review of nominations and VOTING for (very nebulously defined) ELECTRONIC DANCE TRACKS of the 00s

Yeah, I should have said that, along with all of the other limitations on my perspective, it is certainly UK-centric.

Club DJs, otoh, are always reaching for the newest thing, and you might "Ragysh" or whatever (haven't been dancing in a while as you can probably tell) a lot over the course of a few months and then it disappears.

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Sunday, June 3, 2012 3:12 AM

for bigger tune yes they are likely to get a big peak in it being played and then falls away, but a lot of great DJs (arpiar, zip, panorama bar residents, cdv residents etc ) will play stuff from all kinds of different periods, you just won't necessarily know that

^ ie forgotten records from 1998 or whenever thrown in, records that probably cost $1 on discogs but....only because no one knows what it is

it tends to be less about "I want to dance to Ragysh" and more "oh wow I love this track" as they're already dancing.

partly but more i think its about a set, as in how a bunch of things hang together

That was sort of my point, though admittedly poorly made. You're up dancing, and it's up to the DJ to make it really exciting, and it's those standout tracks that get people really excited (this is opposed to indie disco where you get up to dance to a song or two, and when you don't like one, you just sit down again - it's about individual selection rather than the whole piece).

overall i see where you are coming from re:timeless but one of the things i love about dance music (or at least non UK-focused dance music) is actually a weird sense of true timelessness, records from the past aren't necessarily "oh here's this thing from the past that sounds like its from the past" its more "this record is going to work right now and it could have been made at any time who even knows". i actually like house music's non-changing nature, house music is always house music...is a dan bell record from the 90s dated?

of course there are still a lot of the records on this nomination list that are definitely dated (all that eulberg and ananda type stuff....and anyone voting for mouth to mouth is living in some kind of nostalgia zone) , but in a way its only bigger hits that get 'dated', and most records aren't actually like that

Definitely voted for Mouth to Mouth out of nostalgia, good times were had.

xpost

that's why I'm interested! I want to see what records have come through being passing phases or big hits for a time and are now deemed truly 'timeless'. I'm definitely not a House purist though, and that's gonna come into this poll a lot I reckon. House remains the same maybe but minimal (MNML?) was a thing and then it wasn't, dubstep was a thing and then it morphed, UK Funky etc etc etc.

all I was really getting at is that this poll, in my mind, is more interesting than, say, a best albums of the 00s where Kid A is gonna sweep into a top 10 spot or whatever because I think there's a more agreed-upon canon in other genres than there is in EDM, and a lot of that has to do with trends (if I go to an indie disco every week in 2004, skip 2005 and 2006 completely, and go every week in 2007, I will probably be able to catch up fairly quickly on whatever I missed, whereas doing the same thing in EDM clubs would mean i would have completely missed out on a lot of stuff).

You could just as easily argue that it's not the timeless qualities of dance music that lead to the 20 year cycle of reappropriation, its the music that is quintessentially of its time. No one likes Italo disco because it sounds like it was made yesterday, it got dug up again because of its influence on house and its novelty factor as kitsch. I voted for music that reminded me of the last 12 years, not the music I think I'll still like in a decade.

I've had a latin freestyle song stuck in my head for three days so its possible I suffer from an unique viewpoint on the subject, fortunately for me there are a lot of people with better taste than mine on this board.

I want to see what records have come through being passing phases or big hits for a time and are now deemed truly 'timeless'.

i think 'big hits' (of any genre) sort of become 'out of time'...almost the opposite of timeless, in that regardless of actual sound (dated or no) their ubiquity takes them outside of normal time.

You could just as easily argue that it's not the timeless qualities of dance music that lead to the 20 year cycle of reappropriation, its the music that is quintessentially of its time.

i think yes - music quintessentially of its time (italo disco, 90s drum'n'bass, electroclash or whatever) is what falls out of time and gets reapproriated - but lots of music isn't quite so of a particular time (gemini, daniel bell) and doesn't really fall out of time as such and therefore doesn't have faddish reappropriation in the same way

I voted for music that reminded me of the last 12 years, not the music I think I'll still like in a decade.

― Josiah Alan, Sunday, June 3, 2012

this poll is kind of a composite of those two views. if i'm voting in 2012 about records from 2002 then i'm kind of voting on music that i DID end up liking a decade later, no? unless you are taking self into past and voting on nostalgia alone

House remains the same maybe but minimal (MNML?) was a thing and then it wasn't,

yeah but a lot of that thing about minimal being in and then out was really just about labelling or defining rather than actual music, stuff gets tagged as minimal then the term falls out of fashion and then "oh look these particular records were never minimal after all" - i mean is a villalobos set from today drastically different from one in 2005? i'd say there's a lot of continuity there! could be totally different records from different periods but could easily take stuff from one set and put it in the othea lot of those records are 'timeless' in that they could be from any particular time, if he plays a record from 1999 next to one from 2008 its not necessarily obvious at all...

...guess this kind of comes back to that argument about retromania (which i think makes a certain sense in a UK context, with the turnover of genres and reappropriations but not so much on a wider scale with house music where there is more continuity

Villalobos sets may not be drastically different but I suppose that a Villalobos set in 2016 may not necessarily be the same draw it was in 2006, that generation's clubbers may just see his entire approach as old hat, and the older ones aren't going out as much. Actually Villalobos is kind of a bad example here because he pretty much ploughs his own furrow but you get the point I'm making. But that's the same for all genres really, dance or otherwise.

Really big ubiquitous-on-dancefloors records like Ragysh or, before that, something like Rej, kind of fall in and out of fashion in the way that most pop music trends tend to. They'll be huge for a while, then just put away for a bit as they seem too obvious and people are maybe a little bit tired of them, then they start coming back and just never go out of fashion. A lot of the sounds that appear in this poll will maybe sound a bit anachronistic on current dancefloors but the records themselves that appear will be the ones with staying power. The records that really do blow up and then disappear without trace by and large are the ones that weren't really that great in the first place.

Debate's a bit muddied as well because some of the genres we're talking about, most obviously filter disco and electroclash but also increasingly 2-step and subsequent genres are re-emerging as basic building blocks of current chart pop. But that's what you get when you have a generation young enough to have had rave music around their entire lives.

just using villalobos as an example he himself may not be the same draw in 2016 (esp as he'll prob quit DJing in the next year or two) but the records played fit into a theme of continuity and many can be from any time - same thing as with the get perlonized nights or arpiar..

A lot of the sounds that appear in this poll will maybe sound a bit anachronistic on current dancefloors but the records themselves that appear will be the ones with staying power. The records that really do blow up and then disappear without trace by and large are the ones that weren't really that great in the first place.

they'll also be the ones that get most votes (mouth to mouth, orbitalife) - records that really blow up and then disappear, it isn't because they're no good its because they tend to dominate, and then disrupt the flow of a set once they get heard a lot (In My System is anything but a bad record but could only really be played pretty sparingly now, even tho in no way does it sound dated)

this In My System btw, lotsa records w that title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpE9v4q32O8

some drop away because they sound dated, some drop away because they become overplayed (especially anything bombastic or anthemic or whatever), yeah they may be reappropriated at a later time but they still drop out

whereas like idk tribue by moodymann say - this record would fit perfectly not only when it came out and today, but at any point inbetween - its not a record that would have sounded anachronistic at any point

sorry what the email address?

i tried to do this but i actually started to feel panicky and anxious when i looked at the list.

ah come on, take the plunge. would like to see your ballot as much as anyone's.

i found it easier when i stopped sweating stuff that didn't make the list.

i don't think "mouth to mouth" sounds anachronistic at all and in fact i just used "mund zu mund" in a set ... i hate to poo poo on long discussions but i think a lot of what gukbe and coal are talking about come down to the specific listener rather than the scene or country or genre.

(if I go to an indie disco every week in 2004, skip 2005 and 2006 completely, and go every week in 2007, I will probably be able to catch up fairly quickly on whatever I missed, whereas doing the same thing in EDM clubs would mean i would have completely missed out on a lot of stuff)

like this just strikes me as off-the-top-of-my-head idea making rather than anything rooted in reality

fwiw i dont think mouth to mouth SOUNDS anachronistic (which is why i separate it from things like nathan fake or eulberg), more just that it was such a big and bombastic record that it seemed difficult to play once its immediate time had passed - your experience may be different but i've never heard a DJ play it since when it was played the whole time

i don't think i've heard it out very much - in fact i don't know that i've heard it since, either - but i don't think that's rooted in some quality of the indie rock vs dance genres or club scenes, i'm sure we wouldn't have to think very long to come up with a few indie anthems from 2005/2006 that don't get played anymore as well as some that do. it's not like you'll hear le tigre, bloc party, the killers, franz ferdinand, etc if you go to an indie disco this weekend.

i mean YOU might, i probably wouldn't and haven't lately, and as far as "catching up with the sound" goes i think that has much much more to do w/ the listener than anything else

like this just strikes me as off-the-top-of-my-head idea making rather than anything rooted in reality

I exaggerated timescales but I mean I basically quit going to indie discos for a little over a year and when I went back it was all the same songs save one or two new things. I haven't been out dancing at all in over a year, and I only know a track like "Ragysh" because of ILX. I've never heard it in a club or even in a mix. I'm using that track just because, but if it were a big hit, say, I could imagine hearing it A LOT for a while and then not at all for ages after that (used to hear "Beautiful Life" a lot when it came out, then didn't hear it out anywhere for a long while, for example). I could see missing out on a number of tracks if you drop out of the scene or the music for a year.

it's not like you'll hear le tigre, bloc party, the killers, franz ferdinand, etc

probably not bloc party, but all the others one yeah I think there's a good chance.

ive no idea about what is played in indie discos

this is all obv based out of personal experience, and as someone mentioned, it's a lot different from country to country and even club-specific. i didn't think my original point was all that controversial though. I didn't go dancing for a year in 2007-2008 or roundabout then when I moved to Alabama and to this day I've never heard the Frankie Knuckles remix of "Blind" in a club, and the way people talked about it when it came out I got the impression that people heard it out and about a lot.

anyway i clearly don't know what i'm talking about so i should just shut up.

i think you could have been clubbing in alabama pretty solidly for a long time and never heard the frankie knuckles remix of "blind" out

haha that's true.

ftr i think you know what you're talking about but i also think that your experience has to do w/ your personal relationship w/ dance music and indie music, and that the same is true for just about anybody, and it's not your fault, all of these ideas like continuity, familiarity, etc are basically dependent on the listener and don't have any meaning in and of themselves in a vacuum

in other words this is a hermeneutic problem, not one that we could fix by looking at charts or tracklistings or playlists

i really wish it didn't have to be ranked :/

its all fun and games until i have to name something "the best electronic dance track of the 00s"

eh just fucking whittle em down by desert island disc ... "this one or that one" and the one that you pick moves "up" on the list ... you keep doing that until you're happy w/ the list. it's like voting for politicians. in the end it just comes down to the one you feel better about with your hand hovering over the ballot, and the snap decision makes as much sense as anything else.

hm, yeah, that's a good method, tournament style.

that's how i did it

it's kind of like an endless tournament though ... every time i switch two i gotta start again

i'm doing it where there is a reigning champion and each challenger goes down the list until it beats one

exactly

it's like voting for politicians. in the end it just comes down to the one you feel better about with your hand hovering over the ballot, and the snap decision makes as much sense as anything else.

this is a terrible way to vote for politicians too btw

ok i am looking at the spreadsheet

this is a terrible way to vote for politicians too btw

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d - malice gabryelle refix

should be

d malice - gabryelle refix fyi

so, when is the deadline?

sometime after i vote