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)

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Simon's Saturday March 6th Blissblog entry (in part):

"Just got back from Miami a few days ago--and yes, that is on the early side, if I’d been down there for Winter Dance, but I wasn’t: it was a family mini-vac. We left town just a day before the droves arrived. Totally coincidental, of course, but I can’t help finding an inadvertant symbolism in it. It seems all too apt a signifier for my disengagement from dance culture.

Is it just me that’s over it, or is “it” actually over? I can never decide. Some months ago Philip Sherburne stoutly defended dance culture's continued vitality contra an Alex Petridis obituary for same in Tthe Guardian--and much as I admired Phil’s rigour and passion I couldn’t help feel that Petridis was only pointing out the bleedin’ obvious. There’s evidently micro-scenic motion worth monitoring and I enjoy reading the sonic-shift scrutiny from Phil, Finney, Tufluv, Ronan, et al, but…. the burning urgency to go and check out the recommended records, in store or in situ, just isn’t there. And as much as that might just be me, in my heart of hearts I feel it’s an appropriate response to an objective deficit of…. whatever it is that makes things matter, or made this thing matter in first place. Dance may not be a lost cause exactly, but equally, neither is it a cause in any sense anymore.

Sonically, it’s a movement that isn't really moving: people scrabble around to shuffle together some fresh-seeming (meaning slightly-less-stale) combination of established elements from the last 20 years of electronic dance music's rich history(probably the most disheartening dance experience last year for me was watching Luke Vibert live dusting off the 303 again--acieeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzz). With all the period sounds being juggled and obscure archival sources coming in and out of favour, it's at the point of there being a 'record collection dance' just like there's been 'record collection rock' since the Jesus & Mary Chain. Retro-Dance to match Matt's Retro-Rock TM. (For what it’s worth, I think electronic non-dance is probably in even less impressive shape--when was the last really head-rearranging new sound to come out of IDM?).

(Grime exempted from all the above 'cos it's not dance music).

The only people left who really care are either deejays (amateur as well as professional), druggers, or those with some kind of business or career stake in it (including journalists). The punters, the general populace, aren’t there in anything like as much force anymore, and neither are the fashionistas, those fly-by-night types who actually provide vital grist to the vibe-mill. As well as being a bit more demonstrative and lively on the floor than your true school scene-guardian types, the trendhoppers are a bit like opportunist life forms, parasites whose buzzing presence indicates that here is a flourishing source of cultural nourishment. They’re a signal that this is the place to be. At the moment the best that dance culture(s) can hope to be is a place to be, one of a number of leisure options on the urban menu.

And an enjoyable one still for sure..."

Steve Kiviat (Steve K), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)

probably true - i certainly care less than i used to

stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Don't all music genres end up becoming just "one of a number of leisure options"?

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.

Steve Kiviat (Steve K), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

For what it’s worth, I think electronic non-dance is probably in even less impressive shape--when was the last really head-rearranging new sound to come out of IDM

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

stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

where oh where will we go to get some kulcha next?!

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

These sentiments feel familiar to me.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm sure the above's been said at the end of many an era, but it's interesting that this particular trajectory of nightlife culture (beginning in the early discos, thru to rave) should have its headstone (in the U.S., at least) placed amidst national debate on gay marriage, "Totally Gayer!" tv shows, and opposition to such withering away.

Dare, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:14 (twenty-one years ago)

where oh where will we go to get some kulcha next?!

try the Palms Of Goa in Soho matey

stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe it's cos he's, like, 40.

Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:36 (twenty-one years ago)

he was also 30 when he started raving so i think that's pretty much bullshit.

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

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:41 (twenty-one years ago)

There is nothing wrong with losing interest in something as you get older. "Has it changed or have I?" is worth addressing, I guess, but in the end "I don't like it" is the most important thing.

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.

Mark (MarkR), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's maybe true* that dance culture is slipping from its age of jouissance to its era of plaisir (I know these are no doubt misused terms but I got them off Simon R in the first place so it seems apt). An opposition between the two is pretty much the motor of how he writes and thinks but it also seems to me his weakness too.

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

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

There's something of the tiredness I felt (and rambled on about here) regarding having to always be 'on' on all the time, keeping up with everything or else, thus my comment above. My solution has been to stop worrying about that and to leave the micro-obsessing to those willing and able to do same.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)


There is nothing wrong with losing interest in something as you get older.

But what if it's also your source of income? That said, who cares? It (Dance Rock Whatever)'s always in flux.

nathalie (nathalie), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

x-yawn

Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

insightful.

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:08 (twenty-one years ago)

if i have had a problem engaging with dance culture i blame it on the fact that the general populace, aren’t there in anything like as much force anymore, and neither are the fashionistas...

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.

vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:08 (twenty-one years ago)

When's he gonna do the book on the hermeneutics of School Disco?

Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Dance culture? Maybe because this doesn't just refer to people who go out dancing often is the reason some people have a hard time keeping up with it.

dleone (dleone), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

i started writing this on sunday morning after reading simon's post and planned to post it to technicolor but i will probably never finish it, so i might as well post it here:

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...

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Or poptimists vs Jessimists!

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:19 (twenty-one years ago)

arrgh

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

It's that there's (as always) too damn much of it

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

dleone (dleone), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:22 (twenty-one years ago)

haha manly because there hasnt been anything really NEW in the last two or three years

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:24 (twenty-one years ago)

and i've reached a point where i've accumulated so much of the old stuff that the not-that-new new stuff has to be pretty fucking spectacular for me to even care.

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

also i AM a dillytant when it comes right down to it, and always will be. i'm sure if i was more "committed" i could burrow down into the various seams of certain genres and find endless pleasures in the minor tweakings and deviations. but i cant, so i wont.

strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm bracketing out my nursing home years to catch up on box sets.

dleone (dleone), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

re: dom's quote, I don't know that it's worthwhile in this convo. to focus on 'home listening/collecting' while forgetting the social aspect Simon is probably pining for -- the clubs, the parties, traveling to and out-of-the-way, dialogue, etc. But for myself I know things'd be a lot better if all the best slivers jess mentioned were scrambled together when I went out. Instead, at least in DC, it is micro-micro-micro. I wasn't proximate to the early ambient house days with Alex Patterson playing everything + the kitchen sink, but after eyeing the collections of most file traders these days, what with all the interest in bootleg mashups and grey albums, it seems to be what people are reaching for.

Dare, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I suspect a key fact people aren't tackling is the extent of the commercial decline of dance. I mean there are still fucking loads of packed clubs at weekends in London or Britain aren't there?

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)

Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it'd be very easy to read the dance is dead articles and think that there wasn't a real spirit left in the genre or something, or to forget that people actually are still going out and enjoying this music, or having their lives basically dominated by it. There's still no genre which can take over someone's life to the same extent.

Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Dance music has to die once every generation or so. Clears out the bad blood y'know.

Tony Casino, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:53 (twenty-one years ago)

So the Boy with X-Ray Eyes grew up to be the Man Who Knew Too Much, and realized that ignorance is bliss, yadda yadda. You really have to possess a young, absorbant mind to be romantically blown off your feet by every new genre derivation -- not too mention being simultaneously repulsed and secretly thrilled by the trendwatching fashionistas invading/hyping the scene. Guess what, the very young aren't very appreciative of being told their scene is dead. If it's dead to you, that doesn't mean it's dead, but it no longer matters what you think.

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."


Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Also: he'll be back.

Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Im still not really sure how I feel about it. When I read the entry a day or so ago, I bought it completely, and even started to wonder if Western culture as a whole was just dead. I have invested a lot of time in it, and to admit to myself that it is "over" is to really undermine a large commitment.

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")

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe it was Miami that did Simon in. All I remember from the coverage in the NY Times is Oakenfold/Tommy Lee/Perry Farrell/Puff Daddy. That's enough to do anybody in.

scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

i wonder how larger media outlets figure into this as well? why is DEMF not as important as Woodstock? DEMF gets more people, better music, and it is free.

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

okay - i had this response idea as a joke and now thinking there might be some validity to it-
perhaps part of the problem is the drugs that are popular right now. drugs seem to go through phases much like fashion, and they tend to compliment the music scene- Right now the predominant fashion is 80's retro and the predominent music is Urban/Hiphop/R&B. I think this has led to a rise in cocaine popularity, and a decline in psychadelics. Hence, people want music that reflects their cocaine "inflated ego" high - and what better compliment than inflated-ego endorsing hip hop toonez - esp. with urban personalities like snoop dog and dave chapelle supposedly getting off weed- I hardly hear any weed-rap anymore.. The current drug scene seems to be alcohol and cocaine, and that doesn't really lend an audience to the tripped out sounds of techno (this is mostly speculation since I'm not even around the drug scene anymore).. Haven't really thought this through and don't know how much this idea really holds up...

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..

pete from the street, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:17 (twenty-one years ago)

No I think it's important to mention drugs, can't really have the discussion without mentioning them!

Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:19 (twenty-one years ago)

another thing to consider on this and many other current social issues - how the age of broadband has dramatically increased the rate at which culture progresses and recycles.. we have yet to see the long-terms effects of the current 'speed of life'...

pete from the street, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

also, Simon says in his book that the music has made him think harder about social and political concerns than any other. surely this is still valuable as well, and probably still true for him.

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.

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:21 (twenty-one years ago)

i think simon is partially right, i think dance has definitely shrunk, i think ronan is wrong about clubs in london being packed, derrick carter at the end was not packed, and lfo and villalobos at fabric on their birthday party? walked right in, no queue.

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!)

gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

i think everyone being on the same drugs has a lot to do with it. going to raves and seeing the veterans, the supposed "keepers of the flame" as it were, the ones who should be socializing the newcomers to the postive social aspects of the scene, lost in k holes is certainly a problem.

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

i dont think a few people doing ket really has any bearing one way or the other, and peopel havent all been on the same drugs since about 95! if you are going to mention drugs i think its more the fact that people do es and stuff just anywhere now, and have been doing for a long time, and at £3-4 a pop, you can see why

gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

it might be more true in america than the UK.

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I have so much to say on this subject, but so much to read first. May a thousan long and thoughtful posts flourish before the inevitable descent into paranoid acrimony.

the music mole (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Rock? Fountains of Wayne, The Shins, and Wolf Eyes.

Jess I think I have located the source of your malaise

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Malaria even.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

does that fact that people even care that Reynolds doesnt like the music show that the discourse has becoe to centralized anyways? I admit I am a victim. I should just be able to read Tim's blog instead and not give a shit ;-)

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Why hasn't "Break down your taste into 'one populist choice, one semi-popular choice, and one obscurantist choice'" become a thread?

dleone (dleone), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Dance hasn't shrunk, and it never has shrunk. It's just that the fucking critics have gotten bored with it -- for now. Sorry, but when Reynolds says "is it dance or is it me?"... It's DEFINITELY him.

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.


donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 20:43 (twenty-one years ago)

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.

hector (hector), Thursday, 18 March 2004 01:53 (twenty-one years ago)

haha nice one ronan
best thread ever

robin (robin), Thursday, 18 March 2004 01:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, it really is! And probably the most civil given such a robust subject. And I was just thinking about the whole "where to now" question on the tram only two days ago.

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.

Stephen Stockwell (Stephen Stockwell), Friday, 19 March 2004 07:51 (twenty-one years ago)

and people's people people

Stephen Stockwell (Stephen Stockwell), Friday, 19 March 2004 07:55 (twenty-one years ago)

reading simons 2nd piece on this, i now disagree with what he said. i don't think dance is creatively dead at all, but i do think it is in social retreat. the number of ordinary people that you run into at school/work/wherever going out to dance stuff is less than before, this i think is irrefutable.

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

gareth (gareth), Friday, 19 March 2004 10:26 (twenty-one years ago)

but what about the end of sonic novelty i.e. 'new sounds' - surely this has had an effect on the creativity of dance and hip hop, combined with the limitations of subject matter and themes behind any pop music (inc. dance and hip hop) - i'm aware these are sentiments of a jaded - perhaps even bitter - mind

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.

stevem (blueski), Friday, 19 March 2004 11:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I feel like I totally missed this 'golden age of hip hop'.

Barima (Barima), Friday, 19 March 2004 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, 'the end of sonic novelty' area has been done to death - it's a well known factor behind the 'rock is back' crud. A lack of sonic advancement isn't necessarily the end of a genre if other elements like tunage and production skills will still shine through. After all, we've been in a revivalist period for a few years now.

Barima (Barima), Friday, 19 March 2004 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe but it always felt to me that dance revolved around those new sounds, but yeh it doesn't affect my enjoyment of Strokes/Stripes/whoever. the daft thing is i keep tolling the bell but will probably look back on this period in ten years and feel it was just as exciting as twenty and thirty years ago (then not now).

stevem (blueski), Friday, 19 March 2004 11:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe it was Miami that did Simon in. All I remember from the coverage in the NY Times is Oakenfold/Tommy Lee/Perry Farrell/Puff Daddy. That's enough to do anybody in.

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

Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 19 March 2004 12:06 (twenty-one years ago)

You're probably right. The dance press in Adelaide was doing features on the scene's (imminent) decline since its first issue in 1991! Every DJ in town was already predicting techno was already on the way out even back then. Go figure. The grass is always greener 5 years earlier.

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.

Stephen Stockwell (Stephen Stockwell), Friday, 19 March 2004 12:36 (twenty-one years ago)

The interesting thing about what Simon says after the Kompakt show is that really he seems to be seeking the sort of dance music which people here would seldom if ever praise.

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.

Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 19 March 2004 13:17 (twenty-one years ago)

A lot of the attacks on current dance music/scenes appear to me as directed towards a huge strawman built upon projections and wishful thinking. In the minds of music journalists, today's dance has apparently become a commercialized, inward looking, deeply arrogant form of music, devoid of any real enthusiasm. Even within dance music, this applies to the much maligned subgenres eg Big Beat, Trance, etc. The professionalization of clubbing is seen as the final nail in the coffin. Yet whenever I speak to clubbers, producers and DJ's, and even promoters I'm still amazed how much genuine, pure enthusiasm there is for the music, the people, the experience. The audience may inevitably decline (dance's almost complete dominance over all other 'going out on a saturday night' musical options cannot last) as all fashions do ('vibe migration'), but I'm very hesitant to blame that on internal flaws.

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...

Siegbran (eofor), Friday, 19 March 2004 13:53 (twenty-one years ago)

After winessing the sxsw fest and all the shitty noun bands in crappy bars with 40 year-old industry people with purple hair, and lame ass corny college radio indie fuxx, and every teenage girl dressed like a salvation army wanna be strokes groupie from Ecourse, Michigan with an amsymetrical haircut. Dude, fuck rock and roll. Rock and roll is a festering corpse that is being picked clean to the bone by a bunch of trend maggots.

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.

The Rebukes of Hazard (mjt), Friday, 19 March 2004 22:55 (twenty-one years ago)

WOOOO! </ricflair>

send me your address mike!

vahid (vahid), Friday, 19 March 2004 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I have no idea what sxsw, ricflair or mike is but WOO HOO!

N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 20 March 2004 00:33 (twenty-one years ago)

So I haven't checked this thread in awhile. Does SR still hate dance music?

Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 20 March 2004 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

seeing sxsw first hand this year completely changed my mind about dance music and electronics.

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.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 20 March 2004 02:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Mike is WOO HOO!

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

hector (hector), Saturday, 20 March 2004 02:47 (twenty-one years ago)

"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... "

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

don, Saturday, 20 March 2004 02:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Siegbran right OTM.
Self-righteous hostility is just boring. Anywhere.

Stephen Stockwell (Stephen Stockwell), Sunday, 21 March 2004 08:54 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe after some 30 years, dance culture finds its continuity burdened by its own Gospel history. Maybe the nostalgia that several generations of 16-26 yr olds have invested in this rite of passage has also served to alienate younger music lovers by its implicit demand for them to recognise its quaint historiography in order to supposedly 'understand' the music (ie: "House principles", the real meaning of Funk, Techno's "true people", the Rave massive, and the endless dry-milking by "Sasha van Oakenweed" of its dubious Ibiza lineage).

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.

Stephen Stockwell (Stephen Stockwell), Monday, 22 March 2004 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

nine months pass...
why isnt grime dance music though? a lot of it still uptempo.

goldie sovereign (goldiesovereign), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 12:59 (twenty-one years ago)

five months pass...
This thread was quite interesting! I've just been rereading it and hmmm, lots of passion and provocative, well argued viewpoints. History will sort it out.

moley (moley), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 06:11 (twenty years ago)

The kind of music being made now is made by and made for people who have been in this for a while; they’ve grown with the music, they don’t want to hear crass riffs and obvious hooks.

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.)

Omar (Omar), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 10:53 (twenty years ago)

Why does Simon Reynolds hate present-day dance music so much? Doesn't he like LCD Soundsystem? Or Fischerspooner? Or Vitalic?

Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 12:02 (twenty years ago)

Of course he doesn't. Where's the grime content in any of those?

Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 12:04 (twenty years ago)

incredible thread

sleep (sleep), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 14:42 (twenty years ago)

It's kinda funny to note that while this thread was raging on, SR was quietly posting on a Sheffield bleep thread.

MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

i hate to say it but i think his comments ring more true today than a year ago...

vahid (vahid), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

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.

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!

sleep (sleep), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 19:58 (twenty years ago)

in L.A., "deep house" is seemingly the dance music of choice on the extremely influential station KCRW, played on pretty much all their dance music shows. It's packaged, at least here, as the mature, sophisticated alternative to other "immature" types of dance. Which is why most people I know who own Naked music compilations (despite their relative high quality) have never seen the inside of a dance club.

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

I think it implies this overstatement that Masters at Work mixes are the dance equivalent of a live Eric Clapton album or something.

Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:14 (twenty years ago)

Alternately, Gear OTM.

Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:14 (twenty years ago)

well I'm not saying it's bad music, I'm just saying it seems to be the dance music of choice for a crowd that skews slightly older and less adventurous, maybe.

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:15 (twenty years ago)

I think this same crowd was buying Global Underground comps in '98 and '99

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:16 (twenty years ago)

Do they listen to Minimal House in LA?

Semaphore Burns (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:18 (twenty years ago)

Gear, I didn't think you were saying it's bad.

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.

Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:20 (twenty years ago)

oh ok!

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.

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:23 (twenty years ago)

But no Perlon? No Luciano?

Maybe I couldn't live in LA after all!

Semaphore Burns (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

xpost, haha, I wish those places would just put Costes 1-6 on random and be done with it.

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.

Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

Not many, but Philip S had Soda and now there is this new Kontrol thing.

Semaphore Burns (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

There's a hotel restaurant downtown that had a microhouse DJ a year or so ago (note: could have been PSherbourne).

gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

it's funny, if I couldn't find a good DJ playing anywhere in town and I wanted to dance, somehow I'd always end up at Goldfinger's.

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

which is gone now

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

the venues you guys are describing seem to back up SR's orginal post. the music is probably more interesting now than when he posted, but it's still being listened to in art galleries and hotel restaurants (at least in my city).

ugly and mean, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 21:00 (twenty years ago)

i'm not really sure what i think about the validity of simon's argument right now, need to think on that a bit. but in reponse to a few posts ago, what was definitely not me playing in a restaurant. not saying i wouldn't, if the arugula was good, but i've certainly never been asked. (an sf restaurant playing microhouse? weird.)

ps, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

well just checking! FWIW: It was Ozumo on Steuart and I was there for a birthday party. It might have been 2 summers ago now that I think about it.

gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

Thanks Gear and Spencer (xposts)

sleep (sleep), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 23:36 (twenty years ago)

Omar OTM. Danced to Kinda New with a few thousand good friends at Coachella. Good times.

Lukas (lukas), Thursday, 23 June 2005 00:49 (twenty years ago)


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