teengirl fantasy, miracles club, mi ami, 100% silk and the rise of HIPSTER HOUSE: S/D

i'm not saying it's 'authentic'

i'm saying it's better music

nah

that miracles club video makes me want to have so many kids and buy so many SUVs

haha

i'm not saying it's 'authentic'

i'm saying it's better music

― geeta, Monday, October 10, 2011 7:55 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

truth bomb

hercules and love affair and miracles club vids came out in the same year fwiw

just saw mc (not for the first time) last night, and the new stuff is great. more pianos, less acid lines, weird sense of "is this a cover? i feel like i've heard this before" but still pretty great. they had 2 dancers, the usual mime-ish dude that is amazing and i think an official part of the 'club' and another buffed out muscle dude who just kinda flexed a lot. so much better live than h&la.

also- comparing this stuff to old house records is such a ridiculous point. fucking of course the classics are better but it's not like anyone has chances to go see robert owens or jamie principle or whoever play live in 2011. and the few times i have seen dj sets by the artists listed in this thread they played almost exclusively 80s and early 90s house jams so no reason to complain imo. there is a definite sense of reverence for the older stuff even if something like the church song video feels silly and ironic

comparing this stuff to old house records is such a ridiculous point.

There's plenty people right now making dance music as good as whatever old house records tho and this......well, this ain't it.

the reverend OTM

Compelling arguments.

i need to go to bed - i was at the occupy boston protests (i left right before the mass arrests) and it's almost 4 AM

but the tracks i've heard from this genre thus far just aren't very good--they sound like b-sides or outtakes of '80s house tracks. the retro videos are mildly entertaining, but there's this ironic, distanced hipster stance that i find hard to swallow.

your mileage may vary, of course

ok, i really need to go to bed now

i mean, i agree that there is better contemporary dance music out there than what is being talked about itt for sure. that doesn't make dancing to live 909s and vaguely familiar synth lines any less fun imo

i don't think anyone is arguing that this is the best thing happening in dance music at the moment, it's just in my backyard and people actually come to the shows and i see no rational reason not to support it beyond "ewww hipsteres"

standard NNF tropical Italo dub

i try to excise "hipster" from the dialogue past 2kwhenever but if forced to think about "hipster house" i immediately think of the slackjawed italo+boogie that hardcore/indie rock kids-cum-djs seem to default to which a lot of the youtubes in here seem to cover... but then there's some of them are like that first octo octa posted which is fine more "future-type stuff - as is a lot of what DIS covers. the two areas don't really overlap for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sXtAjnUl3U

first thing i thought of when i read "hipster house"

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1355

doesn't really fit in this thread now i've seen what's being discussed, but i like it. has the noise scene connections

i am trying to hear the ironic distanced hipster stance in these tracks and i cant hear it!

and fwiw the artists on this thread have always struck me as serious crate-digging obsessives--they may not be "authentic" but their appreciation for real-deal old-school house is about as far from "ironic" as u can get

just seeing this now...

l.i.e.s isn't DC but NY, and like their buddies W.T., they were punk kids at some point, but have been into house/techno for at least a decade plus. They come from a harder techno/electro background, used to hang out with Legowelt and Creme Org type folk.

ok, just read most of this thread on the train to work.

While it's true that so many of the influencing records were mastered shitty and there may be a bit of punk rock fuck it just put it out attitude, I agree with Stirmonster (as usual, except when discussing hi-nrg and Modern Romance) that I think most of these people, at least the more hipster side of things, just don't know better, hadn't really considered it, or couldn't afford it. With care they can make records that sound good while still not sounding like a Benny Bennasi record or whatever.

ha ha! i have a confession to make dan. i have finally come round to the charms of modern romance after managing to excise the childhood trauma of watching "ay ay ay ay moosey" on top of the pops.

Blue Rondo a la Turk revival next!

I would like to add/give props to the fact that Hipster House is/may be responsible for returning house to it's roots...not just/only due to superficial aesthetic similarities to the old stuff, but the fact that old house was very catholic and strange. What we talk about now as yr standard/typical "house" is nice and all, but it's a sound that's been codified for years that mostly has stripped out those awesome sources, the Anne Clark's Our Darkness and Los Ninos del Parque and all the other weird shit that helped make house and techno so fresh in the beginning.

geeta:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrW_v3qrvmU

That's really nice...but stuff that's that slavishly derivative...I don't know how much it offers. Adding distant female vox and some piano stabs to Can You Feel It is cool, I do love stuff like this, maybe I'd even play it, but at the same time I can't listen to it without thinking of the source material. Not that this is a new thing, stealing/recycling/appropriating riffs/melodies etc. It's homage and I'm fine with it. I'm just not going to get super excited about it. I liked Light of Love more.

I'm right with you Dan. I actually don't see the point much at all.

The problem with this stuff isn't that it isn't for really real (and the h-word is a huge red herring), it's that most of this shit just doesn't really bang like that. If you need more stuff that sounds like the terrible second H&LA record, I guess this is your thing, but I really don't.

ice cold bro

You know how I do.

To be frank, I don't really feel that house in 2011 is any more substantially groundbreaking or future-orientated than anything on this thread.

In terms of my specific listening, many lo-fi records like Ital or Gillette actually sound fresh to my ears after years of minimal, electrohouse and microhouse software precision. And I find this material has some sense of playfulness and fun as opposed to techno Berlin analogue fetishism as a counterpoint. Besides being danceable, it's also interesting conceptually and even a bit more heretical than something like DFA's bridging presumed or real indie-dance divides.

I also like the way the releases on 100% Silk seem so fleeting...

Neither like nor dislike any of this stuff, only ever heard it on ilx not out anywhere - but not sure where idea house is futuristic comes from anyway. i know we've been through this before but i find that idea peculiarly british

xps i can't think of anything here that sounds anything like the stuff on the second h&la record tho... i think most of us were dismissing those comparisons, the only similarity is maybe that they would play the same records in a dj set?

what, exactly, is the purpose of that version of 'can you feel it' posted above? it's not as good as the original, and it's boring.

also, why are all of these people still mining mid-'80s chicago house, when they could be mining the extraordinarily rich vein of '90s house?

is it because soul jazz hasn't yet done a reissue of strictly rhythm or nu groove, the way they did with trax?

let's all have a big authentic off

then i can hack my wrists and rub the blood over the screen so i don't have to read it.

look at that everyone, you killed ronan

Probably because there's generally a 20 year lag in revival movements?

is it because soul jazz hasn't yet done a reissue of strictly rhythm or nu groove, the way they did with trax?

it is sad that nobody in modern house music has ever heard strictly rhythm or nu groove.

you can hear this clearly in the sheer lack of records which sound like music on these labels, and djs who play tracks from these labels in every single set.

if only people would dig deeper then these two majorly successful and massively iconic house labels would be known by more than 2/3 ilmers.

i dream of a world where almost every single dj who ever plays at a club is hugely respectful and in thrall to these two labels, yet it feels as far away as oh...every passing second of the last 7 years.

then i can hack my wrists and rub the blood over the screen so i don't have to read it.

that might make a good 100% silk video, if you added some VHS lines over the top and bad video toaster style transitions

if soul jazz do a reissue of mosaic and the little woman has sold all my steve o'sullivan 12s again there'll be hell to pay

why does nobody in house music bother to repeat the word "detroit" or the word "chicago" in a track these days??? don't they know those two places are where house music was born???

whatever

you and i are arguing two different points

home music

don't think so really, i only ever have one point, loosely...xpost

you and i are arguing two different points

you arent really arguing anything, yr just posting abt how lame you are

protip for stuff on 100% silk, it sounds great stoned, the end

and everyone's happy!

you arent really arguing anything, yr just posting abt how lame you are

hey, nice, oersonal attacks! that's great, super productive

i think i'm going to retire from ILM again

what do you expect if you drop in to tell everyone how authentically house you are? do you ever remember ilm to not oppose that kind of thing?

The extent to which this stuff is a "return" to late 80s house can be overstated if only because house has been returning to its roots since, well, its roots.

e.g. the Magic Touch single sounds more like early Pepe Bradock to me than any first wave Chicago (and arguably more like second wave Chicago than first wave as well).

These are relatively fine distinctions because Bradock was influenced by Chicago as well - but this is my point.

I would agree that Strictly Rhythm and Nu Groove are very much remembered and celebrated, though this maybe was less true seven years ago say. That Strictly Rhythm comp of early stuff compiled by Tiefschwarz a few years ago was (a) great and (b) indicative of how centrally that music is ensconced in house's aural tradition at this point.

In terms of my specific listening, many lo-fi records like Ital or Gillette actually sound fresh to my ears after years of minimal, electrohouse and microhouse software precision.

I get this might have just been a personal statement, but if applied generally this is another one of those ideas that sounds spot on until you actually think about the last ten years of dance music. There has not been a single moment during that period when people weren't celebrating some refreshing return to lo-fi house... the fact that stuff like Abe Duque or "The Sun Can't Compare" were somewhat better produced than most 100% Silk material isn't really enough to make the latter's production values worth celebrating in and of themselves - or at least not as some kind of point of contradistinction.

(reminds me of the one time I thought nabisco was well and truly off the money, when he was celebrating the return of rock in 2001 as being the return of rock bands making music together in a room with a minimal amount of studio finnicking - as if this had ever, ever, ever stopped previously)

Actually mid-00s DJ Hell possibly could pass as 100% Silk material given how hissy it all was.

I say this not to run down 100% Silk, more that I can get frustrated at the sweeping claims made about "the state of dance music today" both by the sceptics and the enthusiasts.

We should keep in the front of our minds that basically any combination of revivalist impulses that can be propagated has been propagated. What changes are the precise constellations of sounds X scenes X contexts.

NB. I love early Pepe Bradock so have absolutely zero issues with the Magic Touch single!