SIMON REYNOLDS DISCUSSES CURRENT DANCE MUSIC IN TODAY'S NY TIMES

why is this odd?

seriously tho, this article is madly sad-sack. and, dare i say it, rockist. amazing how he seems to want to put across the notion that germany is just getting it "these days" (i know he's gotta be smarter than that).

yeah, mixed with other songs! the drawback that "albums" have is a preponderance of g a p s

hstencil, aren't germans more into techno and dance music, don't they go to more clubs more often? aren't they simply listening to more electronic music in general, than people are in the us? i mean that's been my impression, all the way since 1990, at least.

Which is not to say that it CAN'T be done. Most all attempts are failures for sure. A complete analysis could not ignore "events" in society, though. How can a success ("respectable" sales figures) or failure be judged purely on it's own aesthetic characteristics?

"electroclash, anyone?"

Sorry, never went there. And my gut feeling tells me that electroclash never really lifted off in a way that prior genres did. Think of the "glorified bars" that SR mentions. Did dance in NYC really peak after 9-11? This is news to me.

exactly. now i know when something gets in the nyt arts & leisure section it ain't exactly news, but at least the infamous "grunge fashion" prank article was no more than 6 months late. 14 years is just pathetic.

HA! Dave Q wins.

Dig Your Own Hole was a top-ten album, so yes.

electroclash, anyone?

wait, this was *popular*? for more than six months, I mean?

- "musical overproduction, which effectively divides the pie into smaller slices"...

Effect:
- "the overall pie also seems to be shrinking as well"

- “Dance music has simply lost the ear of the floating consumer”

He ends by saying that sonic producers will have to "once again figure out how to smack listeners upside the head with sonic strangeness".

If this is true, it'll only be a new generation of producers doing it “in the name” of electronic dance music.

He also says that dance music became "too familiar", but how can it be too familiar if it's divided into all those microgenres? Do the microgenres SOUND no different than what preceded?

Uh, that's not exactly true. I knew quite a few kids in high school in DC who used to go to the big raves (where was it, Capitol Ballroom?).

Should I refer you to the thread about a year agi where I predicted all this, and was howled down? No, that would be ungracious of me.

I will say this one more time, and then shut up once and for all: the next playground for electronic music is rock - specifically metal. It's not that dance music has died; rather, it's that electronic devices have been reviving disco for about 15 years now, and the revivial is itself becoming stale. It could not be more obvious that rock is on the very brink of going completely electronic, same as happened to funk and disco.

Oh yeah, one more thing: if it's popular and has a strong rhythm, it's usually dance music. Dance music is not a genre.

Moley the Smug

rock is on the very brink of going completely electronic

you need to hear RTX's Transmaniacon.

xxpost

seriously, isn't "dance music" the most redundant term? unless it's a drone, it's probably danceable. hell even some drones have beating overtones.

Yes, true enough.

I think there's al lot to be gained from panning back to a broader view however. When has technology not revived old forms - in music, transport, or any other walk of life? Electronics are not a genre, any more than dancing is. Genres are based around actual musical formulas - specific rhythms, structures and melodies. People will not stop dancing - but they demand new life in genres, and that is were technological advancement, in the broadest sense, can be applied to old genres, reviving them.

And I now see that, while I was typing this, djdee has made the same point with respect to hip hop.

in shelf-life terms, hugely arguable--Kompakt both preceded and outlasted electroclash, has a growing audience whereas e-c has a shinking one, etc. (neither are all that big, obv., even in dance-music terms.)

Where electronic music is right now in America...

Metal Techno, or Techno Metal

Ideas to Revitalize Modern Metal?

Metal techno: the worst genre ever?

perhaps. far be it for me to stick up for electroclash (esp. since i was listening to kompakt type stuff in 2001-2002), but I just don't see kompakt having the "cultural impact" (so nebulous I know) that ec did. tho sales-wise, they're probably similar. there's no kompakt fischerspooner (yet).

Where electronic music is right now in America...

Metal Techno, or Techno Metal

Ideas to Revitalize Modern Metal?

Metal techno: the worst genre ever?

I agree and I'd just like to add that anyone whose interests DO overlap these various genres is probably a pretty open-minded music fan with a large collection rather than some kind of trend-hopping dilettante. Is it so inconceivable that someone would have krautrock, dub, tropicalia, techno and folk music in their collection and actually still listen to all of the above? I think it's a peculiarly dancist take on the situation to assume that people buy into the latest thing and then 6 months later sell all of their records and move on to something new. I know that's the type of listening that Simon Reynolds tries to push but I'm not convinced that too many people actually behave like that. At least nobody who would bother to read a site like ilm.

I think it's a peculiarly dancist take on the situation to assume that people buy into the latest thing and then 6 months later sell all of their records and move on to something new. I know that's the type of listening that Simon Reynolds tries to push but I'm not convinced that too many people actually behave like that. At least nobody who would bother to read a site like ilm.

Jess is surely criticising that type of person!

He seems more than affable and rarely writes about stuff outside of his own tastes. I don't get it.

Right, but he's criticizing the person who theoretically flits from dance music to folk music and implying that said person should have been into and stuck with dance music all along. He says this is a current problem that is particularly bad in NY, implying that in the past or in another country the dance scene was better and the fans engaged with the music on a deeper level than mere trend hopping.

The point that I was (rather poorly) trying to make is that the problem of fickle outsiders inundating the scene can't really be as detrimental as the problem of fickle behavior encouraged from within the scene itself. Would you rather see those NY hipsters change their interests from dub to house to folk or be devoted consistently to the "dance scene" but change their interests from hardcore to jungle to 2-step to whatever the latest sub-genre division of the moment might be? My point is that the latter situation might be seen as the progression of dance music by someone like Reynolds where an outsider might see it as fickle trend-hopping of a narrower, less interesting variety.

Right, but he's criticizing the person who theoretically flits from dance music to folk music and implying that said person should have been into and stuck with dance music all along.

And by the way, it may amaze you to know that say, jungle vs house is as bitter as dance vs rock. or electro vs electro is too, or techno vs house.

talk about assuming something you know nothing about is a microscene!

Personally I have a distaste for some of his writing because of the issues I pointed out in my last post. He seems to get caught up in genres, sub-genres, labelling and categorization in a way that I think encourages that kind of disposable "time to move on to the next new thing" faddism. As someone who is not a part of any of these scenes I find that type of writing to be somewhat distancing but I suppose someone else might think it conveys the excitement of being there in the moment.

I just think Hstencil had shown time and again that he finds objection with anything Jess says, though at least on ILM he shrouds the dislike in something other than childish insults.

I disagree with a lot of what Jess writes, but that doesn't mean I specifically take objection to anything he writes, because I know that I haven't (and have given him praise when he's written something I've liked). I really resent the implication, though it's funny that I'm the one being called "defensive."

As I said, I actually want to know why you think your question is so important. I mean why is me dodging it of any importance whatsoever? If it is then surely you can tell me why you think dance broke through more in 89 than 97? You've dodged explaining your question every bit as much as I've dodged answering it. I'm reluctant to give an answer because I think it's just some rhetorical trap whereby you then go "see, see he hates disco" etc or whatever other thing you decide to make up.

I have a question for you, how do I hate disco or hiphop? Where do I say anything about that?

That's a more clearly bullshit assertion than anything I've said on this thread, and what's more it's personal.

Still nice to note that ONCE AGAIN you try to make this an argument about patriotism, ie "you hate hiphop and disco", "your patriotisms showing Ronan" etc. Is it that hard to just let that go?

On a thread where I've been objecting about the use of the word "Brit" I am called a patriot!

the decline of one affects the rise of the other. of course there were people in either scene at an earlier point, and will continue to be, at a later point, but, in a social sense, it takes the floating people to make the demises and rises)

different scenes are not independent of each other, they are related to varying degrees, the crossover audience that microhouse or electroclash needs to be fashionable and larger, is the same crossover audience folk/noise/weird needs for the same purpose. ie, yes, the 'original' audiences may be different, but outside the immediate, they go for the same people.

ie, electroclash-folk, is not a weird transition at all

I think it's funny Walter accuses Simon of flitting from one genre to the next, do you ever actually read his blog? This is the guy who talks about the "hardcore continuum", who fairly openly is looking for a consistent thread through the stuff he likes, and I think has a fairly solid taste in music.

"He seems to get caught up in genres, sub-genres, labelling and categorization in a way that I think encourages that kind of disposable "time to move on to the next new thing" faddism."

These are the words of someone who has never even read Blissblog.

it was way before glenda collins blew up

As Ronan said, Simon is hooked on the changing-same; he doesn't really switch styles so much as demand that the music he listens to continues to mutate and transform. When combined with his love of drama, I think this can lead to separate "problems" (more accurately, areas of disagreement between him and me) where he dismisses music because its mutational qualities aren't immediately apparent. Jess does this too. So do I maybe, in other circumstances (I have less patience for "breakcore" than either of them, but then I've listened to it less). There's no right or wrong here really: we all apply different levels of scaling or zoom; I maybe am more generally enthused by German electro/post-microhouse etc. because my demands for transformation in that area are smaller. And maybe this means I listen to more "boring" music than either Jess or Simon. But both came around to Tiefschwarz, and Jess came around to Mei Lwun, and I am confident that both will come around to Get Physical. I can think of very few people who are more rigorous in their attempts to articulate the value of a specific piece of music once their attention is sufficiently focused towards it.

Marz - Wir Sind Hier...they just sound so beardy.

And also kids coming in and adults going out. (Though I'm sure most of us will be at the club until we keel.)

Exactly, and the point I was trying to make is that his writing sets up this narrative of dance music as a constant progression. It's not that I believe that Reynolds personally loses interest in one type of music and moves onto something new. For all I know he listens to nothing but records from '89 all day. But I think that this demand for change, mutation or progression in the music is one of that factors that leads to the genre-hopping that Jess was complaining about. It just doesn't make sense to me to criticize trend-hopping hipsters who have abandoned dance music for folk music when the dance scene itself encourages that hunger for change and novelty.

I think it's funny Walter accuses Simon of flitting from one genre to the next, do you ever actually read his blog?

How is that relevant? If I didn't care for the articles of his that I've read then why would I follow his personal blog? I apologize for the rude tone of some of my previous posts as I really have no beef with the guy. Let's just say I just disagree with some of his opinions and leave it at that. I'll try to veil my distaste more heavily in the future.

These are v. different things though! It's not like Reynolds is saying "y'know guys, I was really into dance music but now it's not moving fast enough so I'm gonna drop it all and get into speed metal/folk/etc!" I mean, for all his complaints about dance music no longer moving fast enough (and he's been making this complaint since 1998 at least, if not a bit earlier) he's been pretty loyal, and the developments/expansions in his tastes (to accomodate post-Timbaland hip hop, dancehall, grime, breakcore etc etc) have all been very logical when viewed from the vantage point of his tastes at the point when he started making those complaints.

If anything Jess's model is a bit strawman-ish, not in that it's not realistic but that this sort of thing is very hard to locate in individuals; it's more the product of an entire discourse shifting from focusing around one thing to focusing around another. Hence the level to which grime became a "talking point" on ILM in late 2002/early 2003 (following one or two years in which dilettante interest in 2-step garage had contracted significantly) is much more vulnerable to charges of fashionability/trend-following than Reynolds' individual championing of it, which was totally consistent with everything he'd written prior to writing about grime.

The strawman aspect is the presupposition of a certain passivity in how we make choices as to which music we choose to listen to. Is Banhart-style New Folk only popular because certain media organs are pushing it? I dunno; or rather, I know that's part of it but I can't give any particular reasons as to why this is more true or damning in the case of new folk than it is with grime/dancehall/baile funk/reggaeton beyond my own personal preference for the latter (you might make the argument that, unlike Banhart, the majority of the audiences for these styles don't seek critical sanction before listening to this music - but for the purposes of this conversation such audiences are practically hypothetical).

If there appears to be something dishonest about huge numbers of people suddenly getting into Banhart it may be the arbitrariness of it - the sense that it's a shift which does not rise out of the listening habits of the audience which has made it, but has rather been imposed on them by a force too persuasive to ignore (the media/fashion etc.). I'm not sure if that is true actually: I imagine that a lot of people who were secure during the alt-country/expansive-american-rock era of the late nineties and early zeroes were never actually totally won over by rock is back revivalism, and have only moved further and further into prarie expanse of sepia-toned pastoral lassitude (if anything, I think a lot of people in their mid-to-late twenties have actually been moving in this direction on an almost unbroken trajectory ever since grunge. The kind of people who really got into Neil Young via the Pearl Jam connection).

But the broader point (which I hope that final digression kinda illuminates) is that the arbitariness of fashion offends by dint of its perceived meaningless, the suspicion that Devendra Banhart or whoever merely stands in as a placeholder for some concept of up-to-date-ness which has no real aesthetic criteria to support it (ie. Banhart is "now" because the media say he is). Even if this were actually the case with Banhart fans, it would certainly be the very last accusation one could make of Reynolds, whose tastes are if anything constrained (to the extent that they are constructed by) by the aesthetic criteria he has spent so much of the last twenty years formulating and articulating.

But who says that those critera of "up-to-date-ness" or being in the "now" have any use for the people who like Banhart? The whole point I was trying to make is that the concept of being up-to-date is something that has no value to me at all as a music fan. Newness says nothing about the quality of the music regardless of whether or not the perceived newness is as you say supported by aesthetic criteria.

It's not like Reynolds is saying "y'know guys, I was really into dance music but now it's not moving fast enough so I'm gonna drop it all and get into speed metal/folk/etc!"

Well, maybe he should! I guess there are three possibilities as a listener here. You can decide that the music you're listening to is not mutating and moving fast enough and move onto something entirely different. You can remain faithful to a narrowly-defined aesthetic and simply lament that your chosen genre has ceased to grow and change. Or you could give up this whole idea of constant progressive change completely. The first two choices ultimately don't seem that different to me.

Good times.

WAHT IS DAHANCE MUSIK MADE?

mayahoo, mayahee, mayaha, mayahaha