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

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?

haha that's the most r*****t thing I've written in a while, innit?

oh no, totally agreed on that. but in terms of star appeal, she's really the only one out of that batch that counts.

how are they electroclash? they sound like Elton John.

I don't know about England, but it's regarded pretty much over here.

And he fails to mention New Order anywhere in the entire article? Compares LCD Soundsystem to PJ Harvey & Pavement? I'm sure people have burned in hell for less.

Rex the Dog!

I thought the article was much better than most of the articles on this topic have been, though as per usual at times the "signs of life" can seem to take on a disproportionate level of importance. The Tiefschwarz mention is alright because Tiefschwarz are flagbearers for what is currently the biggest sound in dance music, but I would have considered "breakcore" to be marginal at best. Actually I'm glad that he grouped Tiefschwarz and LCD Soundsystem together because I think it's useful to compare the two groups' similarities and differences.

Although had he actually talked about electroclash it might have been pertinent to note (and this is where Ronan's point comes in) how Tiefschwarz take the electro framework and reinvest it with a ravey actual-dance-music energy (hence electroclash having saved dance music while still being "over" - it's like a "vanishing mediator", or is that vanishing antithesis?).

I'm guessing it's a response to jaymc's comment.

Ronan totally OTM.

That's why this

In fact, some North American D.J.'s and producers like Richie Hawtin have moved to Germany because the climate for electronic music is more supportive

is basically the whole story. Maybe Simon needs to move to Cologne? ;)
Said it in another thread some time ago but dance here is seeing an influx of young people. And this year Dance Valley is probably going to become a three-day festival, so in rockspeak were actually getting into 1969/ the Woodstock phase. :) Now where are The Stooges?

and disco nihilist otm.

If you're thinking about the mainstream (in the US) and why dance is not as popular (anymore), then you have to look at how the public generally tends to listen/view artists: They want a *face* something which isn't as prevalent in dance.

actually, DYOH debuted at no. 14 and went gold half a year later. Not bad at all, but the "teeming throngs" line feels a bit facetious, especially since they've released two albums since then have each done worse than that.

She's right. (Google "lenny bruce," "vaughn meader" and "kennedy" together to get a fuller explanation.)

yeah, when were prodigy and fatboy slim hip on the real dancefloors? never. its all about the singles and compilation mix albums in the REAL danceculture. the culture that brings money to the table, the 'kids'

They aren't waiting on a new Daft Punk either, they just want Dave Clarke to put out a new mix album.

Or Kiss?

Screw that, we're talking about dancing and having fun, and that's NOT Moby these days. What we need is a picture of Altern 8:

http://www.trancentral.ru/pix00/10_misc/altern8.jpg

http://www.yegor.com/Music/moby-7.jpg

see? Lookee!

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