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

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.