The build and release tactic in dance music

Good question, and one I'm interested in knowing the answer to, having taken my eye off the ball re. dance music circa 1991-93. By the time that I got fully interested again in 1994, the build/release technique had become quite common. There had long been breakdowns of course, but these had been intended more as mixing opportunities, rather than as passages which took you all the way down, gradually up, and back in again with a great big boom. Whereas you'd never mix out of the middle of a build/release breakdown.

The first I can think of is Lil' Louis "French Kiss" - but that doesn't quite fit the rules as there's no sense of release once you kick back into the main track. It just... resumes.

I think this goes back to the MC5 and the Stooges

</eddy>

Oh fine. I guess James Brown counts too.

mackro you should listen to acperience to hear what is meant here

yeah i was gonna mention 'French Kiss' but it's a bit different as you say, changing tempo also tho i suppose i should've added that before the build-up comes the beatless break/lull too, which all three do share.

sonned by the hand

i forgot until this moment that i wrote about the build and release more than four years ago, about a track that i believe is also from 1992 but didn't get on a proper album until 1993 -

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/nylpm/2003/08/circus-bells-hardfloor-remix-by-robert-armani/

mackro, no son intended!

lofl I know but i just wanted to say SONNED BY THE HAND

...of the Man

i guess we're really just talking about extended snare rolls (four bars and over) and arpeggio loops that multiply and swell over 16 bars. i wondered if anyone pushed this before E/rave boom. seemed the logical next step after monotonous acid mantras. hardfloor obviously loved this sound so much they wanted to both dramatise and popularise it more just by playing more with the percussion element.

i kind of miss this - getting sick of all the subtle sounds out there

yes you still get this technique in effect today but as you say it's much more subtle (+ 'drum' sounds so different now) and more integrated with the monotony of much house and techno (i haven't actually heard a new trance track for a while...), or so i believe, which is naturally a progression on from this, as it should be, and yet...

It's been used a lot in recent years in DnB and particularly Nu-Skool Breaks.

I remember some 80s era Cabaret Voltaire 12" mixes that did this.. like between Microphonies and Code, although it wasn't used as a buildup/release type of thing, but just a variation on the tempo for kicks. Also the songs had a much slower tempo.

In honesty though, I do think the tradition is inspired by long energetic rock jams, although there is a specific style to what's being talked about here (I was just funnin' ya guys)... I think this is one of those things, like in most cases musical, where the further you go back, the more hazy and underwhelming the progenitors were in comparison.

Not only Cab Voltaire, but also some Tackhead stuff too, although once again, not build/release, just variation and creating a jarring effect.

??? this kind of shit goes back to disco

i mean if yr talking purely 'dance music' then chicago house or ny garage or whatever has plenty of this too

Well yeah, and it goes further back into the 60s into rock, which is danceable too.

Blueski is talking about a specific era of early 90s maybe late 80s electronic dance music here.

in a literal sense all songwriting incorporates this ... blues structure is a build and release 12 bars etc ... the relationship of chords to one another is all about build and release. if you're talking strictly in post-disco dance music than i'm going to argue that it existed on day one

And I would agree, but the technique became more pronounced over time and peaked in the early 90s, and now while the technique is still used, it's more subtle -- overall -- than it was in the early 90s. I think Blueski is specifically looking in that small time period in question (although I could be wrong and should let him/her clarify)

mackro have't we met? i looked mannish enough i thought :/

??? this kind of shit goes back to disco
i mean if yr talking purely 'dance music' then chicago house or ny garage or whatever has plenty of this too

i'm talking about two specific styles of build up described above (8 snares per bar x 4+ - bassdrum equivalent seemed to come after, and massive synth hooks or arpeggiated patterns looped and developed for four bars - you might have to hear the two tracks i mentioned to know what exactly what i mean as i can't always describe it properly, but what earlier examples did you have in mind (from US house/garage/disco exactly, just to clarify?

in disco this seems more like it fits in with "normal" songwriting arrangements eg the breakdown is either the bridge or an extension of the bridge section and the build-up/release is more reminiscent of a 1-2 bar fill or a solo section like you would hear on a soul or jazz record, before coming right back in to A-B

drum machines and sequencing/sampling changed this up a bit? 8-bar loop patterns and the encouragement of knob-twiddling on instruments as they played back a program seem to have separated techno & house & garage from the more standard disco breakdown. also house/techno cellular structure often obliviates the A-B altogether so you just have a,a+,a++,a+++,A,C,A,a++

wish i understood that sequence

detroit dudes didn't really go for prolonged drum rolls (like not even over 1 bar), too busy with the strings :)

Deej there's a very specific thing which trance records (in particular) do in this regard that can be washed away a bit if we say "yeah it's all disco mmkay" - i.e. what's interesting is that early house does not have what blueski/tracer are talking about. Nor does ardkore/jungle/drum and bass/2-step garage: what those styles all have instead is a more advanced use of the breakdown where the beat cuts out for a while and then rams back in with astonishing force (in modern drum & bass the difference here becomes almost imperceptibly small, as the linearity of the beat means you can "hear" it even after it has cut out, thus mimicking some of the effect of the trance-style build-up breakdown).

Whereas with trance/french house etc. it's like the groove is abandoning you, but then it comes back to save you... there can be something almost metaphysical about the experience of a breakdown/build-up/release section on the dancefloor, especially if drug-assisted: it's like you've lost yourself and you're stuck waiting for the groove to help you find yourself, and you can hear it searching for you with flashlights around the edges, always circling closer, but you're not sure when the flashlight will suddenly fix upon you.

With disco - esp. say Larry Levan productions or in a different way Moroder - I'd say there's a lot of stuff which replicates part of this effect: with Levan stuff it's the way that layers are added and subtracted in order to create the sense of peaks and valleys in the track. But there's nothing like this specific trick with trance perhaps kickstarted.

Indeed, I thought to myself "surely Wild Pitch house would be the first time this trick was used in "proper" house music in a substantive, sustained and deliberate way?? Which at least coincides with early trance, and probably just predates it??" But then I went back and listened to Photon Inc's "Generate Power (Wild Pitch Mix)" and there's no breakdown section at all, let alone a build-up version of one - I had assumed there was because the use of layering in this track the whole way through is just out of this world - but, crucially, it's "out of this world" in a post-Levan sense, not a trance sense. If anyone can think of Wild Pitch tracks that actually do this trick that'd be interesting.

So maybe the use of EQing really kickstarted this in house. EQing, I think, formed the sonic highpoint for this tactic, and in some senses dealt a bit of a blow to trance by stealing and improving on one of the key weapons in its arsenal in the name of house music.

So then I thought perhaps an early example of this being done in a substantive/sustained/deliberative way in house would be something like The Bucketheads' "The Bomb". Still one of the best house tracks ever in its full fifteen minute version, and sounding so so current right now - and first and foremost the whole thing is an experiment in eliciting different types of anticipatory tension. Anyway, I listened to it again, and you can start to hear this idea (ahem) filter through, but still in a very limited and hesitant sense, it's still in a post-Wild Pitch (i.e. post-Levan) mode of adding and subtracting layers strategically, the EQing is very subtle. Moments at the eight/nine minute marks are very close to being build-up breakdowns, but fall short, I think, of what this thread is looking for - on a tangent, what this track does really well that's not done enough in house (and certainly not in trance) is cut from one groove to another suddenly and radically (going from the percussion and "Wooh! Wooh!" section to the disco/vocal section) - a trick which mimics some of the effect of the build-up breakdown insofar as the first section explicitly sets itself up as a prelude to something. But the lack of a proper build-up breakdown surprised me, and makes me wonder what the first use of this in a house context would be.

The pinnacle of the EQing trick translated into a pop song is, I think, Kylie's "Love At First Sight" (its use on "Digital Love" is pretty fucking astonishing as well, but I'm discounting Daft Punk on the technicality that they're a dance act). I'd have to think for a while to nominate an appropriate trance-pop example, although obv. I'm partial to DJ Sammy's "Boys of Summer" and Fragma's "Toca's Miracle".

"i kind of miss this - getting sick of all the subtle sounds out there"

Tracer a lot of current stuff is big on build-up breakdowns in at least a post-Wild Pitch kind of way (which is to say, it sounds like Wild Pitch would sound like if my notion of Wild Pitch having big breakdowns was correct).

The Loco Dice remix of Dennis Ferrer's "Son of Raw" is a good example here, and I think a very clever example of how you can combine some of these tricks: the way that the track moves from its opening groove to its central groove (which filters in oh-so-slowly) while the beat fades into the distance before fading back in in a trance-style tiered-percussion heirarchy is just masterful and totally hype-inducing - and in a way that is as close, I think, to something like "Acperience" than it is to French House (although, again, this track is ultimately so Wild Pitch it hurts, right down to the strangulated snatches of diva vocal). I was disappointed that this track didn't get more love in the end of year dance polls, perhaps on account of it being a remix of a big 05/06 track and people being suspicious of Loco Dice/Martin Buttrich. I don't think there was a track in 2007 that did more exciting things with layering. Although there are a lot of candidates here, and may I humbly suggest you check out if you haven't already:
- Matt John - Soulkaramba
- Kabale Und Liebe & Daniel Sanchez - Mumbling Yeah (the breakdown on this is insane, although more in a "One More Time" kind of way than a build-up breakdown kind of way)
- Saint Germain - Rose Rouge (Tak-Su Remix Rhadoo Edit) - although the mystery version that Luciano plays is better for this than the official release

Obviously none of these are as deliberately massive as "Acperience" etc. but still! Worth hearing.

The pinnacle of the EQing trick translated into a pop song is, I think, Kylie's "Love At First Sight"

it was so hackneyed by that point i can't believe people love this kylie single so much! i mean it's ok but...can't think of another pop song that did it now tho...

So maybe the use of EQing really kickstarted this in house

house/garage/techno got a lot of "eq" function out of the reso filter on the front panel before I think they started getting into high/low cut stuff (eq)

I wrote a ten-pager once on how the structures and details in dance music were basically manufactured folkdance normalized by the common technological solutions employed by producers

most early 90s house was just doing the beat drop for 4 bars and resume thing ala 'french kiss' still (going through my folders and not coming up with anything quite like the trance style). gappy knowledge of course but i can't actually think of any US tracks going for it until 'higher state of consciousness' and that feels like more of a european track because of the obvious due it pays directly to 'acperience' plus it's general massiveness here at the time and early big beat anthem status. uk hard house makers went for it around the same time (Stretch n' Vern 'I'm Alive') and it became as crucial to their as it was to it's bigger trancier sister.

Steve what's the earliest house track you're aware of doing the filter disco/french house version of this?

I really love it most when the "resume" breaks in on or close to the 4 or 4-and instead of waiting until the downbeat

Tim maybe some of the 'Trax On Da Rocks' stuff e.g. my fave 'Ventura' from '95 - not quite the same thing but figure it's what you mean by equivalent. Bangalter just triggering an orchestral loop every bar, then twice per bar then four times per bar, maybe 16 bars total plus working the cutoff at the same time. Killer.

Steve what's the earliest house track you're aware of doing the filter disco/french house version of this?

I know my name's not steve but isn't carl craig credited for making the filter house prototype with 69/paperclip people?

or is that just carl craig that credits himself with that

where the fuck has my mp3 of 69's 'Rushed' gone this is important

Am I curious enough to listen to all of The Sound of Music and The Secret Tapes of Doctor Eich in order to answer this question? YES.

actually now you mention it 'Ventura' is totally a nod to 'Paperclip Man'

FOUND: great build-up breakdown at the four minute mark of "Rushed".

(blueski, i'm bad at keeping track of aliases, so I'm not sure who the face behind blueski is... were you previously st3v3m?)

yep

'Rushed' is what, 93? there's no build up with drums just with the great arp synth loop iirc. i wish it would do a bit more tho - just some background strings to heighten the tension perhap tho then it would be even more reminiscent of 'french kiss'

Maybe in a slightly different way, but wasn't this done a lot in dub versions of 70s reggae?

(AHA. Yes, blueski is def an XY people!)

that's why I figured they left craig off of "teachers"

more thinly veiled excuses for salad days nostalgia tomorrow. nighty night.

I have nothing useful to contribute here except that in broad terms, and so far as I can kind of see the history, the foregrounding and emphasis of builds and swells might actually coincide with the moment where people started making this stuff on tools that offered linear displays of the tracks, rather than pattern-based displays. No?

(I.e., working on patterned-based machines line 808/303/etc. versus getting to the point where things are assembled a bit more on computers with tracking-style channel displays.)

If we're listing tracks, how about 2000 and One's "Work"....now that's a guy who knows how to fuck with you in the breakdown.

You can hear kind of a proto-version of this in M/A/R/R/S' "Pump Up The Volume" leading into the Ofra Haza break.

Yeah -- that's actually making me wonder how much of this comes from hip-hop DJs? The way one might, say, snag the last words of a bar, keep rewinding and scratching around them, then do it double-time, then quadruple-time, then restart the groove -- the problem is, I can't really recall if DJs always did that, or if the pace of it kind of got borrowed over from dance music (haha or I'm just being tricked by some Big Beat / Fatboy Slim nexus where scratch-style samples get cut into trance-style builds)

you know what i mean
you know wha
you know wha
you you you you
you you you you
y - y - y - y
yyyyyyyyyyy

I have to say I do also lean towards the disco trend though, disco or funk even.

I know Steve means a specific thing but I don't think it's radically different in house/techno to disco, especially not when you keep in mind that re-edits and stuff were being done back in the day. It's just the technology has allowed breakdowns to become more intense over the years, or at least to change.

nabisco see above where I was bringing up the changeover to sequenced beats and knob twiddling being "allowed" while the loop was playing back

Clearly the relationship/difference between the trance-style breakdown and other similar effects in disco/hip hop/dub/whatever is one of degree as much as nature. But this sort of question too often gets bogged down in a chuck eddy versus whoever (dan selzer originally?) debate where one side insists "all popular music ever is the same in this regard, genre is a myth" and the other says "no clearly there are historic and sonic differences here, genre is everything". As if the possibility of a relationship that combines sameness and difference is beyond our collective powers of cognition.

I mean surely what is precisely so interesting about this question is how trance articulated something distinct using pre-existing ideas it had received (consciously or otherwise) from other genres internal and external to "dance music"? The development of a meme as a combination of both sameness and difference is, I'm tempted to claim, always the most intestesting aspect of its status as a meme.

(okay, maybe not always, but it's always gonna be in the top five most interesting things)

Emotionally, my inclination is to assert the priority of disco and house vis a vis trance because I listen to the first two a hell of a lot more, but to some extent it effaces the qualities of the former styles to not recognise such points of distinction - if we can't see what Larry Levan and Hardfloor do differently, to what extent can we claim to do Larry Levan justice?

(okay, rant directed at no one is over now)

the extended trance breakdown was already present in cowley's work and some italo things in the 1980s, to my ears anyway (i basically hate almost all of it except for some old eye-q stuff)

Yeah I was actually thinking that Cowley might be a good one to check out in this regard - surely the extended mix of "I Feel Love" does this?? Again my memory is unreliable in this regard, i seem to be retrospectively inserting breakdowns all over the place.

no the 20 minute cowley version definitely has one of the most epic breakdowns in the business

i think what Trance did which Disco (inc Italo) didn't so much is make the build-and-release the real focus, magnifying and structure everything around that, which seems to go against the term somewhat considering 'I Feel Love's own trance-like monotonous motion which would always be it's own key characteristic. the difference is really just in at what point tracks became entirely defined by this 'peak and valley' aspect.

Yeah that's a good point. Trance definitely pioneered making the breakdown the star of the track - which I guess also signified a new height (at the time at least) in dancefloor functionalism... tracks as breakdowns whose other parts are just raw materials to give it something to break down.

you could argue it made the music more formulaic and predictable as a result and probably a big reason now why a lot of 90s dance isn't appealing now esp. to young bloggers who totally get space disco, 80s acid and rave stuff

Harder to describe the difference between trance and, er, the more resident advisor end of things ("minimal" being a bit too narrow in this regard). Like, Radio Slave's "Bell Clap Dance" has as few elements as a big mid-90s trance record, but (as I play it) doesn't feel as predictable in its construction... but probably will in retrospect?

this thread

:D

i wanted to start this thread 6 months ago but was afraid of the whole 'wtf this started with disco/reggae/12 bar blues/mount sinai thing' too much and had to get my act together

I don't have an answer to the original question. But my favorite example of the breakdown/build-up/release occurs in Johnny Vicious Feat. Nina Maitri's "Here With Me" (on this comp). It's from 2001 and hence not a pure example (assuming there is such a thing). But its impurities make it so deliciously baroque and ridiculous. So much so, in fact, that it's practically a new song unto itself.

The closest disco stuff I can think of (admittedly not all that close) is some Chic productions like "My Feet Keep Dancing" and Norma Jean's "I Like Love."

And, right, The Stooges' "T.V. Eye" (even farther off, obv.).

Fantastic thread, btw.

around '96 BT was taking the epic build/breakdown to the apex at exactly the same time that Van Helden was doing the biggest 'cut everything for spooky ambient wash lasting a minute or so' stuff (e.g. his remix of Nu-Yorican Soul 'Runaway') but instead of snare rolls he'd just fade a one-beat snare loop for what felt like eternity before bringing it all back at once e.g. Professional Widow (and then like Hardfloor milking this on every remix he did at the time).

"Lobotomie" by Emmanuel Top has a kind of inside-out reverse version of this.. I don't know how else to describe it. The acid trance of the thing gets more and more intense until all at once everything goes quiet -- you almost think something's wrong with your stereo, or the recording, until you listen much closer and hear just a few little bits of percussion holding the beat -- and then the bassline comes back, and kick drum comes back, but it's very understated and soft compared with what came before. Eventually, of course, it all builds up again, but by then the track's almost over. The kick drum drops away and there's no grid holding the song together any more, and the acid squiggles are allowed to grow and multiply on top of one another in a kind of mammoth, broken frenzy, but the kick drum never comes back, the flashlight never finds you again.

I like what Tim F. says about how tracks that do these big breakdown-buildup-release moments are hidden from you, yet searching for you, until it all comes back. There is something visual about what the music does -- it's like it's playing peekaboo, which plenty of other songs, in other genres, had done before and continue to do, as has been mentioned -- but it teases and plays with this more. It knows you know what it's doing, and the longer it can stretch out that anticipation the better. So maybe part of what distinguishes this heightened awareness in the crowd of the tropes and tricks of the music it's hearing. Instead of trying to turn the tables on the crowd and do something unexpected, the producers actually feed these expectations, and give the crowd even more of what it expected that it could have ever bargained for.

So maybe part of what distinguishes this stuff results from a heightened awareness in the crowd of the tropes and tricks of the music it's hearing.

it's hard to not think of that as 'dumbing down' now but people like norman cook admitted as much themselves at the time.

Too much is not enough!

I think it's the "giving them even more of what they expected that they could have ever bargained for" that is key here - that's pretty hard to do, and warrants maximum respect when achieved.

jazz solo

Well, when it works though I mean.

sorry to sound dumb but could someone describe exactly what a breakdown *is*? (in simple terms, or maybe link to an example?)

^^^drop the bass

take out the drums, add some spooky strings, open up the treble end of the bassline, start the snare drum roll, throw in a brief pause, and then bring in the drums again an beat the crowd over the head with the main riff.

Higher States Of Consciousness was the track that kicked this into over drive after Acperience.

a breakdown is when some instrumentation is dropped out for an extended period of time to emphasize certain other sounds in the music.

see above - "jazz solo"

I was looking for a particular mix of HSOC that was modeled after Acperience but magnifies the breakdowns to the point of near parody. I can't find it among various mixes on youtube, but this one has a couple of condensed breakdowns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9gWA491H4U

i agree with the notion that this build and release has been one of the most primary weapons of dance music since day one. the cowley mix of "i feel love" is indeed a fine example, though im sure even earlier ones exist that no one is thinking of.

what trance did is essentially make a genre of the fetish of doing that same trick IN EVERY TRACK. that differs from dance music as a genre which might have used it in certain tracks, but also did it across many tracks just as frequently. basically trance is the "transformers" of dance music while house and techno were much more the subtle "blade runner" in how they used this.

if you want to pinpoint the exact bit that trance stole though, it has to be acid house that made that much more common. the tweaking of the 303 is definitely the most obvious predecessor of the trance buildup, even if it wasnt quite so over the top or used on every track.

thanks for the explanations, that helps. there's also this from wikipedia:

Disco mixer and remixer Tom Moulton invented the "disco break" or breakdown section in the early 1970's. Moulton had been remixing a dance record and found that the performance had "immaculated" (gone up in pitch as live performances are prone to doing), and this fact would be noticed unless he separated two sections of the recording with non-tonal information. [1] He edited in a section of drums, and the aesthetic effect was immediately found to be pleasing to dancers. The placement was also useful for club DJ's, providing a rhythm-only section of the recording over which to begin mixing in the next record to be played. Mr. Moulton has maintained that his innovation was an accident (ibid). The placement followed the patterning of a traditional pop recording: it replaced the bridge typically found in such a record after the second chorus. A clear example is the breakdown in "My Lovin' (Never Gonna' Get It)" by En Vogue: a sampled male voice can be heard introducing this part of the record with the sentence "and now it's time for a breakdown". Longer tracks often have two, three or more breakdowns.

Initially the transition to the breakdown was an abrupt absence of most of the arrangement in a disco record as described above. HiNRG records would typically use a pronounced percussive element, such as a drum fill, to cover the transition, and later genres reach the breakdown section by a gradual reduction of elements. In all genres the stripping away of other instruments and vocals ("breaking-down" the arrangement) helps create intense contrast, with breakdowns usually preceding or following heightened musical climaxes. In many dance records, the breakdown often consists of a stripping away of the pitched elements (most instruments) - and often the percussion is cut too - but an adding of an unpitched noise sound effect. This is often treated with a lot of reverb and rises in tone to create an exciting climax. This noise then cuts to a beat of silence before returning to the musical part of the record. Examples of the elements left during a breakdown include "a single string note, a German woman having an orgasm, or the voice of God telling you to take drugs" (Brewster and Broughton 2003, p.79).

does rex the dog ever use this trick on his remixes? i get the feeling he has done, or something similar

uh, tom, are you saying that solo sections in jazz are breakdowns?

<i>Higher States Of Consciousness was the track that kicked this into over drive after Acperience.</i>

In the places that I used to go, Misjah & Tim's "Access" was the watershed moment.

does rex the dog ever use this trick on his remixes

Yeah, the Heartbeats remix is one of my favourite examples. There's actually a couple of times in the breakdown where you think it's all coming back, but it doesn't, and the anticipation and denial is almost excruciating - and of course it makes the final release all the more euphoric.

"immaculated" (gone up in pitch as live performances are prone to doing)

??? can someone explain this to me? first i've heard of it - i know guitar strings can get loose and go flat... but the opposite?

this ties in with this, from shep's wikip entry

During Shep Pettibone's peak years at the end of the 1980s, he established a trademark style of mix most easily identified by the use of a sequenced "machine gun"-sounding snare drum. Steve "Silk" Hurley simultaneously made use of a rapid fire snare, usually with more reverb applied. In England, the mixes of Phil Harding would feature this element (as one can hear on Bananarama's "I Can't Help It") and, less in the spotlight, Dancin' Danny D. and Mark Saunders (both respected remixers) were featuring variations of this motif in their own work (Danny D's snare usually lacked the syncopation of Shep's while Saunders was slower and displayed a pronounced "splash" effect). In contrast, Frankie Knuckles used the snare drum in an extremely sparing manner for his trademark "Def Classic Mixes". Shep's "bazooka snare" evolved into a singular sound that can be used with great accuracy to identify his remixes from the period 1988 to 1992, when present.

audio samples plz, this is the internet 2.0

Mexican version of the build and release tactic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih9wsbq71oo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKZT0x6iTCg

This is the earliest house example of this technique I could think of it. It happens both in the beginning and around the 2 minute mark.