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

lol, i listened to the 5 songs earlier today but for some reason didn't realize that it qualifies for a full length, considering it's 42 mins of music

that's shorter than some villalobos tracks

and longer than some Beatles albums

i'm finally starting to be able to discern his aesthetic as something besides a piece of the greater 100% silk-package

yeah the record doesnt sound much at all like his stuff on 100% silk. it makes sense that itd be on planet mu, really, and also as i kind of summation of bunch of different things hes been involved in.

Why didn't I listen to Sacred & Profane Love before last week??? So good. Esp. "Gloria". The Ital remix of "A Love So Strong" that Lamp posted too.

anyone heard the new blondes full length or any of the second disc or remixes?

i'm familiar with like half of it, since this is just a comp of their whole yin/yang ep series thing, but i'm still excited to dig into the record as a whole. plus - the assemblage of remixers is pretty damn admirable (jd twitch, john roberts, andy stott, teengirl fantasy, bicep, laurel halo, etc.)

*second disc OF remixes

http://soundcloud.com/igetrvng/sets/blondes-blondes-disc-1/

also - among the list of remixers is one 'robert miles'. i guess i don't know much about that dude outside of his pure moods jam but it is definitely hilarious to see him sitting right alongside andy stott on the track list

i saw ital play tonight. word of whitney houston death somehow did not spread. :'(

I expect to hear Whitney at the bushwick loft party I'm heading to.

I find it funny that the DIY element of this scene is getting talked up (see Ital's interview in P-fork last week). I mean, is there really a 64-track multi-million dollar recording-budget strand of house/techno against which it even makes sense to define something as DIY? Hasn't house always been pretty DIY?

I dunno, aside from most of this stuff striking me as really unsatisfying rhymthically--the same sense I get one someone sings out of tune, but applied to rhythm; or, better yet, maybe the way it feels when someone's dad tries rapping--it also feels somehow embarrassingly irrelevant, like I'm embarrassed for the people producing it. Take something like "Church Song" by Miracles Club--it feels so tentative, yet so un-nuanced at the same time, and that piano riff is just straight-up not in rhythm (but not in an engaging/abrasive enough way to sound cool).

Are we supposed to be impressed that people who maybe went to art school or read challenging books (the Ital photo for the P-fork interview shows him--for Christ's sake--posing in front of a stack of books: Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Levi-Strauss, etc, etc) are now deigning house worthy of their creative dabblings? What is it that they can bring to house that wasn't already there? Experimentalism, or making stuff that sounds a little "fucked up"? Bzzt--acid house was decades ago.

A key element of aesthetic hipsterism has always been considering oneself a bit ahead of the curve, right? It's just sort of embarrassing to see hipster ethos brought to bear on a genre that has basically already beat them at their own game in every possible sense.

I mean, there's "table-top of gear" DIY and there's giant modular synth studio DIY and then there's getting your mouseheads fabricated by jim henson's creature shop or whatever DIY, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D26U26fFojw&feature=related

guessing Ital's rack is not so robust?

I see where you're coming from, but the expense/expanse of that big setup doesn't exactly negate its DIY-ness, not to mention that I don't think this is remotely the vein of electronic music guys like Ital are trying to tap! Also, one of the ironies of this whole movement is that, with electronic music I'd argue that the cheaper one's setup is often the more slick and shitty it sounds (because the reliance is so heavily on software). And even when the setup involves hardware, chances are these latecomers haven't spent enough time mastering said hardware (the same holds true for software, too). I hate to say something so essentialist/reductionist, but I think the potential charmingness of techinical ineptitude translates much more clearly and with much more nuance via traditional instruments than via software/hardware, so the really DIY/"beginnery" sounding dance music just sounds, well, tentative and off, but not in a "sweetly humanly imperfect" way or something.

lol @ u

I no longer know what point Clarke B is trying to make.

Miracles Club are the wrong sort of DIY because they don't have enough gear? Having seen them play, I can assure you that ableton/laptops are not involved, at least not live.

What they bring to house is what everyone brings to it: new tracks. Plus, with a lot of them: live performance.

(the Ital photo for the P-fork interview shows him--for Christ's sake--posing in front of a stack of books: Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Levi-Strauss, etc, etc)

By 'etc, etc', the queer lit, Shilts and Greider's history of AIDS epidemic, and skullz...

I've seen Miracles Club live as well (with Blondes); I enjoyed the show quite a bit, actually, especially the energy of Miracles Club's performance. I'm just trying to sort through why stuff in this vein doesn't feel like it works all that well for me sometimes. It's not that it's the wrong kind of DIY; it's something about the traditional DIY aesthetic not translating well to the style for me or something. (It's really just trying to intellectualize something I'm not feeling.) I think I'm with Tim way upthread in that I like this stuff better the more it strays from traditional house. I mean, I've always liked noise stuff, and so I really do want to like this. Lamp, I do very much like the Peaking Lights remix thing you posted above.

i just think your asking too much of this music. i mean if you find it 'unsatisfying rhymthically' or uninteresting or even simply tired that seems fair but i dont really get what you 'want' it to be? slavish about 'real house'? or just 'real house'? or is the problem ppl that went to art school?

i think its that they are in photographs

Hey, some of my best friends are art school graduates! That's an interesting question; I'm not sure exactly what I "want" it to be... I wish it felt a little less detached, I guess. There's often a vibe of simultaneous reverence toward trad-house and clinical distance that I find it hard to sink my teeth into. Tim F. mentioned Stereolab way upthread, and I do get that sort of vibe with this stuff. And I've always strongly disliked Stereolab, for that same reason.

kinda otm about clinical distance and stereolab, but i'm interested in how some of these guys develop. i do like a few tracks, though most of it sounds boring to me. i also agree about the silliness of calling this stuff "DIY" as if most underground dance music isn't DIY. as nebulous a label as "hipster" is, i think it describes this stuff better than DIY. i'm curious to hear "hive mind", that cover really is great.

i agree about the DIY thing but people saying stupid things about miracles club doesn't make miracles club stupid.

the point of "church song" is that valet fans who are used to honey's spacey reverbed tripped out multitracked vocals now have a hook to get into a house song

hopefully valet fans can also get into these spacey reverbed tripped-out multitracked vocals

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

srsly though this thread just keeps going in circles though doesn't it, it's like microhouse all over again

i dig most of the miracle club stuff i've heard

don't really have an opinion on this music but that first clarke b post is fantastic

been listening to more of this stuff lately and was just thinking how dumb and bogged down and inaccurate this thread was in the beginning and yes it has now come full circle.

anyone got any mixes of this stuff?

i like this a lot though it is a bit more conventional: http://www.factmag.com/2012/01/09/fact-mix-311-amanda-brown/

kinda funny that the comments on that mix have a mini-version of the thread argument

whack!
Shitty hipster mix by someone that has no right DJing...like most of FACT's podcasts these days. Hot-for-now-gone-tmrw bands and label A&R's doing too many mixes and real mix artists getting the shaft.

Gary Kelly
What's a real artist? As opposed to an inflatable one?

I'm curious to meet the strawman who likes this strain of house but can't get with more traditional or "proper" stuff. Is there such a person, do you think? Or do you think this music serves / will serve as more of a gateway drug for people that might not have investigated house/techno previously?

I'm not really sensing a major divide between this stuff and house. I mean, a twist on a formula yes, but not really in opposition to anything. but you know, "hipsters" yadda yadda.

Ronan, I'm having trouble parsing out the presentation from the "actual music" (horrible term) myself. On one hand, yeah, this stuff follows basic house parameters, but on the other, it's being marketed and distributed in a way that does scream hipster--the retro-fetish labels, that "Church Song" video, Ital posing in a big goofy sweater with colored wayfarers, etc--so it's not as if that's something just unfairly being brought to the table by too-harsh critics...

xp. yeah, i think there is a roughness to the best of this stuff that is appealing in a way that slicker sounding (putatively "bigger budget"/less "DIY") house might not be, to some people. where you draw the border of "proper" house wrt this stuff probably depends on what arguments you're trying to win.

and i don't think there's some club/clubbers out there listening to this stuff exclusively at the expense of "real" house. i think it's very much a gateway for some people, and more likely for others an adjunct.

but such awful sweaters!

Ronan, I'm having trouble parsing out the presentation from the "actual music" (horrible term) myself. On one hand, yeah, this stuff follows basic house parameters, but on the other, it's being marketed and distributed in a way that does scream hipster--the retro-fetish labels, that "Church Song" video, Ital posing in a big goofy sweater with colored wayfarers, etc--so it's not as if that's something just unfairly being brought to the table by too-harsh critics...

I dunno, I guess all the hipsters (people) I know like purist type deep house, if anything this stuff feels like a nice relief from that, a bit of space for the music to change. Not that I don't love that music too, it's just I sort of think there isn't that much good house music that hipsters don't like and fuel in quite a big way.

maybe my defn of hipster is broad, but let's not go there for the love of god.

x-post

Thinking of it as a gateway actually makes it more endearing to me, I suppose. I would love to introduce people just getting into house via this stuff to, like, Theo Parrish, Omar-S, etc--guys playing with roughness/low-fi-ness in their productions, pushing against the forms, but in a way that feels so much more invested and less Stereolab-detached. I think that's the next step for people who dig this, not so much the slicker and more obviously "club-driven" stuff, but who knows...

It just occurred to me that this scene in some ways feels very similar to the James Chance / Cristina/ ZE Records axis back in the day. I really liked a lot of that stuff back in college when I discovered it, but now it just kinda makes me go "ugh"...

i wonder what this thread would be like if p1pec0ck were still around

tom/pipecock on March 2, 2011 at 3:36 PM
whoa, really didn’t expect to see this on LWE. i like the first two 100% Silk records a lot, and the next two that just dropped sound cool as well. the new Mi Ami joint has a 707 on it and more restrained vox, very HOUSE in every way basically. i’ve been a fan of them, and the more direct their dance influences are, the better the music is getting!

Way upthread I had difficulty understanding any claim that the music the subject of this thread constitutes some kind of liberating twist in "dance music" (beyond a highly personalised and subjective social one, i.e. that by virtue of its origins it provides an "in" for a whole group of people who have never self-identified as dance music fans), and I still feel that, like most claims to such things, the idea that this is constitutively "new" requires an unawareness of similar moves from within dance music circles.

ALL THAT SAID. I also think the idea that the music's presentation or its relationship to "proper" dance music is stultifying or problematic in itself is a pretty long bow to draw.

Reading about the music often gives the sense that it's like "house music. but made by avant noise types." As if the appeal is primarily some theoretical or social positioning vis a vis dance music proper, and this is what is important.

But a lot of the actual music(and certainly my favourite stuff) quite literally fuses in a very obvious sonic (rather than purely theoretical or social) manner its love of dance music with its inherent outsideriness. At this point the sense of theoretical overdetermination falls away, maybe because the more unusual the sounds the more they can "mean".

(which is basically what I think in a whole range of areas; maybe when outsideriness is limited to some kind of "sensibility" rather than a deliberate sonic point of difference I'm just not nuanced enough to hear it)

By way of example, I think there's something deeply appealing about Maria Minerva's approach (incl. on her housier material) that doesn't require any kind of stance vis a vis dance music pro or con, because it just seems sonically explorative and in-its-own-world; I could just as easily imagine it as the work of a dance music producer branching out (as so many do!) as that of an outsider burrowing in.

Similarly on the new Ital EP the real keeper for me is "Floridian Void" (so cinematic), perhaps in large part because it reminds me of Ronny & Renzo, who are like this narrative in reverse.

I guess the effect of this is that I think any attempt to automatically privilege or delegitimise this stuff is kind of way-overcrediting pretty facile ideas about it at the expense of the actual music.

I could just as easily imagine it as the work of a dance music producer branching out (as so many do!) as that of an outsider burrowing in.

this is the thing about this music, something feeling new/interesting but still within house is quite common. I mean the "newness" may be as little as just not being quite so sure of where every breakdown or hook is going to go, a lot of what's popular in house at the moment is incredibly predictable, again i'm saying that as a fan.

Yes I would agree with that. I think that 100% Silk feels more outsider than it would have 10 years ago precisely because a lot of contemporary house is quite conservative and purist.

One person's excitement over where the hook or breakdown might go is another's nagging sense that the compositional chops of the producer are pretty limited...

Isn't that always the case though? You could have made the same enthusiastic claims for, or sceptical dismissals of, Kompakt circa 2001.

tal posing in a big goofy sweater with colored wayfarers

that's actually how californian teenagers dress though

especially "hip" ones who read vice and look at tumblr a lot

yeah i mean if you listen to those virgo four reissues or frankie knuckles for eg it sounds just as primitivist/futurist as any of this. i still like a lot of this. its about filters and lenses in some way.

yeah i was thinking that the line btw outside and inside experimenter is p difficult to parse if you arent aware of where the line gets drawn in the first place

Well Clarke it's both good and bad to me, there is a power in the way the more purist stuff has a predictability, I mean there is something satisfying about that predictability.

But the more meandering nature of 100% Silk and similar is refreshing too. The pristine house thing can get a bit artless.

xpost yeah actually part of the reason I love this stuff is cos it sounds spiritually akin to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3s1O4Ppyms

I do really like the idea of people trying to go back to that sloppiness, not for some silly DIY principle borrowed from whatever other scene, but just cos it actually sounds nice and loose and woozy and not as sharp as so much of what's around.

I feel a bit conflicted in that I love a lot of the deep house stuff that's around but there are other ways of making good music.

I think a big part of what I like Maria Minerva it that she sounds like she's been produced by DJ Koze.

x-posts

yeah i mean if you listen to those virgo four reissues or frankie knuckles for eg it sounds just as primitivist/futurist as any of this. i still like a lot of this. its about filters and lenses in some way.

I hear you Judith, but that Virgo Four stuff is, like, freaking exquisitely amazing. The "out"-est stuff on the Resurrection comp is also waaay more out than any "Hipster House" I've ever heard; like, I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHe-JDl8eNM

Even if they occupy some sort of similar primitivist/futurist zone, the Virgo Four stuff is visceral and thrilling in a way this stuff isn't. Virgo Four actually reminds me (not in the way they sound, but how the music feels) a lot of Fourth Drawer Down-era Associates! They share a sense of just unbelievable raw creativity trying to figure stuff out--intensely personal yet totally expansive. Whereas the HH stuff reminds me more of the way it felt to hear, say, Interpol start out dabbling in postpunk.