Dadhouse

the first question? yes, perhaps the beginnings of bigbeat, but also the retreat into techstep maybe?

the second question? it was always there in a way. some of my thoughts on dance music & nostalgia from earlier this year...

I disagree with Gareth's techstep suggestion - techstep was so obviously and self-consciously the "sound of the future" that d&b producers never worked out where to go afterwards.

"Surrender" is a good call - maybe the first time that a big act deliberately based part of their (revised) schtick around Summer of Love nostalgia, without adding some sort of futuristic twist (beyond updated production skills, obv.)

A problem with "dadhouse" as an idea is that the critics who apply the term tend to be older than the people who are dancing to the music (if often younger than the artists themselves). The idea that "Lazy" or "Love Story" or whatever profited off the back of a horde of thirty-somethings rushing back into the clubs is patently false. And while yes, the music is sorta conservative, it's not really any more conservative than the garage/prog/tech continuum of polite house music that the media have always over-lauded - in fact maybe reason for the success of the two aforementioned tracks and other tracks like them is that the younger clubbers have never heard house music so comparatively *obvious* before.

yer goin alzheimer's on us --> three days ago

i agree the beginnings of techstep were uber-future, but the way it became a cul de sac dated it quite quickly. i meant the retreat was social rather than musical

Ah. I clearly haven't been paying attention.

Anyway, my questions still stand.

Tracer I know - I meant as a critical tool that's only come into fashion this yeah, which is why I said "a problem" rather than "the problem". It's still a really valid and true idea, but it's being used by the same critics who have always praised what was basically dad-house anyway. I know and appreciate what they're getting at, but I think they have to be more aware of the role they've played at reaching this "impasse" (personally I don't think the problem is any better or worse than it's been since, when, the rise of the superstar DJ?)

Gareth - slide into repetitious irrelevance and conscious decision to not to sound futuristic are two different things. If I had never heard techstep c. '99 before and then heard it once I'd probably think it was ultra-futuristic; I don't think the same can really be said for big beat.

tim, yes i agree. its not that techstep *sounds* anything other than futuristic, but that, by stripping itself away and turning inwards, it removed itself from discourse. so, some of the futurism was stripped away. but yes, i'm not overly sure how relevant this is. and big beat is far more important in this argument