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

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

Amanda Brown interview re: 100% Silk

http://nofearofpop.net/2011/11/feature-amanda-brown-100-silk/

virtually no one was talking about the resurrection of classic house music

I think this shows we're talking about a lot of different people coming from a bunch of different places. Or maybe that shows the boiling over point of classic house resurrection, something that people within dance music had been talking about for some time. It's hard to put a number on it but like, Frankie Knuckle's mixing Hercules in 2008 was the moment I thought classic house music resurrection became the topic of the moment.

It kind of depends "which" classic house doesn't it. You could probably make a claim for any year you wanted. There was a pretty huge adonis-style chicago revival circa 2004, for example. And then massive records like "The Sun Can't Compare" in 2006. But maybe "blind" was when the idea became apparent to people more divorced from dance currents.

this sounds like a such a sad state to be in...where i grew up

...it was junglists vs househeads and never the twain shall meet

There seemed to be a natural progression from the middle of the decade till now where disco revival gave way to house revival.

but there's always anomalies, I remember retro acid-house parties in NY in 2002 or whenever.

but I guess it's also about whether it comes from within modern threads of dance culture or without, or to what degree does it reach out.

i think the hipster house thing has more to do with classic house and/or techno becoming influential outside of dance culture tho, not sure this is even really catching in other areas of the dance music world outside of maybe john talabot playing a track in one of his sets (could be wrong about this tho, things change fast etc)

and clearly stir's interest is at least a liiittle piqued

I think sooner or later it's impact will encroach. I'll try not to get back to dropping too many names or out "I was there"-ing James Murphy, but when Glass Candy put out their first "disco" 12" nobody gave a shit and they had a hard time getting people's attention, particularly from the proper dance music communities (whether mainstream or more underground). Or going back further, even though Metro Area came out from people with proper dance cred, it wasn't accepted right away. I thInk both cases they eventually made (from where I sit), major genre-changing influence across wide swaths of dance music.

Vibes Management just hosted Juan Atkins this past weekend. Teengirl Fantasy opened up. Whether people get turned on to what new sounds these artists are injecting...or simply jump on a bandwagon of something riding a wave of hype, the impact will grow until it's swallowed up and it's all just different degrees of dance music anyway.

danced to hipster house 2nite, it was p fun, pysched for the 'real' show here inna couple of weeks

i have a bunch to say but i do think idk the whole dance/no dance thing... i think the way 100% silk et al exist partially outside of 'dance music' is interesting and comforting to me, lets me feel at east/'part of' the music cuz it shares some parts of my own sensibility w/o fucking with some at night hes a tourist d-d-d-dance music culture shit, always at a remove. dont know if thats 'valuable' really, or if it even matters, but im p ambivalent abt how this is all perceived/synthesized w/in dance music broadly...

anyway think a couple of friends and i are going to do a one off nite of this at a bar here, see how it goes, feel p energized atm

Question: do people feel that 100% Silk exists outside of dance music in a way fundamentally different to 1st wave electoclash? If so, what is/are the key difference(s)?

idk i was in high school for 1st wave electroclash

sorry for terrible drunk posting also jeez

some of 100% silk in particular only exists 'outside' dance music in a v nominal/extramusical way tho, if thats what u mean

Question: do people feel that 100% Silk exists outside of dance music in a way fundamentally different to 1st wave electoclash?

no not really

kinda feels similar in that it was like a safe way for non dance/techno types like me to get into those sort of things

"safe"

Vibes Management just hosted Juan Atkins this past weekend. Teengirl Fantasy opened up. Whether people get turned on to what new sounds these artists are injecting...or simply jump on a bandwagon of something riding a wave of hype, the impact will grow until it's swallowed up and it's all just different degrees of dance music anyway.

interesting - just booked Miracles Club to open for Francois K in December here in DC. Curious to see what the audience mix is like and especially the reaction of the older FK fans to Miracles Club.

ya i think it's hard for me to analyze how first wave electroclash was received by the preexisting dance culture at the time because, even though i lived through it, i had zero conception of what 'dance music' was outside of end-of-year lists and college radio parties

I was already writing about dance music at the time and to me it mainly seemed like just another form of dance music which took influences from outside of dance music - in a long line of such things.

I guess the overriding implication of a more dichotomised notion of dance music circles versus outsiders is that it turns dance music into this monolithic unitary thing, when of course it's much more porous and dispersed, both sonically and socially.

i.e. It's not clear to me that 100% silk is more divorced from the mainstream of dance music on either metric than were Mille plateux or 2000 black or mo'wax, to cite three random examples.

electroclash was pretty much responsible for me getting into "proper" dance music

hey guys, please point me to the 100% silk stuff sounding really housey besides ital's only for tonight. most of the references i listened to doesn't sound like house/dance music AT ALL! like, i get old cabaret voltaire minimal synthy vibes or something from most of this shit but that's about it. even that first ital 12 has nothing housey about it (that particular one sounds more like shitty instrumental new order tracks pre-technique, or a lo-fied dead or alive circa youthquake???). so unless i was listening to all the wrong stuff i'm kinda perplexed by this *100% silk = nü house* thing

octo octa, but otherwise u otm

a lot of this stuff that i check out sounds weirdly out of tune

the magic touch, ital, octo octa, sir stephen and at least a third of the releases on 100% silk (especially recent ones) are extremely influenced by classic house. but as pointed out many times upthread and in the op it's super varied and we are generalizing all over the place

also tim - i'm not sure anyone is arguing that this is unprecedented in any way (see above posts re idib/dfa) but i don't think it necessarily leads to dance music being some monolithic thing at all (i wish i had time to expand on this but it's time to head to class so i'm forced to summarize). i just think that you're missing a large part of the story if you aren't also analyzing this stuff in the context of recent trend cycles in the noise/indie/drone circles from which it came

It's not clear to me that 100% silk is more divorced from the mainstream of dance music on either metric than were Mille plateux or 2000 black or mo'wax, to cite three random examples.

Or Mo' Wax from hip-hop...

With electroclash, there was still a strong connection to dance proper in my mind through International DJ Gigolos, 'Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass'/IF, Detroit influences from Dopplereffekt, Ersatz Audio/Adult., even Felix Da Housecat had a long history in house before 'Kittenz And Thee Glitz', or stuff like Green Velvet's 'La La Land' that was incorporated into many electroclash sets, but really can be equally read in terms of GV's own development through second wave Chicago House and stuff like 'Flash', and it's worth noting that Crosstown Rebels literally refers to Damien Lazarus' exodus from City Rockers following the Futurism comp. For all these reasons, and many more, electroclash had a far closer relationship to dance music at large than 100% Silk. If fact, most of the compelling and interesting stuff from electroclash, to my mind, came out from the dance direction into pop and rock formats, rather than vice versa.

i just think that you're missing a large part of the story if you aren't also analyzing this stuff in the context of recent trend cycles in the noise/indie/drone circles from which it came

Yeah I get this, and obviously something like Maria Minerva is difficult to describe as dance music. It's more that the way some of this stuff is being presented (e.g. in the interviews quoted upthread) it's like this kind of relationship to dance from the outside is, if not unprecedented, then almost non-existent currently. Whereas I think this is what genres tend to be about.

To me 100% Silk is actually by and large (though not always) less interesting the closer it drifts to being indistinguishable from other house music; most of my favourite material really effectively synthesises the dance music elements and the noise/indie/drone elements.

Frankie Knuckle's mixing Hercules in 2008 was the moment I thought classic house music resurrection became the topic of the moment.

I've been thinking about this a bit lately, I think what Tim says is definitely true, like obviously there have been endless house revivals, it's sort of inherent, but I do agree with Dan that there's some new watershed in the last few years.

I think the newer revival is a lot more about singers and male divas though. I feel like after a good few years of deep house dominating the more underground scene in Europe that a lot of the people who were into your Justice or whatev type clubs are now more into disco and house.

At least that's my experience of it...a friend of mine started a loosely gay night in Dublin a few years ago and it was all old electropop etc at first.

I'm DJing there this month and he swapped my date by two weeks cos Azari and III are playing at another venue and he said literally no other act could guarantee emptiness so strongly.

Anyway slightly tangential but I do find it good how the more, I suppose overtly gay, side of Chicago house has like FINALLY gotten through to your indie dance people...

Would definitely agree with the above.

A little late here but -- having not followed anything re: the label or style this year per se -- it was interesting last year to see a bit of this starting to gel at the second On Land festival. Thinking in particular about this night:

http://nedraggett.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/on-land-festival-2010-friday-shows/

And specifically Operative and White Rainbow's sets. (And then Oneohtrix Point Never after that, I suppose.) Given the crossover a lot of this crowd has/had with Not Not Fun via the Echo Curio/Smell it all happened pretty easily...

i dont really know if i see the connection bw white rainbow/OPN and this dancier stuff, tbh, ned. seems like there's an intersection in the fanbase, but i dont know about the music itself.

A lot of it is social/contextual, and can't be easily summed up -- the references above to indie/drone circles are key. There's no one to one connection but there is an overarching appreciation and supportive community, a space in which this has thrived and expanded.

the new forkner project, purple and green, is not hipster house but it is dancey as hell

in a mid-90s rnb kind of way

is there overlap with this scene and !!!/out hud? those guys' live shows verged on live goa trance at times

Very cool n' interesting thread. I'm gonna throw in a plug and beat Dan Selzer at his namedropping skills while pointing out just how deeply incestuous (in the best sense) we hipster housers are: I have an album coming soon on LIES that originally came about during a drunken convo with Legowelt about what kind of "fake soundtrack' I'd like to create for his StrangeLife label. LIES ended up wanting to release it after StraneLife went on hiatus. My record will have remixes by Steves Moore and Summers and Marcos Cabral. I once released a record on IDIB. I don't do yoga but I know Jan Woo.

steve moore remix = you have my complete attention