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

selective c&p-ing from the bobbins thread:

I'm posting this here, rather than the NNF thread: 100% Silk Mix for Wow Magazine.

01. I Can Feel the Heat - MAGIC TOUCH
02. What?? - PHARAOHS
03. High Reflection - OCTO OCTA
04. Wet Devil - SFV ACID
05. Milk N Honey - SIR STEPHEN
06. Queens - ITAL
07. Shadow Disco - INNERGAZE
08. Kyrie Eleison - MARIA MINERVA
09. Trickle - CUTICLE
10. I - GILLETTE

Kind of wish it was actually beat-mixed, rather than crossfaded one track to another, but still offers a nice overview of the label.

― MikoMcha, Tuesday, October 4, 2011 5:11 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Really feeling the Octo Octa EP, even if Ciara vocal samples have well and truly been done to death.

― ha ha ha ha jack my swag (boxedjoy), Tuesday, October 4, 2011 2:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

have almost started a hipster house thread sooo many times cause i duno where to talk about 100% silk, miracles club, xander harris and all the other noise ppl that jumped on this trend

new mi ami stuff and the solo magic touch/ital releases are great if you have a tolerance for this type of thing

― it's time for the purpculator (psychgawsple), Wednesday, October 5, 2011 2:01 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark

The funny thing is that 100% Silk et. al. most definitely give off this vibe of hipster something, but i'm not sure if it's more because of their outsidery status or the fact that their revivalism has that crucial sense of artifact-fetishism, or somehow those two things intertwining with each other, or...

But in this and several other senses they're basically 2011's IDIB, right?

― Tim F, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 2:57 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i AM feeling stuff like ITAL but like delia & gavin or whatnot it doesn't really "work" in a techno / house set except in the loosest way

i think it is *related* to house and techno but distinct enough that it might deserve a different thread

― funk master friendly (moonship journey to baja), Wednesday, October 5, 2011 3:21 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

this has been going on for a few years now, especially in the 20 jazz funk greats / altered zones sphere of influence, but it seems to be making some serious inroads on the west coast in the last year or so (tho i guess i can only speak to this wrt sf and portland): former noise artists and others with post-indie sensibilities picking up drum machines and taking a stab at house and techno. this stuff ranges from more primitive/diffuse experimentation like cuticle and the deeep, to 80s horror-sdtk influenced stuff like steve moore and xander harris, to acid house revivalism like miracles club and soft metals, to futuristic piano house cuts by ital, magic touch and octo octa.

100% silk is an offshoot of not not fun records, and both are based out of la, so i'm thinking it probably has some influence down there too. also oberlin seems to have something to do with all this, at least in the form of merok records / teengirl fantasy / blondes. and something about me wants to throw dc stuff like the l.i.e.s. and future times labels into all this, but that stuff seems to be accepted as more 'legit' within the dance community for some reason? i definitely agree with what tim was talking about, how it absolutely comes off as 'hipstery' but the reasons why are hard to pin down

anyways, let's keep this out of bobbins cause it is definitely it's own 'thing'

beat it with that hipster trash

lol.

here are some youtubes for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16WuhaSSIPo&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSU1b0ZSyNg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzxvOgcGLmk&ob=av2n

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaBhZ1jr_M4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNxhgua6K6A&feature=related

xps

There's been some talk on the Not Not Fun thread as well. It's pretty easy to draw lines from say other acts on NNF to the house-inflected material, also some of the projects Gavin Russom has been involved in (Black Meteoric Star, No Fun Acid). Most of the time it seems to be noise/avant artists trying their hand at dance rather than dance artists trying their hand at noise, which is I guess why it codes as "hipster" and a lot of it would sound odd in a club.

I haven't kept up with all the 100% Silk releases, but "Ital's Theme" is a track I've been playing a lot recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUbNXO7_CGA

i dunno man but that octo octa sleeve is gorgeous.

i like the idea of a more diy/release-heavy approach to dance music. plus, this stuff is dfa-level cheap on vinyl in the us

and yeah, gavin russom to thread for sure. pictureplane probably belong here someplace too

these dudes opened for optimo in sf recently and a good time was had by all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iWvj4UQ8zQ

(miami dolphins GET IT???)

Wouldn't Pictureplane be a bit too silly (that's a description not a diss) and indebted to stuff like rave and jungle for this group?

Also, some of these artists aren't just releasing hipster house - the Xander Harris album is standard NNF tropical Italo dub iirc.

the XH album is like that for sure but the single on 100% silk is different and pretty rad imo. and yes pictureplane is p silly, it's probably useful to establish some boundaries here lol

ha ha ha imagine someone saying "standard tropical italo dub" in 1994

i see a few connections to IDIB but i see the real spiritual successor to IDIB in soft metals. this stuff is a little more out there. anyways, here is my favorite hipster-house song and video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2_6qL0GZrE

whiney is gonna frickin hate it

nice t-shirt

(^ that ital track is posted upthread too, with sexy 100% silk jacket. when i saw him live he introduced it with "here's a little something i wrote for you guys..." or something along those lines)

for whatever reason the progression of honey owens is v interesting to me and telling of this scene in general: starts out in experimental noise collective jackie o motherfucker, moves on to ethereal droney stuff as valet, then decides to cover mr fingers tunes as miracles club

xp - my point was just that some of these artists have a dilettantish approach to house material, they only sometimes put on their house hat.

yea everything about this thread is whiney bait tbf

yeah daniel martin-mccormick has a cool progression too. i still like mi ami the best but his ital detour is pretty fun

hmmm i don't want to diss a female electronic artist but imho honey owens getting into mr fingers tunes might be down to the adam forkner connection, he's been doing synth-heavy stuff for like 5 years now

valet >>> miracles club, too

speaking of valet, nobody replied to this: honey owens / adam forkner free folk power couple appreciation thread

idk i was asking forkner at what the heck fest about house/techno/if he djed at all and he pretty much avoided the question, then proceeded to stand behind the dj booth all night at the local bar where some k-rec's ppl were djing, twiddling knobs and acting v interested (and i recently saw that him and calvin johnson are starting to do some dance night at holocene together wtf). he's doing 90s rnb revival stuff as purple and green now tho, which is interesting for different reasons (also the singer is amazing)

oh yeah, i dunno if elite gymnastics fully qualifies as hipster-house but they're in that ballpark i think.

it might just be a good idea to lump all DIS magazine stuff into "hipster-house"

but yeah i really like the two valet records, and the last song on the 2nd album definitely hints at this direction

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hC8MOYoYQk

err...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hC8MOYoYQk

a lot of this stuff just reeeeeeeeeeeeks of portland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmV31r6-IW8

i guess someone who used to be in glass candy is involved w/that, to make the connection to idib even more obvious

feel like first-wave IDIB is absolutely the antecedent of 100% silk in every applicable sense, johnny jewel from glass candy started out making noise/drone as twenty-six and iirc used to brag in interviews about palling around with wolf eyes, pretty much blazing the trail from noise/lo-fi to dance that many of the people named itt are currently following

easy to look at 100% silk as filling the void IDIB left when glass candy and chromatics went on hiatus and the label mostly just put out nu-disco 12s that could have just as easily come out on dfa or permanent vacation, wouldn't be surprised if that's how they saw themselves, glass candy and jewel's solo "mystery producer" mirage singles seem like the template for so much of it

i guess to some extent the early dfa connections to no wave / black dice / six finger sattelite are the beginnings of this template, and i have no doubts that you could reach much further back than that if you wanted to.

but yeah, james brooks otm

another thing that had me torn is when i read about ital's production technique

part of me is like whoa, that's really cool, but part of me is like, why? and then all of me answers its because someone spent a lot of time in critique sessions talking about *process*

where did you read about that? i am curious (he kept deliberately unplugging the cord from the headphone jack at the aforementioned show, aiming for sooome type of effect i presume but it sounded awful and everyone was just sorta confused)

what's his production technique like?

Surely 100% Silk is the house to IDIB's disco? The Silk stuff is far more trackier. And I'm just going to throw in the Invisible Conga People are easily my favourite act from this axis.

Ital's production technique is discussed here: http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/podcast/lwe-podcast-97-ital/

I think IDIB is more connected to 70s and 80s disco and early house/techno, whereas this stuff is a further rooted in the 90s when house and techno were more established.

That video for Miracles Club "Church Song" looks so much fun, one for the "videos I want to live inside of" thread. It was the song I was dancing around my kitchen too a few weeks ago when I accidentally broke a glass and stood on it, so now it has a bittersweet connotation for me.

Can we also join the dots between this stuff and: "My Girls"; Delorean; Sincerely Yours (the record label); John Talabot?

alexis blair penney is worth checking out too- pretty embedded in the aunt charlies queen scene in sf, most of her album is being produced by teengirl fantasy, this remix is p nice imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gBd4YN8eQ

fellow ilxor sanfrandisco is working with her on something too (hope it's ok to mention that!)

i wish some of these artists would take mastering and pressing quality a little more seriously as they often sound dreadful on a club system.

yeah i mean i didn't mean to imply that 100% silk was just a rote continuation of the exact music IDIB started out releasing, more just like picking up the ball that IDIB sorta dropped when they turned into a comparatively standard-issue nu-disco/edits label

always got the sense that glass candy/chromatics really resisted any attempts to be connected to the larger context of what else was going on in music at the time, refusing for example to allow official remixes or cooperate with warp or dfa or any of the other labels that were absolutely pursuing them

sorta feel like maybe anyone who was a fan of theirs that followed that worldview would have valued not the fact that they referenced disco but that they approached dance music in general from a point of view that was more in line with the ethos of noise/punk/DIY music than anything people actually played in clubs

like to think of 100% silk as those people, who maybe always assumed IDIB would continue to explore that approach and follow the natural progression of influences from 80's disco to 90's house, and ended up deciding to do it themselves once it became clear IDIB wasn't ever going to get around to it

I didn't meant to suggest otherwise - just to point out how 100% provide a continuum in more than just one way.

i wish some of these artists would take mastering and pressing quality a little more seriously as they often sound dreadful on a club system.

it's probably deliberate in some examples but that doesn't make this point any less valid

i wish all artists would take mastering and pressing quality a little more seriously as they often sound dreadful full stop

yeah absolutely, amanda brown even sounds enough like ida no on some of those recent la vampires collaborative EPs that they almost function as elseworlds alternate universe glass candy singles that plug different influences into the same basic approach for kicks

I'm actually a little hesitant to almost dismiss stuff like the artists on 100% Silk with a name like "hipster house" (not that that was necessarily the intention here)... that area involves your more psych-y/post-drone types... who for my take tend to be a little more involved and experimental than the usual "LOLindies-going-____".

besides, the psychedelic tendency to mess with the form is a way things can mutate and evolve, so I'm kinda feeling it, actually. Maria Minerva is one of my favorite things out there right now

those maria minerva releases sound a lot like nite jewel with worse recording equipment

i think a lot of ppl in this thread (me too obv) are 'feeling it', so i do apologize for a potentially pejorative term. but it is effective, no?

throwing a dash of the h-word in the title of any thread is a proven recipe for getting a lot posts

Well "The indie end of the noise spectrum having a go at house thread" is a bit banal for a title.

i really like the magic touch 12", but i am a huge jonas reinhardt fan so

i know and have had pleasant, friendly interactions with a lot of these ppl so i can only hope the term wouldn't piss them off (it probably would to a degree but it's all in the name of META). i *do* want this stuff to take off tho because it is one of the only things i care much about in the musical world of pdx (besides mississippi records of course)

i think the point I was trying to make in my earlier post (quoted in the question for this thread) is that this stuff codes as "hipster" in ways that I'm almost tempted to call objective - rather than the kind of pedigree-based "oh this person is a poser"/"lolindie" implication of the word which can only ever be relational to the speaker.

Objective significations of hipsterism in this material:

1) faux-period sleeve art;

2) faux-period monikers (not "Teengirl Fantasy" which is hipster in a different way, but definitely "100% Silk", "Miracles Club", "Magic Touch", "Ital"); and

3) notwithstanding (1) and (2), an air (sonically and discursively) of distance from the very things that (1) and (2) mimic, not superiority or even necessarily straight sonic differentiation, rather a sense that the original artifact is defined by its aura of inacessibility and unreproduceability - a time of lost innocence etc. etc.

basically 100% Silk : early house :: Stereolab : space age bachelor pad music.

http://images.hhv.de/catalog/old_detail/00247/247914.jpg

its okay to be a hipster guys

yeah, for sure, guess I just wanted to note the distinction since I'm see a lot of merit in some of the stuff, and 'hipster' does have its connotations... but yeah I see where you're coming from. xxxxpost

I don't mind being a hipster! I just like to break down how the term works in particular cases b/c it's got a million different meanings.

Especially considering it's broadest meaning is basically people younger than the speaker who aren't bogans.

said elsewhere on ilx, but I kind of know one of these dudes

you know a hipster?

'this stuff was covered already on the chillwave thread' - some annoyed msgbrdr

chillwave i love you but i've chosen hipster house

I like this...does that make me bad and dirty?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EghSZ232Fgc

chillwave i love you but i've chosen hipster house

honestly i love this stuff too, time passes, the world keepsss spinning

if the latest dominant legs 7" counts then i want to mention it itt

^ the dominant legs track i found sounds like fairly standard indie-dance fare but maybe it's not the one you're referring to?

i like the idea of a more diy/release-heavy approach to dance music. plus, this stuff is dfa-level cheap on vinyl in the us

it's outrageously expensive by the time it gets to the UK (like £11 for a 12") but this might have something to do with Phonica and fucking Volcanic Tongue being two of the main folks carrying it

I like the Mi Ami 'Dolphins' EP a whole bunch, ditto the Ital mix for FACT, but this ish is largely out of my price range right now for the most part

A lot of the Teengirl Fantasy album sounded really hamfistedly produced to me, even when the tunes were there, you got the sense that the producers weren't really comfortable or natural enough in their approach to the music to really take off.

Love the Talabot remix of Cheaters though. Not heard any of the rest of these guys, don't really want to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UiUHmH4Ctc

Agree that the Teengirl Fantasy album was weak overall, especially compared with the epic Cheaters original and the John Talabot remix.

Actually, Talabot holds an interesting place in this, he links up a set of coordinates mentioned already. Especially on his XLR8R mix, which connects Tri Angle (Altered Zones fave) to 100% Silk to Permanent Vacation, for instance.

i wish some of these artists would take mastering and pressing quality a little more seriously as they often sound dreadful on a club system.

I sort of agree somehow, although this is obviously the most ridiculous complaint for something like a sublabel of NNF! I actually played out a track from the Maria Minerva and it was a mess on a big system, unsurprisingly. This means that the stuff probably is geared toward live performance, rather than DJing at the moment, which is a sort of rock-ist frame, but also emerges around the cultural politics of distribution that these labels are involved with. Lo-fi as a critical stance to the free content of network culture. Now that I think of it this way, probably doesn't belong at all in the bobbins thread.

Besides all that, I have to say, what I'm constantly drawn to is how tracky a lot of this stuff is (I think that was also mentioned up thread). Maybe this is something other than Tim's hipster house definition based on the distancing effects and retro-stylistics.

i'm patently too dance-ist.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aALlMKcIB40/Toy6YjmhglI/AAAAAAAAADw/aVI1RWY7-jk/s1600/novembersilk.jpg

ha i'm glad this stuff has been delineated here, i had no idea it was a...thing. certainly didn't know miracles club were in it - they're (she's?) the only act mentioned with a song i really love ("light of love"), i'd just assumed it was some faceless balearic re-edity dude. i like the talabot remix of teengirl fantasy too but it's not a scene that appeals in any way.

Errr... is it a scene though? I feel like it might just be a thing at this point ;)

(Also, this is great):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ZZhXYmmdA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnRKb_KS3as

truth is i never listen to this stuff after i see the artist names

DOMINANT LEGS?

i mean, how can a single live up to a name like that?

great thread! aside from the usual debate on nomenclature I’m into it

would bookmark

it's hilarious that on a website dedicated to talking about music people seem to be getting more and more allergic to actually talking about music

i mean, what's wrong with a debate on nomenclature? in chemistry, there are professors whose only job is to worry about nomenclature, and whether a new compound should be classified as being in this group or that group.

I think it's the specific nomenclature that people are trying to stave off here rather than nomenclature in general

ok. why this specific nomenclature?

Yeah it’s just LOL hipster _____ that gets everyone all shook

It’s nbd really

the lack of interest many artists itt have in mastering this stuff so that it sounds good in dance clubs is interesting to me

on one hand it does limit the potential for exposure through traditional dance channels but on the other hand doesn't it also kind of foster the kind of air of exclusivity these people are used to using to market themselves

100% silk's use of the 12" format i think is an appeal directly from collectors to collectors, the fascination with house or disco probably being sparked by collecting old music rather than by going out and hearing it in clubs, the archival activities of the internet, used record shops, and reissue campaigns usurping the role of the dj in exposing people to the music. the idea of tailoring records to the needs of DJs and club culture probably seems bizarre to them, allowing outsiders to share in the revenue streams coming from music that from the point of view of the people making it exists completely outside contemporary club culture

the name hipster house is maybe not the greatest name but i get the impression that taking this stuff out of the bobbins thread would be entirely in line with the interests of the people making it

good analysis ... i think my favorite stuff is def the stuff that fits the needs of club culture, "ital's theme" and "church song" in particular

the rest of it seems sort of ... labored

btw in the church song video is that adam forkner in the white varsity jacket behind hottie owens?

I gotta say that I picked up the first two Ital 12"s because I liked the idea of where the continuation of Black Eyes --> Mi Ami --> House-ish stuff would lead. Unfortunately, I've felt a bit nonplussed. With each new release it feels like just pulling from some point in dance music's past, making the recording sound muddy/cloudy, and not really doing much else with it. So much of it feels very generic once the fuzziness is removed.

a good deal of it is probably totally functional when it comes to being played loud at a party while people dance, especially in basements or DIY spaces or dive bars and places like that where the american audience for this stuff prefers to do those things

the mastering/production just makes it very incompatible with proper dance records that have been mastered to sound good in clubs on good sound systems, iirc a lot of the johnny jewel stuff had this issue too, it's very difficult to play in proper house/club sets because it just sounds v. messy and thin compared to the professional stuff

what's kind of cool to me i guess is that there's getting to be enough of the stuff that these guys could start booking themselves around as DJs and playing nothing but h****** house, never running into the problem of the music's incompatibility with proper dance culture because they operate in a completely separate niche version of it

xpost but you could say the same thing about GERJHARD RICHTER DO U SEE

I'm quite enjoying this mix but I do wish the quality was higher in general (I have a few of the Ital 12"s as I was curious early on and I find them pleasant, nothing more). I think there would be a real demand for high quality releases of this stuff - I would love to see someone who could mix some of this in with more straight ahead techno a la the discussions in the Bobbins thread. I think the NNF aesthetic applied to dance is very specific but there is crossover, with the Talabot remix of "Cheaters" arguably being the nexus. I find it irresistible as a straight dance/techno track and in a non-club context. Not sure if this was discussed among the Bobbins or Dilettantes but the If This Is House I Want My Money Back comp (a ref. to this thread title) is surely an instructive part o this discussion, no?

http://open.spotify.com/album/378kzkUeYOiMFBaQtuyNdp

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about techno.

Permanent Vacation - as a production act, not a record label - belong in the same liminal zone as Talabot too, their own "Zucker Hut" and their remix of Woolfy vs Projections' "Neeve" seem to me to be too bleary-eyed and dizzy to be proper bobbins.

xpost After a quick Google, yes you could say the same about Gerhard Richter.

dunno how interesting it is to try to reconcile the stuff mentioned in the OP with permanent vacation/dfa/if this is house i want my money back type stuff, feel like it would be useful to delineate clearly between arty types trying to do house and house types trying to be arty

runs the risk of repeating the mistakes of that one simon reynolds piece that threw the the james ferraro/mark mcguire/not not fun axis into a conversation about chillwave despite that music having essentially nothing in common with washed out/neon indian beyond a couple of critic-friendly talking points about eighties nostalgia and cassette tape artifacts

or maybe i'm just being too "keep portland weird" about it i dunno

been talking to a friend bout this 'scene' a lot lately. he is involved in it: dj'd w/beautiful swimmers at ps1, has a 12" coming out w/remix by steve summers. we've been jokingly calling it 'post-net house'. w/youtube and blogs where you can download or listen to pretty much everything ever made at the click of a mouse, everyone can know everything now. everyone can know everyone. there's not as much a need of global closeness to make a scene w/email and soundcloud.

but ya, it does seem to be a bit centered in sf and portland. the club i used to dj at has featured a lot of local acts performing this sound live. magic touch, jason kendig (working w/dude from hercules & love affair), robot hustle (last 2 part of honey sound system), bobby browser (of wav dwgs), roche

http://soundcloud.com/bobbybrowser707
http://soundcloud.com/wav-dwgs
robot hustle: http://soundcloud.com/robertyang
http://soundcloud.com/rochesolos

imo the majority of this stuff is underwhelming and some of it is pretty terrible. but this one i like this one a lot, best track on 100% silk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDJDW3RBN_k

and yeah, the mix/mastering made it sound pretty poor in the mix when i've played it.

also curious what peoples' opinions are regarding hercules & love affair and where they might fit into this discussion?

x-post all the ppl jaxon just mentioned are well worth a listen, some great stuff there.

also, omar-s seems to be a big influence on most of these folks.

i think there are several things contributing to how this scene fits with dance music and its lo-fi mastering quality. i think it all relates to various perspectives on performance and background within the scene. with 100% silk, part of the story is that 100% silk is a sublabel of not not fun. so the inspiration comes more from the fetishistic lo-fi quality of noise music. i've played ital's records for my noise friends and they all say it's "dance music they can get behind". this also could be seen as a way to circumvent the gag reflex most hipsters (in SF at least) have when you start talking about going to clubs and more refined house music.

i think there is a live component to all of this as well. many of these groups perform all of these songs live on PA systems in the way a band would. sometimes the performances are a clubs or larger venues with powerful soundsystems, but when the projects are born it is a couple of people with an MPC, a few synthesizers and a couple drum machines. miracles club remixes most tracks before they play, so does magic touch and mi ami. teengirl fantasy has a freeform aesthetic to their playing where tight drum sequencing gives way to loose drumming on MIDI drum pads. some groups even believe this process informs their music as there is an improvisational quality to it, see this Blondes interview:

http://www.dummymag.com/features/2011/01/07/blondes-interview-meredith-monk-touch-is-what-we-re-in-danger-of-losing-/

all of these people are aware of the dance music that their music draws on, but the venues in which the music is conveyed and the idea of capturing something that can be recreated live (without Ableton) pushes mastering concerns to a lesser priority.

but there are also DJs in the camp too though and associations with venerable members of the dance music community (john talabot mentioned above and legowelt as well). beautiful swimmers are amazing DJs with deep collections (see their PS1 warmup mix) and their compositions are part original, part edit and seem slightly more informed by the traditional production techniques of dance music. this could be why they are more widely accepted and receive nods from Resident Adviser and more European circles.

my picks from the genre though are everything from the new L.I.E.S. (long island electrical systems) label (with contributions from Steve Summers, Marcos Cabral, Legowelt and other undiscovered talent). Future Times - with Slava, Protect-U, Beautiful Swimmers and most recently deep house act Juju & Jordash. Plus of course Miracles Club and Blondes (where RVNG seem to be cutting out a piece of the scene as well)

as far as the local SF scene goes there is a pretty vibrant DIY gearhead driven scene of house and electronic music conveyors, see bobby browser and WAV DWGS, roche, group rhoda and lots more. there is a monthly party called O.K. Hole where a lot of us get together and come out to support local talent.

this stuff is right in the zone of what I'm interested in but I need to catch up on a lot of it. I love Soft Metals. Future Times label is great.

i have seen miracles club, blondes and mi ami live this year and all sounded great live, both musically and sonically. i'm no fan of refined house music but i do think it's a shame that i'll skip playing the 100% silk records i have in my box in a set due to the poor fidelity of the mastering. i can't believe they are deliberately mastered and pressed badly to appeal to fans of noise music. oh well, at least i can still enjoy some of them in the comfort of my own home.

i love soft metals too but wouldn't put them in here.

I don't if they are deliberately mastered and pressed badly or just that the audience they are targeting won't be playing these on club systems so they don't spend the time/money to make them sound good in that context. If that makes sense?

feel like it would be useful to delineate clearly between arty types trying to do house and house types trying to be arty

Absolutely and also:

but there are also DJs in the camp too though and associations with venerable members of the dance music community (john talabot mentioned above and legowelt as well). beautiful swimmers are amazing DJs with deep collections (see their PS1 warmup mix) and their compositions are part original, part edit and seem slightly more informed by the traditional production techniques of dance music. this could be why they are more widely accepted and receive nods from Resident Adviser and more European circles.

I think DJs and people in this thread (god forgive me) are making the connections a little bit.

V. curious to see some of this acts live.

maybe deliberately mastered and pressed badly to appeal to fans of noise music, but maybe also deliberately mastered and pressed badly to offend the sensibilities of DJs and club systems

like i said earlier, if DJs can't play the shit, it cuts off many traditional avenues for the music to get exposure, but it also lets the label and artists exercise a lot more control over how people perceive and experience the material

someone asked about H&LA upthread and they're kind of interesting because to me they represent the early/mid-00's crossover era grinding to a halt, their debut represented a sincere attempt to drag the entirety of house music's wild, wooly, queer-centric underground kicking and screaming into a major label crossover release, and the market rejected it. they got dropped from EMI pretty much immediately despite peerless, near-universal critical acclaim and a growing buzz as a fantastic live act

i'm sure that has nothing to do with why 100% silk records sound like they do but i like the idea that the larger romantic ideal of a crossover record has been been so violently despoiled that we are now faced with the reality of house labels that do not want DJs playing their records

I'm not really feeling most of the stuff posted itt, except for the Octo Octa EP, which I love. I think a lot of this stuff I hear and I like the synths/whatever, but the drums sound so weak.

great thread

C.L.A.W.S. http://soundcloud.com/claws (part of OK hole san frandisco mentioned)

someone asked about H&LA upthread and they're kind of interesting because to me they represent the early/mid-00's crossover era grinding to a halt, their debut represented a sincere attempt to drag the entirety of house music's wild, wooly, queer-centric underground kicking and screaming into a major label crossover release, and the market rejected it. they got dropped from EMI pretty much immediately despite peerless, near-universal critical acclaim and a growing buzz as a fantastic live act

I think the comparison with H&LA just throws into relief how hetero-caucasian the whole vibe of this stuff is. :/

dunno if that's an entirely fair characterization of the stuff mentioned in the OP, especially TGF

^ yea i'm not sure where that's coming from? like at all...

and i was about to question why permanent vacation and john talabot were getting mentions itt, from what i can tell this scene wants nothing to do with the current european incarnation of house/techno (despite the awesomeness of talabot's "cheaters" remix and the fact that he uses maria minerva in his equally awesome xlr8r mix). it seems like (again, release-heavy and diy) dudes like omar-s and legowelt are definitely huge influences, and what i can't help but notice is how all these acts code as undeniably AMERICAN. seems like a reaction to the european dance music establishment more than anything, which was a huge turnoff at first tbh

this also could be seen as a way to circumvent the gag reflex most hipsters (in SF at least) have when you start talking about going to clubs and more refined house music

this is unfortunately OTM

i love soft metals too but wouldn't put them in here.

yea that was probably a mistake on my part, i guess my reasoning was: 1) sometimes they used acid lines and 2) portland

I'm sure a distaste for refined music played a bit of a role, but it's not like the noise/indie scene these people are drifting in from are known for their global stance.

as far as the fidelity question goes, i think another real distinction between a sig. amount of uk/european house and this stuff comes down to hardware vs software. which would theoretically work in the hipsters' favor if they pressed these releases with more care/better mastering

what would they sound like if they pressed the releases with more care? apparat?

or just h&la? because i don't think they'd actually sound like the dfa.

dunno about the hardware vs. software thing, i remember reading interview quotes from ital somewhere where he talked about making his tracks in audacity and going "shhhhh" into his computer mic to make the hi-hat sounds

feel like the differences between these guys and more conventional house producers run deeper than just "these guys use synths" and "these guys use software"

how did dissident records sound in clubs? i live in the states so i'm not sure i ever actually got to lay eyes on one

i bet, given the circuit-bending influence, that they are at least not above things like hardware emulation and DSP

dissident stuff sounds ridiculous, as does the underrated supersoul label

ital uses a laptop, yes, but a lot of these acts don't. i have no idea what it'd sound like with better mastering, i guess the future times/l.i.e.s. stuff is an example of this tho

feel like the differences between these guys and more conventional house producers run deeper than just "these guys use synths" and "these guys use software"

this is absolutely true, i was referring to fidelity tho

but less chilled than future times

iirc the ital stuff is done on a computer but the mi ami record was done under a specific remit to use hardware samplers or trackers or something

sort of enjoy the notion of house sonics being explored by people who are more promiscuous in terms of production/process, fetishizing the sound of old house records in a more abstract way than retro-minded producers elsewhere that fetishize the hardware that was used to make them or in the case of the NYC necro-disco hotel lounge edit house thing, samples of the records themselves

the case of the NYC necro-disco hotel lounge edit house thing

^^ new thread?!?

saw this stuff described as "art-school techno" in a review today

link?

sort of enjoy the notion of house sonics being explored by people who are more promiscuous in terms of production/process

Is this comparison limited to the examples you then cite? Or just a general statement?

Because i don't think house music is particularly afflicted by a lack of sonic promiscuity.

http://www.yellowgreenred.com/

ctrl+f innergaze

what is necro-disco?!?

http://www.drben.net/files/China/Source_Materials/BooksALL/Communism/Mao-ManNotGod-FrThQ.jpg

whoops wrong thread

TS: standard tropical Italo dub vs NYC necro-disco hotel lounge edit house

i want to hear this impossibly exotic-sounding yet no doubt totally mundane crap house music!

Is this comparison limited to the examples you then cite? Or just a general statement?

Because i don't think house music is particularly afflicted by a lack of sonic promiscuity.

― Tim F, Thursday, October 6, 2011 6:47 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

yr right i take it back nvm

he probably means wolf and lamb

ital uses a laptop, yes, but a lot of these acts don't. i have no idea what it'd sound like with better mastering, i guess the future times/l.i.e.s. stuff is an example of this tho

again, i think a lot of this is about process and a lot of aversion to the use of laptops in performances (it's a philosophy i also subscribe to in my compositions). steve summers for instance will use only hardware on his performances and for his remixes he will do a single take using his live setup. the use of shhhh sounds for hats and other lo-fi sampling/production techniques is very true to house's roots as well, which is where i believe the philosophy derives. there's an idolization of people like rick wilhite who did not have access to serious mastering techniques and much of his stuff was legitimate bedroom studio production. whether these artists have access to mastering or the funds to spend on it is another question, but i feel like that is where the inspiration comes from.

necro house must mean like art department or wolf + lamb black

standard italo dub ... is that like social disco club?

but like i said there are connections to the more traditional house scene. On The Prowl just came out with a release on their sublabel Let's Play House (inspired by the monthly of the same name) that features a beautiful swimmers remix of a Runaway track. Runaway is undoubtedly part of the more refined sounding house music, but they don't perform live and neither do Beautiful Swimmers. all of these people are running in very close circles and we are a small community of like-minded individuals but people are doing very different things.

i don't think H&LA and Wolf + Lamb really belong itt

I thought Wolf + Lamb were being cited as a negative point of comparison.

house producers have been fetishizing the past since forever, and altho the necro-disco comment almost makes sense within the context of that post i agree that h&la and w+l do not belong here at all

sorry to harp on about this but i don't think the mastering / pressing thing is an aesthetic choice but rather down to not really giving it much consideration.

dissident records sound great btw.

Legowelt's record label is based in Portland now, I believe

did he move to portland?

I dunno I just got an email from their mailing list last year saying they wouldn't be accepting orders for a month due to moving to Portland.
Most of the stuff on that label is just nice dark lofi ambient stuff, not all that jackin.

I can see NNF folks being way into Legowelt's Smackos and Franz Falckenhaus stuff.

which label?

legowelt does not live in portland

sorry to harp on about this but i don't think the mastering / pressing thing is an aesthetic choice but rather down to not really giving it much consideration.

this is pretty much what i said. process driven composition that puts little priority on dance-floor mastering.

so 100% silk is putting out a 12" of peaking lights remixes huh

anyway i like this thread a lot, its like alien anthropology or s.thing, laptops in performance vs. laptops in dissemination idk

It's a nice twist, I must say.

moonship, his label is Strange Life

Anyway, the whole DIY angle of this stuff is interesting. Techno/house is so intrinsically DIY, it's cool seeing different permutations of how that mentality is expressed.

wow all the stuff on that label sounds awesome so far. legowelt is one of those guys with an intimidatingly massive back catalog, and then when you throw side projects / related artists / stuff on his labels into the mix it's just insane

if anyone has dug through it all and can give me a rough primer i would be v v grateful

favorite track itt so far is that magic touch one (last youtube posted before this post)

i want to hear it on a big system so bad!!

Magic touch best of the bunch imo

What a weird thread to read. I've known the boys from Blondes since 2003, and was at the first Teengirl Fantasy show. Those boys raided my computer in 2007 & 2008, and I know Nick in some other ways ;-) ....so I dunno, I'm totally biased.

What I will say is that I saw Teengirl Fantasy twice in late September, and though the first night looked like lolcollege (they were opening for James Blake), the second night was....genuinely a gay, gay party scene. And in addition, Nick and Logan just tore the fucking roof off the place. It was the best live performance I've seen this year. A lot of their newer stuff sounds infinitely more....Detroit. Like one thing they played totally channeled Delano Smith's early work.

also, does Ital dude still perform under the Sex Worker moniker? i fucking hope not.

i'm sure i've seen "Sex Worker" but i remember nothing about it. I saw mi ami a bunch several years back, has their sound changed?

^ yes, even since last year there has been a pretty big changeup

uh, yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iWvj4UQ8zQ

it's not a HUGE changeup, they more or less just decided to use a drum machine instead of real drums, so maybe categorizing it as 'house' is a little misleading. the side project 12"s are the real change in direction imo

i'm just starting to listen to a lot of this, to be honest

the whole concept makes me a little bit queasy

I have to admit that I'm kind of into the promo 100% Silk videos for each release. Here's the new one for Malvoeaux - 'Sunsets'

Also, why queasy Geeta?

Also, why queasy Geeta?

First it was like:

http://youtu.be/igzcvcGudLY

And then it was like:

http://youtu.be/lNb8FyCaMBA

And now it is like this:

http://youtu.be/wzxvOgcGLmk

I am not even trying to be all like keep it real/2black2strong. This stuff is like a half ass retarded indie xerox of a slightly earlier well-executed xerox.

good grief

make it stop

that third clip made me cry a little bit inside

i'm going to go back and listen to my early '90s new york house records

miracles club live = more fun than your *authentic* house records at home

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!

There has not been a single moment during that period when people weren't celebrating some refreshing return to lo-fi house

Sure, but I think there's a combination of factors at work with 100% Silk, beyond the playfulness and conceptual stuff I mentioned before, there's also the relationship with recently obsolete analogue formats like cassette or Ariel Pink style lo-fi places this in a distinctly different trajectory ("analogue is the new new media, etc.").

It also feels fastand cheap production-wise, which is refreshing to me. Even someone like Ital was using just Audacity for recording, if you wanted to get technical.

xpost

Yeah I get that... but at the point that any actually evident sonic link to Ariel Pink et. al. becomes indiscernible in the music (which IMO has already occured with this stuff), what bearing does all that have beyond giving a nice angle for critics to muse on in the first paragraph of a review?

even late pepe actually sounds kinda like some of this stuff. that amazing manuel tur remix for instance.

though i thought the maria minerva sounded like grouper. i'm inclined to agree with dan s, if it lets some more people through a door into house then great. there's far too much criticism of artists that create the environment for influences that are perceived as "wrong" to come into house music.

some of the music posted here feels a bit like the artist is purposely trying to make a "wrong" version of house as is and ever shall be.

at least, given it's impossible they haven't actually heard house. it's like they're trying to feign some 80s far flung interpretation in a place where you had only a limited access to whatever records.

I mean, my point is, how much are celebrants and detractors alike over-focusing on the pedigree of the artists and the audience rather than thinking about what other dance music the result actually sounds like?

Maybe the issue here is that I have cloth ears and would never be able to tell the difference between the different software people have used in creating the music.

at least, given it's impossible they haven't actually heard house. it's like they're trying to feign some 80s far flung interpretation in a place where you had only a limited access to whatever records.

this feels like a super spot-on evocation of the vibe of this material I think.

i think it's worth noting it's not really like lo-fi v precision here, it's more garishness and cheapness. but it's like they're going for a garishness and cheapness that unlike say, justice or whatever, is accidental and imprisons the "soulfulness" or whatever in this knocked off deep house...

it's all pretty interesting, don't really see myself listening to a lot of the music but the idea of people imposing restrictions on themselves to enforce a cheap aesthetic, but one that is actually inauthentic rather than authentic, is kind of cool.

shame about the music lol (nb only listened to two tracks, maria minerva was actually good)

Lonely guy just reading thread, thinking baout '90s house+noise

shame about the music lol

Basically sums it up.

Any time there's a group of artists or a label that is releasing music that sounds like a past genre or period this is the dialogue, isn't it? I think it's counterproductive to go "pssh, whatever" and dismiss anything wholesale or lament about the lack of historical knowledge because this isn't a one-time event, it's the way of things.

It's always the same pattern: some of these artists are just working a style, some view it as a homage. Some will make it their own thing and possibly become popular, with only tenuous hooks to the past sound, while others will fade away. Many listeners won't know the difference, or will possibly pick up a compilation of historical material and go no further. Some will learn about the new music, only to later decry it and latch on to the "authenticity" of 90s house and sneer at their peers who "don't know any better."

I've played a lot of roles in this story.

Society is in the gutter, a man used to be able to dig out a Gang of Four LP and these days these LCD Soundsystem imitators sell out some outdoor theater and still quit.

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.

never heard of nu groove but yeah i don't think strictly rhythm has a problem with being known - moreso seven years ago when house/edm in general was a bit less fractured/flash-in-the-pan/internetmakingthingsquicklike (and we were actually closer to the 90s). weird to see some german guys listed as a qualifier for a label i consider so strongly "american" i guess - although that sense doesn't really extend past the fact that along with nervous i grew up on their stuff (and _i'm_ american wow!), and that they're chock-ful of black/latin/gay influences in a way i don't usually frame in the context of other countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtsbyUk0riY

That tiefschwarz are German is the whole point though.

that magic touch made me think of this kinda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DER9Yh8myU0

except not as good

i guess they're not that similar on second listen, drums are way diff, but i wanted an excuse to post a hot jam

lamp is like the anti-whiney in these threads

nb although this might sound like a compliment its not per se

shame about the music lol

This is U&K, can't be requoted enough. The VHS-lines revivalism of some of the 100% Silk videos probably makes 10 people happy but ultimately dance music lives or dies on whether people want to dance to it. I'll rep strong for some of this music (I love the Ital 12) but I certainly get where geeta is coming from re "queasy".

I didn't mean to denigrate that take on it, either. It's as valid as any, and if you love the stuff being ripped/made homage then it's a little bit heartbreaking.

i guess what it comes down to is this idea of exclusivity is something that bothers you or not ... people itt are treating it like 'hey its legit, they just want their own niche / private scene' & its like, ok, and when the press celebrates that scene just for being so different & cool are we supposed to not pretend its an exercise in elitism & journalistic laziness etc

http://www.mixmag.net/scene-selection-100-silk

mixmag... unsound festival... does not compute

(from a central US perspective, whenever mixmag was available as a import magazine, it was best described as "titties and E" as by a friend in college)

Interview not doing any favors IMO. Cringed multiple times.

House, What is house?

Technotronic, KLF, Or something you live in?

To me, House is Phuture,
Pierre, Fingers, Adonis etc

The pioneers of the hypnotic groove, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and the yellow magic orchestra.

This album is dedicated to you.

House.

In the future, We hope our music will bring everyone a little closer together,
Gay, Straight, Black or white, Hipster, Blogger, One nation under a groove.

(I never got Depeche Mode's props here. I "get" it, but I think New Order would've been more appropriate.)

I don't think NO had the impact of DM in the US? Well, not at that time, idk

Weren't Depeche Mode supposed to be a big influence on Detroit Techno (moreso than New Order)? Granted the topic is "house" but LFO were clearly more detroit than chicago anyway.

NO didn't have the commercial success of DM, but I'd think more influence in the clubs.

I remember reading that Depeche Mode's "one finger" synth patterns fed into detroit techno quite significantly, but it was so long ago that I can't say for sure.

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?

Not to be pedantic, but influences and inspirations, along with general comments about the YouTubidification of dance music and a plea for 'earnest comments' are easily available on the 100% Silk blogspot account: Ital 2 or Maria Mineva.

Stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded

But maybe the question is about how this is reflected in the music, and the settings that it's produced, played out and experienced: 'the scene'. Nevertheless, I still feel that there are interesting reflections and negotiations with internet-based encounters with music, and the maintenance of cultural production in these conditions with these guys.

Chris & Cosey make an appearance in this thread yet? Lots of this stuff sounds like them.

Maybe this would help (influences):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O53-C8fMXhI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LDS7boNwtKk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tGv8y2u_XU0

soooo i'm in pdx this weekend. anywhere i can pick up some of these 12"s? how about cl1nton street mus1c? that guy played me a purple & green track last year...

how are miracles club djing? i wanna check em out on thursday maybe, depends on how late we get in there. any one have any other recommendations for like record stores or something, i know this aint a portland thread but i hope it makes sense that im asking here.

liz torres everyone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpgPn4vepyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6d3Vw0UtjE

damn hipsters

i'm reading john o'hara right now

i had a blast seeing miracles club dj in pdx when i was there. i think that was miracles club? erik...?

i'm pretty unimpressed with any of the criticisms vouched in this thread by the UK/European crowd. the whole, "i don't like how it sounds critique" is just an echo of the tired berlin school dance music dogma that everyone said about justice six years ago. if you like minimal house, then don't come here to hate on the production techniques because the artists are trying to achieve very different things. even comparisons to classic 90s house (which many of us involved in the movement are digging for and playing out) are unfair because the landscape of dance music was very different when producers were making that music than it is today.

i think that dance music doesn't have much of an outlet in the cities where these artists are coming from that isn't dominated by disgusting club culture - something that noise and punk kids have a special aversion to. so as a reaction to that, the artists involved in making this kind of music started throwing cheap DIY underground style parties in basements, warehouses, galleries etc. to avoid that culture. the success of such acts has fueled the beginning of labels such as 100% silk and future times.

jimmy! that was miracles club, right? we had fun!

when i DJed? that was them and their friends DJing

i think that dance music doesn't have much of an outlet in the cities where these artists are coming from that isn't dominated by disgusting club culture - something that noise and punk kids have a special aversion to.

100% Silk is out of LA, same as Not Not Fun. I see what you're getting at overall but the contention that Los Angeles and surrounding areas don't have a non-club underground dance scene that "hipsters" (ugh) would feel comfortable in is pretty damn specious.

such as 100% silk and future times.

future times records sound great though.

stir, read my post further up on them, they are closer to the traditional DJ/dance music producer side of this scene so they put a higher value on those elements and have hence received wider acceptance by europeans

Lol at san frandisco complaining about the euro-minimal haters and then making casual references to "disgusting club culture".

Going to clubs! Is fun!

Actually I don't think anyone in this thread has made negative comparisons between 100% Silk and "european" production values ITT. I did question the utility of comparisons in the reverse.

MFB, more of this "hipster (ugh)" nonsense, get over it for christsake. there are underground dance scenes that exist counter to the shitty mainstream club culture such as Harvey Sarcastic Disco and Lovefinger's Blackdisco parties before he left for NYC. but these are still grandfathered in from an older rave scene that subscribes to very specific ideas of what dance music should sound like and how it should be conveyed. i love those scenes and they are what got me into dance music, but they are more from the hi-fi paradise garage underground scene. not arty non-dance musicians trying to create something or do something for themselves.

i do go to clubs, i subscribe to a lot of different dance scenes and play a lot of this stuff and higher produced stuff. disgusting club culture refers to very different social aspects of a music scene, not the music. i just dont have hangups because the low end on the track isn't to my liking.

or rather i should say of a quality that has been established and accepted

anybody up for taking this to the outloud room to play the influences and key tracks?

san frandisco otm

I'm not objecting to the use of hipster to describe this sound/people making it, more the idea that there is no/minimal crossover between the all-night dance party, non-club crowd and the noise/experimental scene. In my experience there is a lot (currently in Brooklyn, have lived in the bay area and Los Angeles for extended periods).

so these guys are worried that if they had better mastering, there would be an influx of fans with affliction t-shirts

I seriously question this idea of clear demarcation between overground and underground dance scenes in 2011.

how so?

I seriously question this idea of clear demarcation between overground and underground dance scenes in 2011.

It seems to be more along the lines of Bobbins and Dilettantes. For real, though.

my descriptor disgusting was meant to refer to specific aspects of club culture that dominate a popular perception of dance music in the US. i, and a lot of my friends from this scene will go to all-night dance parties, and definitely subscribe to "club" culture in that we go to a venue where a DJ plays on a good system and people dance. also, there is a wide celebration of detroit DJs and a lot of effort to go out and see them regardless of the venue. i agree, the crossover is there and as i said before the backgrounds of people in the scene are quite varied. MFB you are right, Brooklyn, LA and SF are definitely the hubs for this right now.

Every single scene or sub-scene bar David guetta either thinks it's underground or that a portion of it remains so; it all gets written up on resident advisor just the same.

not quite sure what you mean by that, i am talking about a US specific phenomenon, mostly with my experiences in SF, LA and NY, which is where a majority of this music comes from

You were the one who brought up Europeans and their shitty opinions about sound quality.

i'm pretty unimpressed with any of the criticisms vouched in this thread by the UK/European crowd. the whole, "i don't like how it sounds critique" is just an echo of the tired berlin school dance music dogma that everyone said about justice six years ago. if you like minimal house, then don't come here to hate on the production techniques because the artists are trying to achieve very different things. even comparisons to classic 90s house (which many of us involved in the movement are digging for and playing out) are unfair because the landscape of dance music was very different when producers were making that music than it is today.

Seems like the most vocal critics of this stuff itt (self included) are Americans tho? And in my case, at least, I never gave a fuck about minimal or most Euro stuff in general. Your rant seems way offbase.

Stuff which genuinely does not get breathless critical mileage (except by me sometimes) from the usual suspects: uk funky and bassline. But I don't think I'm impressively underground because I like that stuff, I try to proselytize to everyone instead.

i'm pretty unimpressed with any of the criticisms vouched in this thread by the UK/European crowd. the whole, "i don't like how it sounds critique" is just an echo of the tired berlin school dance music dogma that everyone said about justice six years ago. if you like minimal house, then don't come here to hate on the production techniques because the artists are trying to achieve very different things. even comparisons to classic 90s house (which many of us involved in the movement are digging for and playing out) are unfair because the landscape of dance music was very different when producers were making that music than it is today.

does that make u feel better?

no one thinks they are impressively underground. if anything this music is meant to target audiences who don't usually listen to dance music to get into it.

does that make u feel better?

Not really, because I still don't give a fuck about Berlin or minimal house. But some low end in this music would be nice.

The part about 90s house is fair tho, even if I disagree.

no one thinks they are impressively underground.

Okay then, your self-congratulatory post about having transcended caring about what dance music actually sounds like owing to your history as a veteran of all the great US underground dance scenes had me confused there for a second. Glad we cleared that up.

dont be sad, tim f

the whole, "i don't like how it sounds critique" is just an echo of the tired berlin school dance music dogma that everyone said about justice six years ago. if you like minimal house, then don't come here to hate on the production techniques because the artists are trying to achieve very different things.

does this suggest that justice is great and/or that only minimal people hated on justice

received wider acceptance by europeans

i love this line. it's true. we europeans are a different breed who only listen to records on liebe*detail.

this is a lot more historically-oriented & less populist than justice was. justice was p much just "what if daft punk was more, like, rock"

but yeah i didnt like them either

fwiw im gonna go to this show when they come to chicago bcuz i find scenes like this attract hot chixx & im interested to see what the dance scene is like

'disgusting club culture'

soooo i'm in pdx this weekend. anywhere i can pick up some of these 12"s? how about cl1nton street mus1c? that guy played me a purple & green track last year...

how are miracles club djing? i wanna check em out on thursday maybe, depends on how late we get in there. any one have any other recommendations for like record stores or something, i know this aint a portland thread but i hope it makes sense that im asking here.

― runaway (Matt P), Wednesday, October 12, 2011 12:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

definitely go to clinton street, jared rules (the guy with the silly sweater with sunglasses on it in the church song vid), and i'm not sure about where to pick up a lot of these 12"s but i would imagine your typical run of the mill indie store would carry this type of thing- maybe green noise? they're sorta the equivalent to aquarius in sf, or volcanic tongue etc but i'm not sure if they f/w house. tbh i've found more stuff at the bay area amoebas from this sphere than anywhere, jared stocks amazing older stuff but i feel like he'd be wasting money if he bought more than a few copies of newer dance releases (lol portland). there are a few stores i still need to check out but i've found that for the most part pdx does not like to stock newer 4x4 stuff in any large quantity.

and you should definitely see miracles club dj (i'm hoping to swing by too), raf uses a laptop but plays a lot of rad nu groove / strictly rhythm / '90s house tunes mixed in with newer piano house revival stuff (no 100% silk soundz from what i remember. when he spun on sunday i sware he played at least 5 mk songs lol). also their friends that dj these nights are very very skilled vinyl guys who spin a lot of disco-not-disco classics, detroit classics, you know. the good shit. i think jared has a low key cosmic / synth wave night down the street from valentine's at backspace or someplace on thursdays too, but i need to look into it.

was really impressed with miracles club dj set on fri, was working and wouldn't have been there otherwise, but it seems like they were all on their game. super positive

i feel responsible for bringing up the american/euro divide thing, so i apologize for opening up that whole pipecockian wormhole. i liked this thread a lot more before people came in here with these v subjective "THIS SUXX IT DOESN'T BANG LISTEN TO THE REAL STUFF" type comments but what're you gonna do.

i'm more interested in looking at how this whole thing developed, and why. perhaps this does expose a lot of the (justified or not) reasons that certain noise dudes hate on 'disgusting club culture' but that doesn't mean you have to agree! i sure as hell don't!

i liked this thread a lot more before people came in here with these v subjective "THIS SUXX IT DOESN'T BANG LISTEN TO THE REAL STUFF" type comments but what're you gonna do.

Yeah that stuff is BS as well. Basically any time someone ITT thread says "I like this, those disgusting people like that", I switch allegiances.

raaaad, i am stoked. 12 hour drive to awesome dance party, i just booked a cheap motel close by.

thanks for the info psychgawsple. j4red was way nice when i met him, lots of great stuff in his store too. ^_^

obv there ARE very disgusting club scenes but they idk if they anything to do with bobbins-y material, more a perception of a lot of modern house music as being in the "beat the beat up"-type pauly d style by a certain subsection of musicians

obv there ARE very disgusting club scenes

Really? If we're talking about clubs where people go to get totally wasted and beat each other up and sexually harrass people then, well, sure, but I don't think any of those constitute a "club scene" in any meaningful musical sense.

IMO most groups of people who like music are pretty okay when you actually hang with them.

dunno if it is really up for debate that the US has a p. complicated and sometimes antagonistic relationship with dance music in general, both sonically and socially

us vs. europe generalizing isn't really valid but i mean there does kind of seem to be an us vs. them mentality about some of this stuff that i think those generalizations are kinda glancing at

personally kinda think "going to clubs is! fun!" is kind of an oversimplification and not always true especially w/r/t clubbing outside of europe or NYC/LA/SF

agreed

it's obviously subjective! but what tim mentions is p much what i am referring to: sexist, macho, unfortunate places to find yourself hanging out. i wish i had his optimism and faith in all music fans lol

personally kinda think "going to clubs is! fun!" is kind of an oversimplification and not always true especially w/r/t clubbing outside of europe or NYC/LA/SF

probably sydney too right?

As a gay dude who very much looks it I think I'm pretty conscious of what I would consider to be negative macho energy. I rarely if ever come across it in the context of clubs where people actually know or care who is playing. In any dance genre.

IDK maybe Australia is just a nicer place for clubbing, but then I know which venues I'd go to if I wanted to get glassed or gangbashed and (a) they're fairly easily avoided, and (b) no-one who goes is there for the music as far as I can tell.

But maybe the USA is actually super awful?

(Melbourne BTW)

bored, let's get back to music recommendations

really into the bobby browser track on the MIXMAG 100% silk mix, sounds like girl from Group Rhoda on the vocals too

and the sir stephen track, dunno where that dude is from though, his discogs is sparse and a little confusing, anyone know?

sir stephen 'move that body' is like my fave 100% silk track i think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGeKLsO6RRY

this is prolly my fave 100% silk

xps they are less easily avoided in the us i think, but i have never been to australia (woops, melbourne i guess ha) so i have no frame of reference . my point is that it's more about stigma than anything, and there are so many people in places like sf and portland that have wild wild preconceptions about clubs that play 4x4. it sucks but it's true

and yea was playing that sir stephen ep earlier today, some real jams

do u guys ever find listening to this stuff that you wish u were listening to 'the actual thing' & by that i mean something that is less concerned w/ the outer-signifiers of 'a certain era' & more concerned w/ affecting the body/brain as a dancer. i do get where rev is coming from to the extent that a lot of this stuff seems to have a goal of replication of a ~vibe~ than focusing on getting people on the floor

like, obv there's nothing 'wrong' w/ that preference but i think its coming from an honest place to say, as a critique, i wish this stuff was aiming for a little more immediacy, a little more contemporary relevance. i mean i dont like justice at all but they were very much of their time in a way this stuff isnt so much

do u guys ever find listening to this stuff that you wish u were listening to 'the actual thing' & by that i mean something that is less concerned w/ the outer-signifiers of 'a certain era' & more concerned w/ affecting the body/brain as a dancer. i do get where rev is coming from to the extent that a lot of this stuff seems to have a goal of replication of a ~vibe~ than focusing on getting people on the floor

― The boyboy young jess (D-40), Wednesday, October 12, 2011 5:50 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i realize this sounds like the "NOT REAL HOUSE MUSIC" thing but im actually talking about the concrete goals of the artists themselves -- that a functionality would make this stuff a lot more interesting & give it more dimension as music

a rational dismissal! thank god

idk i think if you go see this stuff live you get a much different vibe. also, like you mentioned, hot chixx. almost a similar crowd to a hip soul night but with sillier shirts and beats (yes these songs have bass). also- as mentioned, the dj sets are chock full of classic body-centric house music

I would think this stuff would work pretty well live, esp. if the performances are more erm performative.

i dunno if creating/replicating a vibe or putting energy into more abstract mental stimuli definitively does not get people on the floor

some of the best dance party experiences with the best crowd responses i have had in the small midwestern city where i live have featured inferior systems and live electronic acts, music and presentation definitively concerned with other things besides affecting the body/brain as a dancer

like maybe h******s need the added intellectual distance or whatever to really get into it and start feeling it, maybe the universality and visceral physical appeal of highly calibrated dancefloor WMDs actually alienates some people and now here are their "house is a feeling but also a style of music that was popular in these cities during the years of 19XX-19XX" records

maybe not i dunno

idib had the same problems deej is referring to tho, right? not sure those nights could really be classified as sweaty all night dance parties but people still danced, and it didn't seem to matter that the music was aiming to put you in some type of sexy coma

i also think that these artists are slowly becoming more aware of how the music works on a dance floor and i feel like they will only become more entrenched in those dynamics the more this stuff gains traction

hence idib evolving into a more dancefloor-oriented label putting out 12"s by disgusting disgusting europeans

(joeks)

i think this might be why miracles club uses live dancers (albeit live dancers that are also being used for retro-fetishism purposes)

See the thing is I actually don't think that this music would or should or can only appeal to people who are suspicious of most house music, so it surprises me that some boosters in this thread keep defending the music in those terms.

I think it's entirely possible to both like "the real thing" and to like slightly arch distanced etc. recreations of that thing. People who can only like one or the other are missing out a bit IMO.

Dance music is filled with people who are borrowing elements from scenes that are temporally and geographically inaccessible to them, and the push-pull of recreation/distortion is a major productive motor. A lot of the classicist-yet-woozy qualities I hear in 100% Silk put me in mind of pre-Daft Punk french house.

I saw Glass Candy play in a drafty hall at a rock festival, objectively really awful environment to hear real or hipster-fake dance music, but I had a marvelous time.

I think a lot of what you're saying deej elides with stuff like hatchback windsurf james ferraro etc - there's for sure an Outlining The Difference piece to be written but it's probably already in the Simon Reynolds book - the "thickening" of the material by contextual reference results/can result? in a different listening experience is what I think the deal is. but "immediacy" is a pretty rock 'n' roll stated goal, I think with some of this stuff the added dimension of history changes the effect of listening. like somebody could do the most spoton Paradise Garage tribute sound but if it was somebody who didn't actually experience paradise garage, then it's necessarily a different sound. which is interesting to some people, occasionally there's movements like this in metal too, most bands trying that look can't keep it real or interesting for longer than an album tho darkthrone's throwback stuff is incredible imo

i mean i think what we all like is music that seems to impact at multiple levels (maybe i'm just speaking for myself here) -- i like stuff that refers to interesting parts of musical history, i like stuff that feels cutting-edge, that attracts diverse crowds, particularly in terms of gender, that aims to grab my attention as a dancer, etc. etc.

i mean the criticisms of 'real house music' nights in chicago are that they can be boring & trad & unconcerned w/ finding new & novel (& cool) influences. And then the inverse is the criticisms of this stuff, that it's so concerned with being cool & affecting the 'right' influences that it loses touch w/ the kinds of functionality that make 'the real thing' so attractive to diverse groups of people. when it comes down to it i like both of these things working in concert. I mean, its what works about Harvey or Classixx or Tensnake or whoever else.

at the end of the day, though, i like music that has an immediacy -- meaning, music that appeals to ppl who like cool signifiers but that can immediately appeal to people who might not think on those terms ... that you could invite someone who isnt in 'our conversation' about old house records & they'll still enjoy themselves. I guess the gatekeeper aspect of it JUST relying on hip references & chillwave justifications for its 'importance' is extremely off-putting to me.

today is the same as yesterday basically

like, the underground/niche/'scene' element is, in my favorite music, a launching pad rather than a self-sustaining thing, nb this may be from my hip-hop background where so many of my fav artists are trying to 'make it' & cross over and appeal to more people

good post aero, reflecting on it

that you could invite someone who isnt in 'our conversation' about old house records & they'll still enjoy themselves

i have found this to be true (if you can convince people to actually come!)

i think i posted about this before on ilx but i invited some ladyfriends to come see rupture w/ me once & they were supremely 'ehhhh' abt it -- and they're not really 'top 40 only' types, pretty open minded (i recognize rupture is an entirely difft thing this is just an example) but he was only connecting, ime, with people who'd already 'bought' what he's selling

I don't think any of the hipster house I have heard is particularly anti-outsiders in sound. It's more the conversation that makes it seem so.

xp i have heard this about rupture too actually

i mean, clearly going to see the deeep or w/e is going to have a lot less of an immediate impact than something like teengirl fantasy or miracles club. there are lots of differing strands that seem to be intersecting here and a lot of the generalizations itt are totally dependent on the artist

like somebody could do the most spoton Paradise Garage tribute sound but if it was somebody who didn't actually experience paradise garage, then it's necessarily a different sound

sometimes i think its less abt 'access' to a specific xp or context or sound (since access is sort of a degraded concept) but abt our relationship with a present that does little to distance or distinguish itself from the past, like this music isnt really 'the way it is' because its distanced or ironic or suspicious but because thats what 'xp' is like now. the past is now more a foreign country than the present or s.thing

otm Lamp

See the thing is I actually don't think that this music would or should or can only appeal to people who are suspicious of most house music, so it surprises me that some boosters in this thread keep defending the music in those terms.

I think it's entirely possible to both like "the real thing" and to like slightly arch distanced etc. recreations of that thing. People who can only like one or the other are missing out a bit IMO.

i dont think anyone here said that these scenes would, should or have to be mutually exclusive, but rather that this one, for whatever reason, seems to be accessible to people who otherwise might associate all dance music with the "disgusting" club vibe i mentioned before and have been turned off as a result. (not trying to make a normative statement here, just a positive one)

w/r/t this stuff being anti-outsider

i mean that mixmag interview and the writeups on the 100% silk blog seem like they're meant specifically for people who have never heard a house record before, super flowery exaggerated language, no namedrops or insidery references to equipment or hardware or specific musical or geographic legacies the music maybe be interacting with

if anything it is designed specifically for outsiders, even to the point where the DJ sets can function as cliff's notes guides to the most obvious highlights of the genre the DJ's productions are operating in

sometimes i think its less abt 'access' to a specific xp or context or sound (since access is sort of a degraded concept) but abt our relationship with a present that does little to distance or distinguish itself from the past, like this music isnt really 'the way it is' because its distanced or ironic or suspicious but because thats what 'xp' is like now. the past is now more a foreign country than the present or s.thing

― koyannisquatsi hop (Lamp), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 23:34 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think this is a good way of putting it but (to the extent this needs to be said at all) I also think it's not a general rule - i.e. this is not expressive of the modern human condition but rather one common experience of it.

Scenes have varying qualities of newness/retroism and then overlaid on top of that have various qualities of self-consciousness about where they sit.

Certainly none of these qualities in 100% Silk et. al. are any different in substance to, say balearic of disco edits or w/e - it's a very similar principle I think.

i mean that mixmag interview and the writeups on the 100% silk blog seem like they're meant specifically for people who have never heard a house record before, super flowery exaggerated language, no namedrops or insidery references to equipment or hardware or specific musical or geographic legacies the music maybe be interacting with

I don't disagree with this but at the same time insiderness/outsiderness can operate along a lot of different vectors.

Like, DJ Rupture can be music that appeals to outsiders vis a vis actual kuduro enthusiasts, but then seem insidery vis a vis music that appeals to people who aren't already sold on the idea of one planet under a groove pan-globalism.

David Guetta also wants to appeal to people who have never heard house but that doesn't mean any of us would conflate Guetta and 100% Silk as partners in ecumenical openness.

that sir stephens youtube sounds like laura jones - "love in me"

ok wau at some of the questions in that mixmag interview...

Do you kick it old skool intentionally?

Where do you find the producers that you put out? Each release seems to be from an underground artist capable of creating pure dance floor gold!

some of the answers are p funny too i guess

I just love making people dance, and if I make them think as well, then that's even better.

she just wants to make people dance guys

which is totally obvious on the 100% silk tour featuring sex worker, dylan ettinger, maria minerva and la vampires

i mean that mixmag interview and the writeups on the 100% silk blog seem like they're meant specifically for people who have never heard a house record before, super flowery exaggerated language, no namedrops or insidery references to equipment or hardware or specific musical or geographic legacies the music maybe be interacting with

ugh, this sounds terrible, but i'm just gonna throw it out there. i'm drunk and will deal w/my sexism tomorrow morn, but this was said by a girl. i know full well girls can get into the nerdy collectorism and name dropping, but that article wasn't that.

I was listening to the Future Times mix for Resident Advisor (which I love love love) again today and was thinking that FT is definitely a case where any archness does not get in the way of the music's functional immediacy whatsoever.

not to stir up the pot more, but I really don't think Future Times is coming from the same place as 100% Silk, despite various connections real or imagined. And the differences may be superficial ones regarding scene and history and fashion and degrees of HIPSTERISM but they're there and they partially dictate the differences.

And for what it's worth, I have no problem bringing the phrase "hipster" into this thread, or calling the genre "Hipster House" (hey, I kinda helped coin Beardo Disco, right Vahid?) because to me Hipster has positive as well as negative connotations...and it's beyond value judgements anyway. I've managed to avoid the several recent threads debating "hipster" (despite being invited to take part) but I felt it worth mentioning here.

Agree re "hipster".

"I've managed to avoid the several recent threads debating "hipster" (despite being invited to take part)"

if i do nothing else with my life i will make sure that these words are carved onto dan's tombstone

dan's probably right re: future times too. that stuff is definitely coming from a different, if overlapping place- which is why i was sorta hesitant to throw them in here, but as you mentioned there are some definite connections.

i unabashedly love FT and have slightly more reserved emotions for the rest of the stuff in this thread, regardless of how fun it is to talk about or go see in a live setting. too bad my future times thread never took off

a lot of the stuff on l.i.e.s. tho is more gritty, definitely more ingrained into crate digging history, they put out a legowelt record, etc... there are tons of differences but if you played this and told me it was on 100% silk i wouldn't think twice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ049btJRuM

one could probably say the same for most of the legowelt back catalog too. these things are not the same, but why? i'm not sure i'm the one to articulate this but it has to do with more than just mastering or historical context. i think.

i will openly refute the idea that many of these artists don't know what they're talking about when it comes to older house and techno.

who are you refuting?

i think what ppl are saying has less to do with the artists' actual interest in or respect for the history of house/techno- and ime as well they do seem to be very knowledgeable- and more about that awful interview and it perhaps being aimed at people who are relatively clueless (idk much about mixmag tho, maybe they are just lazy)

table, I think people in this thread were saying 100% Silk appealed to audiences who didn't know much about house and techno (this was held up as being a good quality rather than a bad one).

At any rate I think it's only about half right at most.

all the ppl i know that make this stuff are into 90s uk garage todd edwards type stuff

there's def a growing scene of this sort of thing in london but it seems to be more experimental and less about doing covers of old house trax

i will openly refute the idea that many of these artists don't know what they're talking about when it comes to older house and techno.

know what they're talking about /= knowing the most blogged about / talked about tracks, or what ilx accepts as the canon

super flowery exaggerated language

lol. This is true, but I guess I don't really mind so much. And of course, the selections are relatively straightforward for ILXors - it's hard for me to be overly critical of anyone recommending Luomo's 'Tessio', even if they're writing stuff like "A step in the right direction towards world peace..." (ironically or otherwise).

all the ppl i know that make this stuff are into 90s uk garage todd edwards type stuff

there's def a growing scene of this sort of thing in london but it seems to be more experimental and less about doing covers of old house trax

yeah i mentioned earlier that some of this stuff just seems more like the "future" house/garage / uk bass stuff as opposed to the other stuff in the thread that goes for a feel of the classics, doesn't feel like the same camp to me

amusing to see people always ready to step up for future times - i grew up around these kids in dc/md/va when they were all mostly about hardcore punk/indie/hip-hop, and have seen the label grow and take off with a lot of recognition which is great, go homeboys etc but i can't get into it. feel exactly the same way about dave nada which is the same situation although his spot in dance music is different

it's hard to sort out who's coming from where because of the crossover. That Two Dogs track is Ron Morelli and Jason Letkiewicz. Ron is yr classic old school punk kid turned house/techno guy who's been spinning house and techno since the pre-DFA days. I don't know Jason's background as well because I only met him recently but he's obviously well versed in the history of dance music, with his various projects/psuedonyms, Steve Summers, Rhythm Based Lovers, Innergaze, and he actually vacillates with this aesthetic. Sometimes it's more purist stuff, other times its more hazy/crossover hipster stuff. (again, hipster not in a pejorative sense). They're distinct stylistic choices and there is a difference. Innergaze, which he does with Aurora, cover star of a Minimal Wave comp, has a more lo-fi/minimal synth/experimental influence vibe.

Runaway/On the Prowl etc mentioned above is Marcos Cabral, who was working at Sonic Groove Records in NY w/ Brennan Greene and a serious techno head back before anyone in NY was even playing disco, let alone classic house, (except for actual house DJs, who existed in their own little ghetto separate from techno). It's him and Jacques Renault, and they're coming out of more recent nu-disco scenes, but they're hanging out with L.I.E.S. and going to the same parties.

So you've got people who've been making "techno" and "house" for years and years who are involved in this, and then you have people who are very new to it with varying levels of experience/understanding. In NY there's this whole bushwick yoga house scene, which ties into New Age revivalism as well, and aesthetically is maybe closer to the 100% Silk stuff. They too DJ the real stuff, but when making new stuff, these other influences will come to play.

But a lot of the west coast stuff we're talking about, the 100% silk and Ital stuff, I think has that early Italians Do It Better influence, where it's more lo-fi and artsy take on house music. House music neophytes (recent studies or not) coming out of more experimental noise contexts who don't have the baggage of purism even when they try to be slavishly derivative. But I think Ital just moved to Brooklyn anyway? So maybe he'll suddenly decide to go Diva house anyway. Maybe he's just visiting. In any case, the "difference" doesn't have to be "they don't know how to produce proper dance music" or "hipsters think they're cooler than proper dance music", it's just dance music with a few different influences then people are used to. Maybe that makes it OK for "hipsters" to finally like house music, like Justice made it OK for rockers to like club music or LCD or Glass Candy or whomever. I think there's a noticeable sonic difference from people tweaking dance music from the outside and from the inside. Take Metro Area and LCD Soundsystem. With the former you have artists coming up through "proper" house and techno, bringing in New Wave and Disco and Boogie influences, with the latter you have an artist coing up through punk/post-punk/rock. Both stretched the sound in their times in different ways.

And I think there's a conflict between admiring the mixed to cassette aesthetic, which is a big part of the sound, and an understanding of what sounds good on a system. I know certain hip local labels who started dabbling in music for clubs with similar acts recently and were initially frustrated by the realization that they have to mix and master for the dancefloor if they want it to sound good mixed in with other dance musics. This is a lesson every dance label in the history of dance music has learned, usually the hard way. It's not just about making it work at the Ministry of Sound, if 100% Silk hear their 12"s played enough at venues that aren't a house party rocking through somebody's stereo speakers, they'll get bummed. It's just harder to dance to stuff that sounds quiet and mushy. I'm assuming that's the complaint, I've never heard those 12"s.

Booming post.

dan otm!

i need the welcome roadsigns into brooklyn to note something about yoga and diva house now

http://vibesmanagement.com/

http://bodyactualized.blogspot.com/

Usually when I talk about wacky hybrid genres I'm exaggerating for effect/conversation. Not this time.

The closest involvement I had with all that was on the coldest day possible a few years ago when Market Hotel was still open Jan Woo let Tropical Jeremy and myself host Jonnny Sendar from Konk who was visiting after leaving NY for france a few years before and literally, maybe 12 people showed up. And somebody came, paid with a counterfeit 50 or 100 dollar bill, got change then left, so not only was the party empty, it got robbed. That story pretty much sums up my DJ career.

Oh, I thought you meant you were looking for the "signs", but you mean instead of "Brooklyn, FUGGEDABOUT IT", Marty Moskovitz's signs should promote this.

lol yes fuggedabout it but the signs welcome never heard about it

"Leaving Brooklyn, OY VEY"

Forget that guy. Queens should have signs like that, but they should be in an obscure Nepali dialect.

Again awesome post dan! I was hoping someone would articulate for me all the thoughts I've been having reading this thread the past few days, and have some working knowledge to share of what's happening on the ground.

Actually, I was wondering about 'learning things the hard way' re: 100% Silk. There's some interesting stuff on the label, but I agree that for them to balance out the hazy aesthetic with the demands of big systems is somehow crucial, especially if they expect these 12's to be DJed in a club (and this depends on how these records are taken up, and I'd say there's already some demand or engagement with those releases from that context). They seem to be splitting the difference at the moment between the context of records being documents or even art objects and records being tools for the dancefloor. They're running the label like a traditional dance label, but approaching production and aesthetics from an indie/noise/lo-fi perspective - so there's an interesting tension, but I'm not sure how it will play out in the long term. I'm sure that at the start this was a bit of a coy move from them, but the reception of these releases might ultimately mean they change their game.

I think this is also related to an issue that stems from the turn to analogue medium specificity as a strategy, where the route out from the DIY cassette/CDR scene is as much (if not more) about hi-fi, as well the other familiar path from abstraction/noise/experimental to pop.

Also interesting in this respect that 100% Silk show up not only as a feature in Mixmag, but also as a download on Beatport, and how they move across features/reviews from RA, LWE, or mnml ssgs to Pitchfork, Altered Zones or Gorilla Versus Bear.

Future Times is just put out a comp of relevant artists: Vibe 2 - worth checking out

also, new Miracles Club track on a Wurst comp coming out soon as well that is pretty nice. their place on that comp kind of exemplifies their crossover into the schools of artists who have been making this stuff for a while.

massive post dan, thanks for articulating the sentiments i was trying to say without pissing everyone off! i was trying to convey the relationship to the runaway/let's play house scene because all those people go to the same parties in brooklyn it seems so despite their varied backgrounds there are connections and some cross pollination.

i should say i mentioned blondes further up as part of this movement, if only because of the similarities in their performance styles and philosophies about production. but i was thinking more on this and their relationship to groups like Emeralds, Balam Acab, etc. (who have noise affiliations/legitimacy in those scenes) and i think that while their populist crossover appeal as sort-of stoner-trance goes in entirely different direction, i group them in this hipster-house movement because they have a similar effect on people of making it "OK for "hipsters" to finally like house music" as dan so aptly put it.

sorry, ready "this stuff" as house/disco

and where were all these noise trance hipster house kids at Oberlin when I was there? I started in 93 djing Jeff Mills records on WOBC and working the lights at the Sco while Morgan Geist played Dancemania records to an empty room and ended in 97 DJing a "rave" in South thrown by Paul B Davis and Cory Arcangel. There was a "techno" contigent in Zeke who were all RAVE TILL DAWN compilation CDs and glow sticks, but hey, it was the 90s.

dan otm all over the place.

ive got a weird vantage on all this stuff, cause it's never exactly been my #1 thing, but ive known all of these guys for ten years or so, from univ of maryland and DC/baltimore, so ive gotten to see a lot of the iterations and developments on their styles. ari and jason's MANHUNTER project started as real gnarly noise, and gradually morphed into a house-style project sometime around 2003. they were all about italo and unclassics and TRAX stuff, and got me into a bunch of those records. i think, when it comes down to it, jason's STEVE SUMMERS stuff is my real true favorite of it all. i love the acid sound, and it's got the most personality for me. innergaze and ital and beautiful swimmers are all good, too, and im excited for the prospect of 100% silk putting out more of jason's malvoeaux stuff. maybe these guys are hipsters -- theyve always had a SCENE, yknow? -- but theyve really been working it for a while, now, steadily building a base for like-interested musicians and fans, from WMUC to the old disco city nights to dahlak in dc to future times, etc etc etc.

yeah I feel like when the members of Black Eyes would go to Ari and Jason's DJ night at the Black Cat backstage it was pretty formative

When I came to the Black Cat with The Rapture to DJ when Black Eyes opened up, I walked through the back of the audience with someone in the band, pointed at the stage and said "hey, I don't see any black guys".

aw I miss the years of Black Eyes/black guys joeks

hadn't heard of teen girl fantasy in this thread, then announced today w/ kingdom

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/276692_241701265879593_2129686854_n.jpg

Were there years of those jokes? I only know the one. I think that was the biggest crowd I've ever played to, but there were no monitors and everyone just wanted to hear The Rapture anyway.

yeah i was going to say i would've been out to help out the minority count except i probably wouldn't go near the black cat for a rapture show

But that was the night all the DC indie-rock kids learned how to dance!

(sorry Ian Svenonius)

i don't think an apology is necessary i've been to spilt milk

^ niche joke but lols achieved

I had to look it up, found an article from 2003 talking about Gibby Miller inviting Ian and Calvin Johnston to Boston to DJ Start.

"...I was there" :)

and where were all these noise trance hipster house kids at Oberlin when I was there?

San Francisco iirc

they were actually in middle school at the time iirc

someone needs to teach the london kids to dance, the laurel halo/teengirl fantasy/maria minerva gigs were dry beyond belief. During teengirl fantasy i got tapped on the shoulder by the wettest spoilt dweeb ive ever seen and informed I was 'interrupting their circle' as me and my mate were the only people out of about 300 who were willing to have a bit of a jig

Great to hear from Dan Selzer on this, some of the only solid info in a thread filled with confused uninformed conjecture

Glad to hear London can be as dead as New York. I think a lot of Americans think of Europ + UK as one big never-ending dance party.

my conjecture is just as confused and uninformed, it's just a combination of stating it plainly and presenting a calm age- and experience-earned authority that makes it sound good at times.

Thats the one thing that really bugs me about this whole scene, I still prefer to go to traditional (abeit slightly more underground) house/techno parties as people do drugs and have fun even if they are slightly high st. Dalston Kids just stand around looking mopey outside The Alibi.

someone needs to teach the london kids to dance, the laurel halo/teengirl fantasy/maria minerva gigs were dry beyond belief. During teengirl fantasy i got tapped on the shoulder by the wettest spoilt dweeb ive ever seen and informed I was 'interrupting their circle' as me and my mate were the only people out of about 300 who were willing to have a bit of a jig

Oh noes. This would be the thing that would really put me off as well. They should book clubs for the 'hipster house' live performances alongside DJs outside that circuit, avoid the indie ghettos.

saying that some mates of mine are doing a 100% silk showcase up north soon, they always throw a good party

http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?296807

a thread filled with confused uninformed conjecture

this is sorta silly, a lot of us have been saying more or less what dan said but with less nyc-scene specific knowledge. the majority of posters here have had irl interactions with the artists being discussed and we're exploring how they fit into a larger context of dance/noise music as opposed to 'stating it plainly'

dan's contributions are hugely welcome tho don't get me wrong

"SORRY BOUCHA CIRCLE UNBRO"

I can drop west coast knowledge and names too. Alison Childs and Kat from Donuts hooked me up with Ryan Paulsen for a gig in SF where I met Robot Hustle and re-met Safety Scissors, whom I had DJ'd with in NY years before opening up for Martin from A Certain Ratio at the height of electro-clash. ILX's very own Jaxon was there as well. That's the night I told him he should start DJ'ing, and he hasn't looked back since.

I went to Portland last year or so for a wedding and met up with Matthew Quiet and Genevieve D. at the Holocene for a Soft Metals/Joey Casio show. I met Ian from Soft Metals but he probably doesn't remember/know who I am. I think I missed Optimo in Portland by a week.

innergaze more like innercircle

funny. apart from kat and robot hustle i know all those west coast folks too. i'm pretty sure ian does know who you are.

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2011/10/house-arrested-odd-upshot-of-emergence.html

I saw Laurel Halo in Brooklyn (at The Bunker) a few months back and it was the same story... Nobody moving, nobody dancing. Granted, I didn't think her set was very good or inspiring at all, but I also think the crowd wasn't looking for an excuse to get down. It did make me wonder: what exactly did these people hope to get out of this sort of performance? And what was Laurel Halo hoping to achieve or communicate? She didn't seem like she was trying to really pump up the crowd (she never sang or even spoke into the mic), and had that indie detachedness that we're all so familiar with. Why engage with this sort of music, either as performer or observer, if you're content to just sit back awkwardly and observe and pontificate as if it were just another set of drifty synth whizzjizz?

ha i don't doubt your ability to drop west coast knowledge either, but i do doubt the need to do so in the first place lol (linger and quiet are prob my fave djs in portland btw! and all those sf people put on great nights as well)

i met frankie knuckles once

My guess about something like Laurel Halo at the Bunker...(and I don't know her music that well and have to admit I haven't been to Bunker since I was the guest DJ with Porkchop and it was Subtonic and nobody was there, however I did go to a dinner party at Bryan's house with Rick Brown and Sue Garner from Run On and Malcolm Mooney*. How's that for name-dropping?!) but you have the kind of music that certain people really like to dance to...some serious techno, but it's the kind of thing that people go to late late at night...what time was she on? I image they put on a live performance and its on the earlier side and maybe the music isn't exactly bunker style techno and maybe people don't know what to do. One of the worst things about any live performance of dance music is the initial basic age old question, am I supposed to dance to this or am I supposed to watch it? I think a live performance has to have a certain kind of energy where it's like holy shit you're gonna dance to this! Or they should be hidden away like a DJ and half the people won't even know it's live.

That's my last name-drop of the thread. But it's a good one.

one time i posted on a thread with one of the dudes from optimo

actually i didnt meet frankie knuckles, but i saw him

one time i posted on a thread with one of the dudes from optimo and dan selzer

fixed that for you.

who tf is dan seltzer

That's the night I told him he should start DJ'ing, and he hasn't looked back since.

actually, i have since 'quit' djing. except that time i came out of retirement to dj w/you last time i was in ny

i have nothing to add to this thread except to say that damon/daniel magic touch/ital are both, like the lcds song says, actually really nice dudes. and kat as well, and honey soundsystem, and really the whole of SF dance folks that I know are pretty danged inclusive as far as I can tell

shame about the music lol

It's a shame that, amongst all this discussion, this hasn't been posted for those who may not have heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT2_G6Dov0U

So, yes, shame about the music.

yes, our whole little scene is very inclusive.

and on the name-dropping, i could have dropped just as many names, but refrained from doing it in an effort to appear too innercircle about it.

jaxon is the brett favre of the SF nerd dance scene.

i too saw frankie knuckles with max, before he lost his foot too!

i think we might have shaken frankie knuckles hand even

take THAT selzer

my point on that being that the stuff me and psych were posting was just as informed as dan's, just maybe a little less articulate and tactful about not pissing off certain posters

he was wearing a hat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waste, and he was getting DOWNNNN

Talk to me off line if you want to know how I really feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7yQwQtSN7M

never inviting you to contribute to a hipster thread again dan

Dan, it took me a while to pull myself out of the pit of awe I almost drowned in after your Malcolm Mooney name-drop, but yeah... Laurel Halo went on around midnight or so, pretty early by Bunker standards for sure, and it was part of a "festival" with other more noise/drift-oriented stuff, so I guess it's not that surprising that the crowd wasn't there to move. Based on the music from her two EPs, much of which I'm very fond of, I was expecting more of her awesomely ethereal vocals and melodic stuff to be on display. But the whole set was basically her playing four to the floor on her minimal setup and tweaking sounds here and there without much of a sense of the ol' Narrative Flow.

this link is insane. i always thought you guys were joking w/the yoga/house scene

http://bodyactualized.blogspot.com/search/label/Parties

now this thread is just about disgusting clique culture.

jan w00 used to live in a shed in the backyard of my house #namedrop

worst clique culture namedrop - i once had dinner with that dan selzer and i don't think the subject of "post punk" even came up. he has impeccable table manners fwiw.

i too saw frankie knuckles with max, before he lost his foot too!

― ashra williams (san frandisco), Friday, October 14, 2011 3:43 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

max lost his foot?!

that ethos was always particularly strong in Britain, and indeed one the things that turned me off house for much of the 90s... the fidelity, the purism .... and above all the epigonic narrative of decline that everyone who gets into this music, at whatever point in the timeline, seems to buy into... the location of "Better Days" in the rear-view mirror, rather than just around the corner

i know that this is just simon's thesis about retro etc but in fact one of the predominant ideas in house is that better days are in the FUTURE -- that this retro referencing is not about tradition but about the continuity of community (specifically a black, gospel, religious one) that is about self determination and the use of unity & community to "i have seen the mountaintop" etc. optimism, that rather than being about looking-to-the-past it's about asserting a tradition of shared oppression etc

at least, that's the framing i've always associated w/ it. I get that there's a retro-ness to it but that feels like a smaller part of a bigger overarching idea -- and one that where these particular power struggles still exist (partic. w gender, sexuality, race) they CANT be retro by definition (even if the music might be, or might not be)

i dont know that i'm disagreeing w/ him but maybe looking for more nuance or something

this thread sucks

:(

ouse music is not about cliquey groups of douchebags (hipster or otherwise) obsessed with "analog sounds" oh my god fuck off

'ouse

o plz dear gatekeeper please spread your word down from the mountain about the true meaning of house for the rest of us ignorant douchebags

haha sorry i'm drunk excuse my 'house music is not about X'. i just couldn't really give a shit about analog vs. digital and find it odd that ppl do.

we sorta determined that a lot of these people use laptops, it seems to be more about process than analog v digital

Was this discussion even about "analog v digital"? There was the discussion of the mastering and mix quality, which can be good or bad with analog or digital. Also "analog" referenced as a particular aesthetic, though it was brought up in multiple contexts. 1. the lo-fi Ariel Pink post-noise underground/experimental influences coming into play and B. the fetishization of analog synthesizers as being representative of a certain time. Of course that's an uninformed cop-out when various digital technologies also represent the past, like 4-op FM Yamaha DX basslines.

See Legowelt's recent free release "The Teac Life"

Ok people here it is the new Legowelt album which is free to download for u all
Its got a hella lot deep tape saturated forest-techno tracks on it and when I say Techno i dont mean that boooooooooooring
contemporary shit they call techno nowadays with overrated tallentless pretentious douchebag cunt DJs playing a few
halfassed dumb mongo beats and being all arty fartsy about it.

F*ck that, I am talking about: Raw as fuck autistic Star Trek 1987- Misty Forests- X-FILES,- DETROIT unicorn futurism made on cheap ass
digital & analog crap synthesizers recorded in a ragtag bedroom studio on a TEAC VHX cassettedeck in DOLBY C with an
unintelligible yet soulfull vivacity.

That's one take on retro for sure.

And the only thing that came up during my dinner with Stirmonster was my dinner, when he ordered haggis.

Just kidding, I tried it and it was really good. Though I think it was a classed-up version and not the most hardcore offal bits, no?

Was this discussion even about "analog v digital"?

no i was just p. drunk. (sorry) (so glad ilx is back)

if that TGF performance was in NYC, i have a few ideas as to why the crowd might've sucked.

at last, we can argue about hipster house again!! Ive been in withdrawl

withdrawal

i never saw the continuation of this thread...but i largely feel like every dance music thread ever anywhere now involves someone saying something then someone else posting a grim "goddamn right" unsubbed, and intermittently directed at one or another person based on whatever.

prob should have cyanide capsules on hand when such discussions occur, all of us.

goddamn right!

i put this here so you don't have to.

my friend's in town and wants to do a cmj show but i don't follow cmj at all and all i can think of is the tgf show due to this thread. i think i'd rather do anything that's not cmj.

...goddamn right!

tgf were good tonight. the crowd even moved a little.

love that legowelt quote. dude is hilarious on facebook.

steve summers LIVE on BIS
http://www.beatsinspace.net/playlists/595

^ just began listening to this, he is def my favorite figure in this scene by some distance and the sounds are good so far

the legowelt 'teac life' album is also p damn good (if a bit long)

i don't know from house music

but i like listening to legowelt

yea it is worth re-stating just how FREE and just how awesome that record is, you have no reason to deprive yourself of such things

linky

Little White Earbuds, Talking Shopcast with 100% Silk

Interesting interview...

Obviously, it's difficult to relate to some of these comments from a European perspective:

You know, I have so much respect for all dance labels working now, in particular DFA, R&S, Hyperdub, Future Times, and Planet Mu. I just think doing it right now is difficult, you know? Because it’s not 1988. It’s not 1992. It’s not the most vibrant time in history for dance, you know? It’s hard to keep it up now. A lot of people make glitchy music, a lot of people make weird hybrid dance music — it’s hard to say, ‘I’m going to continue to cultivate and appreciate dance music.’ Because, dance parties and stuff like that are really rare. Live DJs DJing house music is rare, and acid music is rare. Because once rave came it was, like, a lot of things had changed. And so I think anyone who’s still doing that now and has their own aesthetic and their own taste is to be absolutely applauded. I think the people who are doing it at all — that’s just, like, amazing to me.

This sounds really weird to me. Surely making dance music was always difficult, and is perhaps easier now in terms of basic access to technology? Money is arguably a separate issue, but only to the extent that it equally affects all musicians regardless of genre in some way. Of course, I guess it's written from an American point of view, but then R&S, Hyperdub and Planet Mu are not American labels anyway...

I think a lot of people go to underground shows, and I think a lot of people find their one or two little venues in their city or state, and they hover around them and wait for good bands to come and wait for the best nights. And sometimes not even, they just go to get a drink, and hope they’re going to catch a band tonight. And for me, I would love that to be true of dance music, and I would love more dance clubs to open up that were after hours or late hours stuff with people DJing and playing. I think that that would really change the landscape of dance music.

And this sounds just grim.

Is the US seriously this awful for dance music?

I feel bad for you all :-(

Get well soon USA

I dunno, describes my experiences living in the Midwest pretty well.

I've only been to a handful of DJ nights that I've actually enjoyed in the last 5 years. Last couple house nights I've been to had maybe 15 people at them?

Most club nights only run until about 1:30-1:45 am.

However if you want to dance to Top 40/ Hip-hop there's plenty of options.

In most major cities in the US things aren't nearly as bleak as that interview would suggest.

I wish that the house (scene) was really vibrant in my city, in Los Angeles.

= "I wish that there were a lot of regular parties in Los Angeles playing exactly the kind of very limited scope of what I believe house music is"

I've had a much better time in NYC and the Twin Cities than my tiny college town, just wanted to throw that in.

But outside of New York, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, San Francisco, etc... it can get a little dry.

A quick scan of the next week of LA events list shows with Francois K, Jus-Ed, Esteban Adame, DJ Pierre, Doc Martin, Maya Jane Coles, and Wolf + Lamb. And that's just the big name stuff.

one week!

yeah LA has a pretty vibrant scene. all the big cities do ime.

Saw Teengirl Fantasy over the weekend. They were good, some people danced.

there are parties up and down both american coasts with live djs throwing down live house music (of the erm purist sense or whatev) i cannot speak for the landlocked

yeah that statement about LA is just hella fucking RONG. LA and SF hold it down in a real (albeit different) way in terms of house music. with parties like Icee Hot, Tormenta Tropical, Donuts, and tons of others, SF has been pretty rad the past few years, even with the weird pseudo-functioning [kontrol] stuff slinking into the background.

in sf it seems to now be all about No Way Back, every time i see the lineup it makes me v v sad that i moved away

No Way Back has had some great guests. But I should mention, lots of folks enjoy themselves at 2 Men Will Move You, too... next one nov. 12! http://2menwillmoveyou.tumblr.com

sorry, had to do it ;)

I thought the LWE interview was interesting -- I appreciate the fact that there's a seriousness to what they're doing. But mainly I was struck by how far removed Brown seems to be from any kind of dance-music culture whatsoever. Which is fine -- just odd. Statements like this I found just bizarre:

"Because as you know, or you may not know, the dance world is very strict and very cut off. It’s much like the hip-hop, rap world; there’s a strain of people making that kind of music and they want to be famous. They want to be rich, and they don’t want to go through the underground channels, which makes total sense to me."

I realize that the indie/noise/rock world can be kind of cloistered, but still, to make a sweeping claim like that in 2011 seems really strange to me. Like, maybe she needs to get out more, or, you know, read LWE and RA.

Yeah, I guess what strikes me as odd about a "we exist in opposition to mainstream dance music culture" stance is that so much dance music already self-defines in those terms.

It's like some jazz musician saying "we want to make rock that's not like Nickelback."

Simon Reynolds uttered the phrase "hipster house" yesterday.

GAME OVER

http://pitchfork-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/Teengirl-Fantasy.gif

xpost.
ya, he's been reading this thread for a while. this was posted already
http://blissout.blogspot.com/2011/10/house-arrested-odd-upshot-of-emergence.html

reynolds otm here -

that ethos was always particularly strong in Britain, and indeed one the things that turned me off house for much of the 90s... the fidelity, the purism .... and above all the epigonic narrative of decline that everyone who gets into this music, at whatever point in the timeline, seems to buy into... the location of "Better Days" in the rear-view mirror, rather than just around the corner

"the dance world is very strict and very cut off."

What's most baffling is how oblivious she is to how quickly they've been accepted by the dance world. Interviewed by LWE, covered by Resident Advisor & promoted by Phonica - most new, connected dance labels would kill for that acceptance.

That Reynolds para on house just strikes me as 'Reynolds renders irrelevant anything he doesn't know much or care about pt. 3485'.

I think sr really likes 100% silk actually.

I think it's more house as a concept he's been wringing his hands over for some ten years.

In my day they used to be forward-looking...

Ten years? Even when you add some it's out by some years and then some.

Xpost Well sure that's the underlying point, but as a matter of practicality sr seems to object less to past-mining by either underground indie hipsters on the one hand or will.i.am on the other.

No sr was very enthusiastic about house circa 1998 / 1999.

and indeed one the things that turned me off house for much of the 90s... the fidelity, the purism .... and above all the...

...four on the floor kick and offset open hi hats

Very enthusiastic is a bit strong. For a couple of seconds he admired Green Velvet and some early micro-house pups. Later he would admit Villalobos was kinda interesting, but would never achieve popular club success and therefore lacked that certain frisson he was looking for. Now he's deigning to sniff at 100% Silk. Some acts yes, House as a concept - not since 88.

It's been a while since I read Blissed Out (the collection of early essays), but I seem to remember the piece on house in there being this confused analysis of stuff like Phuture, Lil' Louis and DJ Pierre through a post-punk (NME) theory-nerd framework (as was the style at the time). In some ways, SR admiring a perceived post-humanist/post-soul aesthetic in Chicago house, on the other hand, being dismissive of the genre in part as conceptually lacking (iir). Really a massive jump then to Gen X where dance music at large is theorized as a medium coded as embodiment, drugs, enthusiasm, vibe, 'the massive', etc.

Yeah in the beginning of Gen X he cringes at his early treatment of dance music.

Jedmond I was thinking more of when he was really into Basement Jaxx and Body & Soul.

oh my boys as an animated GIF!! fuck yeah. it just makes me want to fucking hang out with them RIGHT NOW.

i've never been to Two Men Will Move You, but i think that's because...wait, did Alexis used to have something to do with it? i really *like* Alexis in an inter-personal way, but the way she promotes herself makes me absolutely ill, for some reason. that said, Primo is a fucking amazing man who has let me into his parties for free when i've been very very broke, so perhaps i should just check it the fuck out.

2 Men Will Move you has been called "house music for people who don't like house music," so I guess that makes us a "hipster house" night?? I did play the Magic Touch 12" last time around.

We love Alexis, but 2 Men is just Primo and myself. Viv from High Fantasy and VinSol will be guest DJ tomorrow night. I'll be back Nov. 12. </spam>

SR is right about lots of things, obv those UK soulboys are all utter dickheads, but behind it all he's never really got house has he? like he simply doesn't like it...it's not about the negative backward looking side of it, he doesn't actually like the essence of house itself.

which essence of house is that, i tend to get that different people have different views on it

not sure that really invalidates the point but sure, there is no set in stone definition of house but you could use that argument to ridicule anyone saying anything whatsoever.

wasn't trying to invalidate the point, just wanted to which essenceof house you were referring to

*know which

i think people are arguing - and i agree - that SR did not and continues to not 'get' any house before rave and hardcore came along, i think even he himself said something along these lines in one of the articles linked to upthread. and not that i am in a position to talk about THE ESSENCE OF HOUSE but you could say that pre-rave house is the essence of house in that it came first and directly influenced a lot of other strands of house that he does enjoy

and he definitely seems to be ridiculing most backward-looking or retro house that uses the pre-rave style as a template

Most people I know who are really into house strike me as total living-in-the-moment types, maybe it's easier to exaggerate the Pipecockian bores because they make a disproportionate amount of noise on the internet.

^^^^ An important point.

I think a lot of sr's baggage comes from defending hardcore when everyone in the dance media was joining the "back to house" movement circa 1992. That basic division still informs a lot of his thinking. I don't think it's a case of not "getting" house - his pieces on Body & Soul were basically celebrations of that utopian element Deej refers to upthread - so much as tending to use old arguments as blueprints for current circumstances.

Pretty much all critics (myself included) do this.

four on the floor vs breakbeats...it was a case of choose your battle lines, draw it in the sand and toe it.

Funnily enough hipster house, whatever that is, reminds me off HipHouse wayyy back in the day. Where the lines got blurred between house, breakbeat and hiphop. God how that shit fucked the purists off but damn could you dance to it...Just ask Betty Boo.

There's some fairly U&K diffs between Betty Boo and 100% Silk though! Probably a closer analogue would be early Saint Etienne.

There's some fairly U&K diffs between Betty Boo and 100% Silk though!

a 20 yr gap will do that, though i should qualify that i was only talking about the similarity in names...Hipster house and Hip house and have never heard of hipster house before this thread.

Though after all this time, i still figure if four on the floor kicks, the main sonic signifier of house, is all you got driving the back beat, they may as well not be there because all they're doing is acting as a metronome and a sync point for shit DJ's who can't beat mix anything else.

think that is the single most wrong thing i've ever read on ilm.

heh...yeah after all these years i can't believe i'm still toeing the breakbeat line.

four on the floor vs breakbeats...it was a case of choose your battle lines, draw it in the sand and toe it.

this sounds like a such a sad state to be in... where i grew up the more technical househeads (in terms of footwork) were also all big into breakbeat