The state of Dance music in 2014...

I feel as though this is the first time in pretty much a decade where I've felt so out the loop as far as dance music is concerned.
Maybe at my age it's to be expected but it's not as though I went clubbing every weekend beforehand and yet even last year I felt as though I had at least some knowledge about what was going on in the world of bass music, house and techno and peripheral scenes like jackin' and footwork etc...

Is it down to a shift in the way it's released? I feel as though a few years ago dance genres fell into neat(ish) categories - your dubstep was distinguishable from your deep house etc, and therefore naturally more prominent and easier to follow. More recently we've seen dance scenes and productions scatter and move around each other. It's become bit of a mishmash where bass music artists experiment with four-to-the-floor and vice versa with ILM coining erms like 'bubblers' and 'interzone' which sums it up pretty well.

Still, I can't help noticing I've really let things slip past me in 2014. I only really know about the Terje album and maybe a couple of other bits. So I'm asking for a few recommendations, big tunes, signposts towards recent developments, maybe if someone more informed than me can point out that I'm entirely wrong about the state of dance music right now and that it IS burgeoning and pulling in the same direction(?)

And if this has been discussed elsewhere, my apologies.

Is it down to a shift in the way it's released?

no

Alot to keep up with. There's also this being discussed by some

Rolling afrobeats thread 2014

http://www.afribizcharts.com/top100.php

I suspect it's mainly your age, the same thing happened to me.

everyone likes deep house now innit

lol @ coining erms

i'm sure it's mostly my age. still keen to hear from those who are more up to date about a rough 'what's going on'. Also, am I missing something but what happened to the Bobbins and Partisans threads this year?

interzone is where it's at

"hold my hand"

Oh yeah there's a dance dilettante thread this year too

listen to music, go to clubs, enjoy those things, participate, form your own opinion. there are many resources on the internet and irl. you're like the student who hasn't done any reading and asks for everyone's notes at the end of the course, except many will be happy to do so in a way that points you toward/advocates for their camp. not much useful knowledge to be had that way imo.

oh and don't worry if you feel like a dilettante, everyone is

If you're not putting the listening in, it's likely that you're just not that interested any more, and yknow that's okay. Keeping up isn't obligatory.

yeah exactly, it shouldn't be a chore and it's not a failure to be out of the loop. just don't go saying it's because of ~wider trends rather than because of you and where you're at.

there's a fellow called "fat boy slim" i've been enjoying lately.

lol @ coining erms

― house always! (wins), Tuesday, May 20, 2014 3:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

upgrunt is an erm for sure

The same thing happened to me as to DL in the mid-00s, when I was 25. Ever since a I was 12 or 13 I'd been listening mostly to dance and electronic music and following the latest trends in them, but about 10 years ago I just couldn't be arsed to keep up with all that anymore, and I wasn't clubbing as much either. At first I felt a bit ashamed of not being "cutting edge" anymore, but gradually I realize clubbing and dance music are mostly a young person's game. (Props to anyone who can keep on doing that into their 30s and 40s, but most of us probably can't, for various reasons.) Nowadays I still get the occasional new records in electronic genres that interest me, but I feel no obligation to keep up with any of them. Most of the time I'm just being an old geezer who lies on the sofa who listens to his beloved mid-90s cosmic ambient and dolphin techno, and that's fine with me!

And I still love to dance at clubs, it's just that I don't have the time and energy to do it with every weekend, more like every other month.

Keeping up isn't particularly difficult when you consider you can have a cutting-edge mix sent straight to your phone on a weekly basis, like there's minimal effort involved, way less than there was in the 90s and you can hear a lot more. So it really is a question of motivation, and mine waxes and wanes like I suspect everyone's does.

The overall trends in straight up (mostly European) house and techno aren't particularly interesting to me right now, I agree the interzone is where it's at and a lot of that is happening right in the mainstream.

It could be this - maybe I'm just used to looking for things in the same places but not finding them as easily, and/or the stuff I am finding doesn't feel quite as new or exciting as it might once have. As most here know, my location means I don't have that much access to decent clubs and even if it were otherwise, the number of people who would happily attend with me has dwindled to bare minimum in recent years (which is entirely all down to age and taste for sure). I went to a house and techno festival last summer and found the experience rather testing - the crowd were horrible and the music was pretty dull. It didn't invigorate any passion for current bobbinsy music - everything sounded very standard and uninspiring.

But then dance has largely been a personal listening experience for me - unlike seasoned dance fans, the majority of my listening is made up of mixes I've made myself, for myself, gathered from web searches and recommendations (a bulk of which come from ILM admittedly).

I'm still very much interested in dance/electronic music though, even if I doubt I'll find myself in a club any time soon. It's only that I've noticed since the start of the year I haven't really come across a great deal of exciting things coming from the usual channels. I literally don't know what is happening out there other than drab deep house retreads, the odd post-dubstep experiments like Wen and Untold, and yeah a bit of the interzone stuff (which is nice enough actually, but is this all that's happening?).

Most of the time I'm just being an old geezer who lies on the sofa who listens to his beloved mid-90s cosmic ambient and dolphin techno, and that's fine with me!

― Tuomas

This is where I'm at.

<3 @ dolphin techno

Keeping up isn't particularly difficult when you consider you can have a cutting-edge mix sent straight to your phone on a weekly basis, like there's minimal effort involved, way less than there was in the 90s and you can hear a lot more. So it really is a question of motivation, and mine waxes and wanes like I suspect everyone's does.

I guess this is true, but part of the reason I stopped keeping up with dance/electronic music in the early 00s because I felt it wasn't really producing anything really new anymore. I'm the sort of person who's always looking for new things and new sounds in music, and for the whole 90s electronic music was a good place for that, as it felt like previously unheard sounds and genres were being invented every month. Getting new records felt like taking magical trips to unknown lands. (And yes, I know this partially just nostalgia speaking, but still...)

But by the 00s that flow innovation seemed to have slowed down (as it naturally does with any genre that's 10+ years old), and that meant my interest in new electronic music started to diminish too. I remember being particularly disappointed with electroclash, as it felt that was the first time a major subgenre emerged that was all about dance music recycling it's own past. Since then I can't think of any new electronic music genre that wouldn't sound like an amalgam or a straight revival of older styles. (Some individual records and producers still manage to have that novelty effect, of course.) So I gradually moved into listening older genres (like jazz or samba or disco) that were still new to me, because I hadn't listened to them before. Currently my favourite stuff is Baroque chamber music and Native American new age records, but next year it'll probably be something completely else.

This is something that's been addressed a few times, especially in Reynolds' book 'Retromania', about a cross-genre lack of 'newness' in the 2000s decade. Strangely it was electroclash that got me listening to dance music again after finding the prevailing Ibiza trance trend of the late '90s just too cheesy and not really understanding the appeal of UKG at the time. Electroclash felt like a breath of fresh air because, as a child of the 90s, I hadn't really been exposed to a whole lot of electro in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder about this 'lack of newness' or 'recycling the past' argument - I understand the appeal behind the shock of the new, but it's maybe a bit unfair to call out something like electroclash for the wholesale recycling of old ideas, when in retrospect it wasn't that simple - Fischerspooner and Miss Kittin didn't sound or look anything like Afrika Bambaataa or Arthur Baker etc... It's quite easy to separate these two noises and schemas.

What puzzles me about (the way I've come to perceive) today's dance music though, is that things like the deep house movement really don't feel distinguishable from stuff people were dancing to 5, 10, 15 years ago - it's not really revivalism in my eyes so much as a point of stasis, where even the slightest deviations from the norm are deemed a risk. IT doesn't feel like a musical movement so much as a soundtrack for a certain subculture to have around them (now I'm really starting to sound old, aren't I?).

The interzone stuff is interesting, but because it's a theoretical non-genre, it's harder for people to categorise and get behind in the same way as any of the other Grand Old 'Nuum Traditions like dubstep, jungle, garage etc.. The fact dance music has splintered so much and in so many directions since the fall of dubstep/post-dubstep means the scene is arguably much more varied and interesting than ever before, but it's equally as difficult to qualify in this handy way. Much as genres and categories can get in the way of a good time, having these in place hasn't done dance/bass music too much harm in helping tunes and artists get promoted and listened to. And I think that's maybe one reason that I, as a mere dilettante, don't really understand what is going on.

i sort of empathize with this in that i hardly ever go to clubs, so it's all somewhat theoretical, although i also feel more invested in the idea of dance music than i ever have before (through doing remixes, playing out, friends, etc).

couldn't care less about deep house but there's no shortage of interesting dance/electronic music coming down my social media pipeline. i really like some of the dark 130bpm post-grime stuff that's been happening (Logos, sd Laika, a bunch of shit on mixes that blurs together), idk. maybe there's not an exciting overarching narrative right now but i'm totally cool with that.

oh i heard sd laika in sister ray yesterday - absolutely fantastic stuff, but i wouldn't call it dance music. more like atmospheric Autechre/Oberman Knocks type noise stuff.

'Newness' is a subjective experience. I have never completed a marathon, yet people have been running marathons for at least 20 years or so

The interzone stuff is interesting, but because it's a theoretical non-genre, it's harder for people to categorise and get behind in the same way as any of the other Grand Old 'Nuum Traditions like dubstep, jungle, garage etc..

maybe you dont need to categorize

anyone making good idm-influenced stuff these days?

still keen to hear from those who are more up to date about a rough 'what's going on'. Also, am I missing something but what happened to the Bobbins and Partisans threads this year?

To be fair to you, going by most of the records posted to the bobbins thread i'd think music was awful too, I wouldnt rely on that to discover any music, but thats just personal taste.

You could try using soundcloud even though you dont like the fact it doesnt throw fireworks at you, do a little dance and write you an recontextualizing essay

or if you're that bothered maybe do some work, and go crate-digging instead of expecting the second coming of christ posted through your letterbox each morning

If I was framing this all in terms of tedious Reynolds abstractions I'd be bored too, no wonder these guys are always scratching their heads and feeling nonplussed. In general, your whole problem is that you're apparently relying on discovering music through other people discussing it rather than your listening to it.

Most of what we call the interzone is just house music really, most of the people driving dance music discourse (RA/FACT etc) have a weird blind spot for it it even though it's sitting there plain as day. Although FACT's myopic reinforcement of its own little scene and jobs-for-our-mates mentality is distorting and stultifying in its own ways as well.

sleepingbag - holly herndon is making some great stuff. Try out Katie Gately too, especially 'pipes'

What puzzles me about (the way I've come to perceive) today's dance music though, is that things like the deep house movement really don't feel distinguishable from stuff people were dancing to 5, 10, 15 years ago - it's not really revivalism in my eyes so much as a point of stasis, where even the slightest deviations from the norm are deemed a risk. IT doesn't feel like a musical movement so much as a soundtrack for a certain subculture to have around them (now I'm really starting to sound old, aren't I?).

No. What you call the "deep house movement" is all about deviations from the norm (though such deviations don't feel polemic), which is one reason why tru deep house souljahs hate it all so much (the other main reason being reflexive anti-populism). Your lack of excitement probably stems rather from the fact that, unlike the stiff, synthy sound of electroclash, deep house's basic language and structure has never been unfashionable or rare, so from an outsider's perspective none of it feels "new" in the way that electroclash did. This is a problem for insistent "unified theory of everything" types such as yourself, but not in the way you're describing: it's less about the inherent conservatism or experimentalism of the music being discussed, and more about the dynamic relationship between "bad taste" and freshness (which I'll readily concede is a big part of the enjoyment of new-"old" sounds, and makes a lot of what experimentalism there is seem more interesting).

The interzone stuff is interesting, but because it's a theoretical non-genre, it's harder for people to categorise and get behind in the same way as any of the other Grand Old 'Nuum Traditions like dubstep, jungle, garage etc...

I think you're overreaching here: don't you really mean "I'm not sure what this ILX term "interzone" really refers to but I'm reluctant to dismiss it out of hand"??

The fact dance music has splintered so much and in so many directions since the fall of dubstep/post-dubstep means the scene is arguably much more varied and interesting than ever before, but it's equally as difficult to qualify in this handy way. Much as genres and categories can get in the way of a good time, having these in place hasn't done dance/bass music too much harm in helping tunes and artists get promoted and listened to. And I think that's maybe one reason that I, as a mere dilettante, don't really understand what is going on.

You could have transplanted this diagnosis onto european post-minimal house and techno five years ago and it would have sounded equally truthy. Scenes accumulate and dissipate, of course, but I think you're giving dubstep/post-dubstep too much weight here, implying that the structuring role it played for you (and maybe FACT) is the structuring role it plays for everyone in dance music.

Where is this interzone term coming from. I'd search ILX but im on my phone and figure I'd just get joy division posts.

And yeah I think tons of stuff are referencing IDM right now, knowingly or not.

what is the coolest kindof dance music rn

rolling 2012 UKG interzone bubblers thread

Duke Dumont and A*M*E - Need U (100%) - Rolling UK dance pop interzone thread

i wonder if one day dog latin will ever acknowledge that the reason for x seeming to have changed in a certain way from his perspective is because of his perspective rather than some grand unifying theory of x

To be fair he does seem open to the idea of new music, the problem is he just wants it to come to him with no investigation on his own part. Its like he wants to go hiking but complains there are no mountains in his house - and then starts a thread saying why is the country so flat these days wont someone bring me some mountains

His other problem is he is looking for exciting, interesting and inventive microgenres, instead of exciting, interesting and inventive records

music is a red herring itt

Sometimes a man needs Simon Reynolds to tell him where a mountain is, even when he's standing on the mountain in the first place. Admittedly in this situation Reynolds would be more "no I mean that one behind us, this is only really a big hill, and not a particularly good one".

haha

although, lex, i've said many times in this thread 'this is probably because i'm LOL old'. Sometimes I wonder if you read my posts or just pick out one or two half-phrases and base your ideas of me on those.

music is a red herring itt

bingo - this isnt about wanting new music its about wanting new words and theories

i've said many times in this thread 'this is probably because i'm LOL old'.

Lex didnt say you were old, he said you were solipsistic. You sit in the bath and wonder isnt it strange everybody is all wet and soapy today, this wasnt the case yesterday when i was in the garden, what has changed about society since yesterday

i pulled the same move with rap once, on this board, and have never really lived it down

that said, it's true that the axis of cologne techno etc that used to
be so exciting has become largely dull and worthy these days

xxpost, i'm not denying that it's largely down to my perspective that i feel this way, although at the same time i don't feel as though i'm looking anywhere different to where i did this time last year.
i'm also not saying that i demand categories and signifiers, or that i want the mountain to come to me. However, it's hard to deny that genres and categories in dance have been known to work as conduits for the way dance music reaches people (like me) who consider themselves dilettantes.
On the whole I see this the lack of a 'big unifying genre' to be a good thing because it means you get fewer 'generic dubstep' tracks and a lot more fluidity with ideas. To make a parallel, it's the difference between punk rock and post-punk - one is a very tangible, descriptive sound whereas the other is an un-genre which spans a whole gamut of styles and influences and was coined after the fact.

at the same time i don't feel as though i'm looking anywhere different to where i did this time last year.

I think you have it in a nutshell right here. It isnt that you are changing, its that you're not changing. You will have the same question next year as well

and those mountains still wont be in your house

lack of a 'big unifying genre'? at a time when basically anything that's 4x4 and isn't EDM gets labelled as deep house?

Or EDM even.

Todd Terje doesn't

dog latin im pretty sure you ask this same question on the EOY threads every year

Mostly I'm just annoyed by the idea that dubstep was this big unifying genre.

oh come on. it was EVERYWHERE, inescapable for at least 5 years or more. whether you liked it or not was subjective.

You do know the difference between "this sound was inescapable" and "unifying genre", right? And it was hardly inescapable even then, although the bits of dubstep that veered closest to being inescapable generally weren't the bits that yr blog theorists would have been repping for anyway.

I don't think it was ever more than about equal with house and techno.

who's saying this anyway? I'm not

i don't feel as though i'm looking anywhere different to where i did this time last year.

I still love this bit - You looked somewhere last year and couldnt find anything, a year later you looks in the same place and its still not there. Then acknowledge you didnt look anywhere different but seem surprised.

what?

Do you feel out of the loop a year ago?
Where did you look for recommendations this time last year?
Were the recommendations good?
Did you feel less out of the loop?
Do you feel out of the loop today?
Where did you look for recommendations this time?
Was it the same place?

What do you think you will do if you feel out of the loop this time next year?

i'm always impressed at how good you guys are at seeing the fnords in my posts.

Do you feel out of the loop a year ago? - Not so much. I don't see it so much as a loop as hearing less about stuff that intrigues me. Why does this all have to be about me and loops anyway? It's a pretty boring subject.
Where did you look for recommendations this time last year? - ILM, 14tracks.com, friends, blogs, sites, listening out for things that caught my ear.
Were the recommendations good? - Some were, some weren't.
Did you feel less out of the loop? - Again, I don't see this as a loop thing anyway and I'm starting to get tired of being asked whether or not I am or ever was in or out of it.
Do you feel out of the loop today? See above
Where did you look for recommendations this time? See above
Was it the same place? Yes, I can go consult the dance fans in Alpha Centauri for more recommendations if you wish.
What do you think you will do if you feel out of the loop this time next year? Probably get lambasted and told I'm expecting too much just for seeking recommendations from people who evidently know more than me about the subject.

sorry for coming across as pissy, but the amount of assumptions being dredged up out of my posts itt are pretty mind boggling.

I feel as though this is the first time in pretty much a decade where I've felt so out the loop as far as dance music is concerned.

Again, I don't see this as a loop thing anyway and I'm starting to get tired of being asked whether or not I am or ever was in or out of it.

seriously this is impossible. I only use phrase "in the loop" because answering the initial question!

Why does this all have to be about me and loops anyway?

Because you start your own threads and talk about yourself rather than posting in the threads where there is music

I mean, this whole thread is about you and how you are out of the loop! it says so right there! and now you dont like its about you and your own loop!

more impt question: what are the popular populist dahnce jams that will be big this summer?

i downloaded a whole stupid 3cd defected release and almost fell asleep

just chatting to serious bass-house hed in her late 20s and she has never heard of ricardo villalobos

At risk of actually talking about music in thread, the Resident Advisor monthly DJ chart is trackier and more functional than I can remember it being, there's a load of grey austere techno, a lot of which bangs really hard but then I get to the end and immediately forget it. Even the Ten Walls tracks, which are huge, are kind of noirish. It's the complete reverse of what's happening in the actual charts.

Can't imagine trawling through the monthly chart on RA. I hope I never see another chart or list ever again

There's actually a regularly updated Spotify playlist, at the moment a lot of the stuff is so anonymous that it makes good reading music.

Lol I need less music not more, soundcloud and discogs is plenty for me, I can live without seeing what steve bug is playing this month

Mostly I just listen to Beats In Space now, it's never going to inspire earnest Dissensus chat but Tim has been really good this year and I can't imagine not enjoying it. Not all new stuff obviously but I don't usually like just hearing all contemporary stuff mixed together.

Why would you want earnest Dissensus chat?

And dies it matter if a record is new or old? Isn't it more important that it feels right?

Better to inspire a beautiful feeling no? Then it really has succeeded

At risk of actually talking about music in thread, the Resident Advisor monthly DJ chart is trackier and more functional than I can remember it being, there's a load of grey austere techno, a lot of which bangs really hard but then I get to the end and immediately forget it. Even the Ten Walls tracks, which are huge, are kind of noirish. It's the complete reverse of what's happening in the actual charts.

― Matt DC, Thursday, May 22, 2014 9:21 AM Bookmark

Yeah, yr Interzone aside, I feel like there's a distinctive lean toward unfun trackiness in a lot of dance music lately. :/

what do people mean by 'trackiness'?

never mind, i googled it.

*high fives everyone*

ha yesterday i was reading a Simon Reynolds interview in which he bemoaned the move toward tracky/functional dance music in comparison to the 6-ideas-per-track days of yore

interview was from '98

One thing Reynolds never really appreciated was how the mid-00s was also a golden age of 6-ideas-per-track (I think he knew it but didn't see much value in it).

Even the Ten Walls tracks, which are huge, are kind of noirish. It's the complete reverse of what's happening in the actual charts.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 22 May 2014 17:21 Bookmark

come off it 'walking with elephants' is hilarious

this isnt an area im really invested in but just seeing this poxy thread title in sna and......dog latin please stop reading about music, just scan through any ilx threads vaguely relevant to your interests, make sure not to read anything but play all the youtube embeds, then perhaps at the end of the year once you have heard 1000 dance music tracks in 2014 you can synthesize this into a grand spenglerian metanarrative with some empirical conviction

i trust you are hinting towards irony here nakh...?

not remotely

It's a bridge too far to say that "i'm not feeling this sound much anymore" is only ever about the listener and not the sound, but I think any "the music has gone off the boil, it's not me" argument needs at a minimum to be grounded in discussion of representative tracks that make the point.

I stop paying attention to entire swathes of music that broadly speaking I'm really into, for long stretches, and it's easy to half-conclude that when you're not watching closely nothing much is happening. This can then easily get flipped into "I'm not watching closely because nothing much is happening." But I only really take that diagnosis seriously from someone who is watching closely (and of course, even then they might be wrong).

This is true. It's like the guy who says 'well of course music's all just Simon Cowell now isn't it?'

the trouble is i don't feel like dog latin is receptive to music that doesn't fit into a more overarching narrative (whether fitting into trends or reacting against them as a statement). just take the music on face value and worry about putting it into boxes if it moves/doesn't move you. could name you a ton of electronic/dance music that 2014's great for (but won't, as have posted about them on ilx as well). couldn't necessarily tell you where they fit into the larger scheme of things though. but that's what you want, isn't it?

Xpost But honestly I think people get me wrong in thinking I'm trying for any 'grand unifying theory' here. If I used that term, it was meant with tongue in cheek. I'm more interested in how for example a Kode9 mix from '06 would have been strictly rooted in dubstep but today it would be far further reaching and incorporate dozens of microgenres from a huge huge landscape. I think that's kind of fascinating because for me it's less tangible and categorisable but ultimately more satisfying to hear everything from afrobeats to jackin to footwork all in the same pot.

Hah, although I won't deny you there lex. Narratives are sort of important to me when it comes to any sort of music, I guess. I don't believe any artist or genre exists in a vacuum. Outside influence is what fuels creative decisions on almost all counts in my opinion.

but if you're going to take that approach you really can't be passive or dilettantish in your consumption, you have to get out there and immerse yourself in scenes you enjoy while also being aware of other scenes, and be proactive in finding less championed artists, otherwise you're just parroting something you read about once

i mean you're not ACTUALLY asking for music recommendations itt are you. you're asking what ~the dance narrative in 2014 is. but you can't ask the questions in that order...

you have a point. what i guess i'm really interested in, is the fact there is no current major/obvious narrative going on right now (i guess i'm talking more in terms of 'bass' music as opposed to house/techno here). the fact erms* like 'interzone' get coined is because fans need a catchment to describe a sound, but it's a sound that doesn't really conform to being categorised or led by a media scene.
forgive the 'journalisticness' of that conceit. dance music, for better or worse, does very often get discussed in terms of narratives, and this shapes opinion and forms scenes, and in the more extreme circumstances you get ex-punk kids from the suburbs wearing 'listen to dubstep' t-shirts and stuff like that.

*using this forever now

before anyone asks, i'm not pining for any narrative or for punks in dubstep t-shirts etc - it's merely an observation that i find interesting, and wonder if perhaps it's partly a backlash to the formation of wholesale hit genres which are too easily incorporated and repackaged to football stadiums and mainstage festival crowds (i.e. EDM).

but that's me trying out theories again, i know...

Xpost But honestly I think people get me wrong in thinking I'm trying for any 'grand unifying theory' here. If I used that term, it was meant with tongue in cheek. I'm more interested in how for example a Kode9 mix from '06 would have been strictly rooted in dubstep but today it would be far further reaching and incorporate dozens of microgenres from a huge huge landscape. I think that's kind of fascinating because for me it's less tangible and categorisable but ultimately more satisfying to hear everything from afrobeats to jackin to footwork all in the same pot.

― now I'm the grandfather (dog latin), Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:09 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right, but it's not like dilettantism is some new thing that's only come along post-dubstep. The fact that some producers/artists in some genres take a more purist, single-genre approach for a period doesn't strike me as terribly persuasive of anything much other than the circumstances of those particular people.

You could equally have said about a lot of Detroit techno producers during the 00s: "oh, they used to only play detroit techno, but now they also play soul, broken beats, jazz, funk, all sorts of pipecock music."

There are many other examples of the same dynamic I could provide. e.g. In January 2006 (the same year as your hypothetical Kode9 dubstep mix) we see the Beardo Disco thread start on ILX, tracking the rise of a genre-not-genre of people playing music that is similarly "far further reaching" than just disco, and incorporating "dozens of microgenres from a huge huge landscape".

So this is what I mean about you making dubstep the grand-unifier-of-everything. Even though you say you're not, you're transplanting your narrative in respect of a particular thread of dance music into a general narrative of all dance music ever. Whereas in truth the historical dynamics that shaped the rise and fall of dubstep are themselves echoes of dynamics that have played out in many other areas of dance music (and music generally!) many times before.

Tracing the ripples of a particular splash in a large body of water doesn't really tell you much about the body of water as a whole, beyond the basic fact that these are the types of ripples you might see any time a splash occurs.

before anyone asks, i'm not pining for any narrative or for punks in dubstep t-shirts etc - it's merely an observation that i find interesting, and wonder if perhaps it's partly a backlash to the formation of wholesale hit genres which are too easily incorporated and repackaged to football stadiums and mainstage festival crowds (i.e. EDM).

― now I'm the grandfather (dog latin), Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

People were saying similar things during the "death of dance music" narrative circa 2001, to the effect that over-exposure to Gatecrasher trance had basically killed off people's interests in heavily marketed mainstream lifestyle dance music, and by extension had killed off the dance music's commercial viability and sense of direction. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

There are dynamics at work which are worth talking about, but they're much more subtle, much of it being about what dance music's floating signifiers mean to various audiences at various points of time, and how they form relationships of affinity with one another. The question of why so many erstwhile dubstep fans are into house now is an interesting one, though it is one which you will struggle to answer without an acknowledgment that dubstep itself was never a "year zero" event, that the majority of people into dubstep circa 2006 over the age of 20 had come to it from techno and/or drum and bass, and were clubbing to it alongside minimal et. al., and that it fit into that taste-matrix pretty snugly.

cool

Narratives are sort of important to me when it comes to any sort of music,

make your own, you mix records, right?

what do you think great DJs do? just play the top 10 in the bangers chart?

forgive the 'journalisticness' of that conceit.

actual "journalisticness" would be going out of your way to find out where the great stuff is, and THEN if there seems to be a larger story, reporting on it.

making up some idealised ~larger narrative that fits your own preconceptions about what a larger narrative should be is shit journalism.

i just searched the bobbins thread and the interzone thread and you never made even one post? But you feel comfortable starting a whole thread bemoaning the lay of the land? you say you want recommendations but the recommendations are right there on those threads (ok so they're nearly all terrible records but they'd be the same terrible records posted here because its the same people!). at least be honest and say you've no interest in recommendations you just want someone to write you a narrative so you can pontificate about it as though you came up with it yourself

larger story is always for the morning after anyway, or when you write your memoirs

yeah the larger story only really becomes clear with a degree of hindsight, trying to write it at the time always ends up reductive

the idea that dubstep, for a period, was 'inescapable' is ludicrous. even if you restrict yourself to london, during the 'golden age' of dubstep for every fwd or dmz there were 10+ house or techno nights happening at the same time. and then if you take into account the rest of the world....

ime rather than unifying dubstep has a polarizing effect. i know a lot dance music ppl who regard any association with dubstep or what it turned into as some kind of 'let's go check out room 2' black mark on their career.

depends where you live / who you know. no one i knew outside of the internet was all that interested in house/techno at the time (or at least it was considered an exception).

lmfao @ house and techno being considered a niche internet interest in comparison to DUBSTEP

i never said it was niche.

it's like comparing indie rock and heavy metal and trying to argue over which is most prominent. it depends on your location, the people around you, what you read etc...

people moan about Pitchfork being the dominant voice in music discourse, but in the UK it's Kerrang! which is the most widely-read music publication. Not that many people I meet IRL even know about Pitchfork

depends where you live / who you know.

which means it wasnt inescapable

i couldnt name you more than 5 dubstep records

this is appropriate because dubstep has got more to do with Metal than it has to do with dance music

xpost i bet you can.

it depends on your location, the people around you, what you read etc...

this is sort of like the "ding ding ding" answer to this thread and your never-ending quest for tossed-off hack narratives

"this is appropriate because dubstep has got more to do with Metal than it has to do with dance music"

um...

xpost True. And discourse, especially on ILM and other sites, has a tendency to bias itself naturally towards trends happening in larger cities. Outside London and a few other UK cities (at least as far as I've noticed) there's significantly less interest in house/techno and a much greater interest in bass-led stuff. some very big dubstep nights int eh mid-late '00s, for example, originated in my hometown. But I was actually quite surprised to hear Bok Bok dropping Macabre Unit as a name in a recent interview because, as I say, these kinds of acts feel less 'important' in context.

heavy metal is just people going RRRRRAAAAAARRRRRGGGGH!

I suppose i just want different things from music than the OP, theres no right or wrong way of anything. I just like records which you put them on and feel that "ooh" feeling and i dont care if theyre old or new or who they are by, or what the narrative is, or how important they are, or where they fit, or what genre name someone else has cooked up for it today, And i find all that stuff increasingly oppressive, like the forecful weight of all these other peoples opinions and preconceptions and i want to escape all that neat little boxes business... Even knowing who a record is by before I hear it means I have some preconception or other, what good does that preconception do me?

All these things above like too tracky, or 6 ideas at once, or club listening or home listening - i couldnt give a shit...it either does something a little magical and special...or it doesnt, thats all there is for me! Records either do that, or they dont - whatever it says on the sleeve or what nonsense list its in. - This is why im (semi-seriously) considering painting over the middles of all my records with how each one makes me feel

that's kind of what everyone wants though isn't it? or at least that's the illusion the DJ wants to present: 'this isn't minimal techstep, it's just good tunes to make you dance'...

it's just that what constitutes 'good tunes to dance to' differs from person to person and without a certain vernacular in place it can be hard to communicate what is meant by that.

this is appropriate because dubstep has got more to do with Metal than it has to do with dance music

― coign of wantage (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 May 2014 10:16 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um...

― My god. Pure ideology. (ey), Friday, 23 May 2014 10:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heavy metal is just people going RRRRRAAAAAARRRRRGGGGH!

― now I'm the grandfather (dog latin), Friday, 23 May 2014 10:34 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

QED

Mala invented djent

that's kind of what everyone wants though isn't it? or at least that's the illusion the DJ wants to present: 'this isn't minimal techstep, it's just good tunes to make you dance'...

― now I'm the grandfather (dog latin),

then i understand the thread even less than when you were asking about being out of the loop in the initial post, and when you were telling lex you wanted narratives

but if we're going that route, i could just as well accuse you of wanting all music to be described in terms of star ratings, a sliding scale of 1 - does not move me to 5 - makes me dance and smile. how else is discourse and discussion work if we negate everything else?

non-Platonic socio-cultural observations, thumbs ups and Youtube links

or more charming, creative narratives. either way.

i could just as well accuse you of wanting all music to be described in terms of star ratings, a sliding scale of 1 - does not move me to 5 - makes me dance and smile. how else is discourse and discussion work if we negate everything else?

ha ratings never understand those. I just like hearing new music

new as in new to me, dont care when its from

and theres plenty of it, if you look

that's very worth of you, anvil. wait hang on, who are you again? is it local garda?

Theres nothing wrong with wanting a narrative, or wanting anything - i think you just need to be honest with yourself about what you want. First you wanted recommendations, then no actually a narrative, then you just want good music, then you want a narrative again. You post about feeling out of the loop but then said someone else said that, its all very confusing

You didnt get a single recommendation on this thread, yet it doesnt seem to bother you. Also you never posted once on any of the threads where there are recommendations.

You can accuse me of anything but ive never said my interest extended beyond records

can someone explain what "interzone" is? im guessing its a mix of styles of some sort

the interzone between garage and house basically

the utility room?

anvil, could you make, or point to some recommendations you've made recently? the last one or two records you heard that gave you a little shot of magic?

Actual music? Wrong thread! This is the dog latin thread, not a music thread!

There are two music threads with recommendations on though, the house/techno 2014 thread, and the house/techno of the past thread. If you are looking for actual music they will be more appropriate!

Here's a Good dance music record

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iUbxEVzA-oI

Don't know what loop it's in ... sounds like some kind of drum loop