scene that I know of, and, even if dance music is dead aesthetically, even if it becomes the proverbial tree being eaten by parasites, those values mentioned above still make it worthwhile. I will continue to celebrate the music for the this reason, even in bad faith.

(this is a massiv x-post. the first unread message is Ott "yawn")

But one other factor in the US that I think contributed to dance's decline was the police crackdown on underground parties in the late 90s. Restricting dance music to clubs cuts out the younger audiences, so the younger generations are more restricted in the types of music exposure. There have always been lots of all-ages legal hip hop shows, and now that hip-hop is getting dancier, the generation that has grown up on hip-hop is moving into the 21+ bracket and starting to dominate the club scene as well..

for me, at least, the love of the music is locked into the love of cities, of their importance as places of culture and of conflicting beliefs. its not an anti-suburbanization or rural stance, though maybe i am secretly a snob, but i think that its imporant to be in touch with modernity, modernization, and its impacts, and this music is valuable towards that end.

culturally dance has been declining for a few years, the closing of gatecrasher/cream were major shifts, but garages continued rise at that time, meant it was only part of dance music shrinking, but garage has undergone its own shrinkage now.

i think another major event (in the uk) has been the rise of hip hop, you could look at garages rise as a shift from house to hip hop and r&b, with garage as a middle ground, but now its moved past that, and hiphop and r&b are the dominant cultural sound. grime is a post-dance music as simon says, it is a music that, when it looks abroad, looks to america, not to europe or jamaica. (there is another thread here about the decline of the role of jamaica in the uk, ironically as it is on the rise as an influence in america)

there is a danger here though of conflating disengagement with cultural decline. one is personal, the other social, one doesnt necessitate the other

i think the very fact that you have this "dance is dead", "no it isnt" dialogue is telling you right then and there, that something isn't the same culturally. dance music doesnt have the same cultural influence it did. can you imagine people saying "hip hop is over, its dead" right now? (as a qualititave statement possibly, but as a sociocultural one???? no way!)

Jess I think I have located the source of your malaise

Sorry. I've always kept a third eye towards dance music all my life. It's always there, and always as vibrant.. it's just that sometimes people in positions of power to publicize it get more into it at certain times and then out of it.

I have to laugh at a majority of this thread.

Perhaps my beef is with the analogy and not the argument that hip hop is more commercially successful than dance music. I didn't really see it as this opposing force waging war on the dance floor for the hearts and minds of america.

The point made much earlier about focusing on your own weird ideas on a local level and to hell with macro planning for the next global epiphany is just spot on. This hits at the real double-edged sword created by the apparent artisan's paradise of p2p and freeware. In a global melting-pot where anyone can pick over a perfectly preserved historiography spanning half a century of ANY music you can think of, its going to be that much harder for folks to come up with ideas that aren't retrospective in some way. I also agree that many of dance's values will far outlast it's aesthetics, but I'd go further.

It's a given that young people people for the foreseeable future will gather in numbers around things that excite them. But to fuss over whether or not there are any more cool sounds yet to be imagined is not only wrong (possible combinations and permutations with currently available equipment are by now, well past infinity, so they ARE out there), but it really misses the point. I prefer to believe it'll be many decades yet before feet cease to be set alight by raw sonic and thematic tension played loud across a sound system. Just simple, captivating ideas - that it's still known as "dance music" in 1 year, 5 years or 10 will be irellevant. And as long as each of us is born unique and the world keeps changing, it follows there'll be no shortage of new paradigms, learning, attitudes - and music.

but now simons clarification seems to point that his original point was a worry about dance musics creative health rather than social/cultural centrality (ok, i know he intertwines them), in which case, i cant really agree with the original premise, as my take is primarily concerened with dances musics retreat from centrality.

i believe hip hop to be creatively at a total peak at the moment, certainly it is an extended golden age, and i see no sign of drop off, last year was undoubtedly a golden year for hip hop

what made last year golden for hip hop specifically?

dance and hip-hop are capable of sustenance because people will always want to dance to that kind of thing i think, but it continues to feel weird that the scenes i grew up with are passing/have passed into history, tho inevitable of course.

Wow, Lee Perry and Farrell Puff were there. Two of my favourite artists.

The dance culture around here is definitely in retreat but I agree with Tim that as long as producers somewhere are creating music drawn directly from the fire of the dancefloor, there'll be no real crisis in quality/creativity even if the precursors for a bubbling subculture aren't really there in your neck of the woods.

I reckon the social future of the up-for-it PARTY organism is going to depend on it completely renegotiating pop. As in completely turning it on its head. And nothing the likes of what's happening with that ultra-slick, lacquered hip-hop/r'n'b pimp daddy's dance either. There's not a lot in its arrogant, bloated vibe unless you're an aspiring millenial new-jack. And that ground's really a bit well-trodden to be considered much of a flag-bearer for new ideas in dance music.

But then I'm not American.

I mean I have friends really into tech-house, not minimal tech but full on banging angry tech, I saw Phil Kieran support Felix Da Housecat on Wednesday and it was pretty effective. I found it harder to write it off to the same friends afterwards, at one point he dropped a remix of Murderous by Nitzer Ebb, and it truly was the definition of tearing shit up. Smoke, and strobe lights and a gang of young people screaming "where is the youth".

That said I'm not entirely comfortable with the whole tearing shit up thing meaning the music has to be full on or aggressive, if a crowd is going mad I'd consider the DJ to be tearing it up, that's his job.

Also I don't think people see Kompakt/micro-house as a populist movement anyway, it's difficult to imagine it as being anything other than a niche genre. I don't think anyone's claimed or hoped otherwise.

Another striking point in current 'dance music is dead' assessments is how being a commercialized, self-centered, arrogant form of music is considered a bad thing for dance, but apparently a good thing for hip hop. You can only take scene paradigm relativism so far...

seeing sxsw first hand this year completely changed my mind about dance music and electronics. 1988 part deux is just around the corner and I know which side I am on.

send me your address mike!

A wise conclusion. You couldn't drag me to SXSW no matter how much money you paid me and no matter who was playing. Kevin Shields could play a three-hour-set of pure noisebliss and I'd just wait for the DVD because it would be cheaper and less horrid to experience.

and by the way i never went to sxsw while i lived there its just a cause of traffic congestion

i'm sure it's a race thing. it usually seems to be.

No wonder mega-raves like Melbourne's Two Tribes and Summa Dayze are described as a "fashion statement" by those still interested enough to fork out the money. It would be fun if smaller, specialised clubs and bedroom producers were keen to reconnect adventurous, unpollished music to large numbers of people, but new-breaks, rare groove and electro-clash clubs seem more than happy to maintain homogeny and nurture their own hipster/gatekeeper aspirations.

Not to say that music hasn't continuously gotten better over the years. Some of the gear I've heard recently has been easily as charged as that from any nominated Golden Era. I wouldn't be surprised to see much of today's bomb-toons fulfill their real social potential in future contexts. And by then we'll probably reassure each other that the early to mid 00's were still the Salad Days while 'others' continued to shake their heads over dance's decline. But with any luck, some 17yr old somewhere will already be doing something even better by then.

This looks a bit silly now. :) At least from an electro-house bobbins viewpoint (which might as well be renamed anthem house.) (Quite amazing really that electro-house fulfilled this pipedream of mine: crossing over and creating something like meta-rave. Within a year and without any obvious tech/drug shift.)

I didn't fully understand this comment, particularly the "deep house" bit. Can someone shed a little light on this? Is deep house the type of dance music people tend to move toward after they've been around the scene for a while? After they get tired of "epic" trance, dnb, hardcore etc? What about the "deep house purist mansion in the sky" concept? Is there a sense of elitism surrounding deep house or something?

Sorry, totally ignorant on the subject!

I have never heard micro house in LA unless I go to see a very specific DJ. Peaches is the only person who plays it at hipster parties.

yeah I never hear microhouse here. it's still all about the deep house and downtempo. and every coffeehouse owns a couple of Zero 7 CDs.

Maybe I couldn't live in LA after all!

Adam, are there specific micro/glitch whatever nights in SF? Also, I mostly go to parties that tend to feature the same DJs, so maybe it's not completely Khia vs Bloc Party here.