the juke/bmore/bloghouse frankenstein dance music they play at clubs

the more i think about it the more i think max's post about middle school dances making americans dancing only to music 'they know' is otm about this stuff -- its like dudes dont actually think about dance music on any level beyond 'catchy melody people will want to know' and then just add generic dancing signifiers i.e. big kick drum, b-more break, grinding synth riff, and hope for the best -- theres like no internal logic to the structure of the song

and a lot of dance music is pretty intensely emotional and weird then theres shit like this thats jut lol dancing right

Lets do a compare and contrast.

There's the good:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=103329400

Fidget/UK Garage from Manchester

and there's the bad:

http://www.myspace.com/thebloodybeetroots

Shit from Italy that combines the more obnoxious qualities of Crookers and MSTRKRFT.

lol i like this crookers rmx now ^___^

at least until i hear a better rmx --- seriously gr8 melody for a dance jam

hahahahaaah after all that protesting

this kind of music still blows tho

yeah i hate it but i like it basically

how i break it down 2 an extent

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x18/gr8080/dancingalienld7.gif

nah i just like the melody. this remix can fuck itself

was it the moon goons?

― as a dude (goole), Wednesday, December 3, 2008 6:10 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mpls LOLZ

haha yeah

good thread

did you want a serious answer?
Ever since reading Energry Flash/Generation Ecstasy a decade ago I have tried to test my reactions to something I find cheesy. His book really opened me up to rave and to all of the gloriously demented breakbeat-and-piano tunes of 1991 and all that followed (though I already liked DnB). I figured that since that awakening, I would be able to be more open to music like this. After all, it does combine crowd-pleasing beats, weird noises and obvious pop hooks. But I can't get into it. I am trying to figure out the reasons and here are a few things I have come up with:
1. Reynolds' most important point about circa-2001 electroclash is that it took club culture all the way back to before ecstasy, to before house, techno, and rave. In fact, the music, at least that which was not coming out of certain sectors (Detroit and The Hague) seemed to try and revive and or amplify that few-year period between disco and post-punk and then house and techno where there was little to no explicit sense of politics in dance music. Anyone, who, like me, has taken a more typical course through dance music, and got into it before the turn of the century, has, at some place in their heart, some sense that dance music does mean or did mean something. The first gen. electroclash artists had this feeling too, I think which is why Miss Kittin and Dopplereffekt and Clone records don't have shit to do with this current scene even if they helped to usher in the 80s revival sonics it partially depends on.
2. Drugs are important. too. Even though cocaine was prevalent in disco, at least in the underground, I get the impression that its value was as a way to stay up all night, whereas I feel like the use of cocaine since electroclash has more to do with the ego-boosting capabilities, and that music bore it out, with all of those haughty, dominating vocals that were worlds away from David Gahan crying over Martin Gore's spilled milk. Obviously, 1985-2000 in dance music was all about E, LSD, mushrooms and weed. And utopia.
3. I wish I could explain this better but I think there is a difference between enacted postmodernity and lived postmodernity. Modernism had collage in which all the parts added up to some unified whole, and postmodernity has pastiche, in which the contrasts and interplay are "the message". But I think someone like Beck had some critical distance, was choosing to make postmodern art, and had the sense of what contrasts would be playful or amusing (and I don't even really like his music). So he enacted the postmodern. Whereas I think with this music it just is. There is no real sense of interesting play, just people who can not achieve any sort of interesting critical distance from a lifetime of constantly flipping channels.
4. I think a lot of the major figures in this scene like M.I.A., James Murphy, etc., are more intelligent than what I just described. And you do have to include DFA with all of this.
5. Baudrillard said something to the effect of "retro demythologizes the past" and therefore takes away any power or mystery it had. That process has been going on for a while now and here are the results. It makes sense that the music itself is engineered to be flat because the music itself is all of history running into a brick wall. At best, this is just a fad. At worst, these records are examples of timeless music as an inverse value. The music belongs to nothing and nowhere.

most people i know (that aren't half retarded) are pretty over "bangers brah". it still gets played in most chicago clubs yeah, but who wants to go to a chicago club anyway? debonair? srsly?
this kind of music is played almost exclusively by laptop/serato djs. why? because its easy.

fascinating perspective sam york. this phenomenon doesnt matter bcuz you are too cool for it, good 2 know

, but who wants to go to a chicago club anyway?

people who live in chicago???

hay Shh! thnx for the serious answer! im not sure i agree with you about all that tho -- i dont think 70s coke use was any more righteous than it is now or something for example -- coke use wasnt part of some disco dancer self-discipline in order to stay up all nite i mean. i have to think more about the rest

well think about it. what is the reason there are so many dj's all of the sudden?
a. laptops
b. this kind of music

no not righteous but i guess i was thinking about the drug difference between coke and e and then I was thinking, well, it makes sense for 1985 on but what about disco? i wasn't around for disco proper but i have a lot of those records, and, they don't sound anything like electroclash orblog house and i dont mean in terms of synths. there was a different spirit in disco, so i guess i was trying to make that contrast by pointing out the difference in attitude between singers ad lyrics even though i didnt explicitly mention the more communal and loving vibe of salsoul.

the difference in attitude, if it exists, is probably more attributable to political context and the cultural positions of the producers of the music than it is to the drugs

yes. i meant exactly that but am writing backwards it seems.

i a sick and my brain is not working very well but i have some friends who are into this music and i wonder about it a lot so i thought i would wager a guess. maybe tomorrow i can explain myself better.

re your point #1 - i don't agree, i think the ironic thing is that people like the DJs and producers who make this music are probably more aware than anybody else of all of the minutiae of chicago house, detroit techno, UK hardcore and rave, etc etc.

it seems like the kind of thing DJs are just 'into' and theres nothing that can be done. i tend to avoid clubs that play stuff like this but it still gets slipped in, even DJs who start off playing rap music end the night w/ this kind of shit.

i don't know, i think of it as the end result - or maybe just the current state - of a morbid fascination with remix / mixtape / mashup culture. maybe that's why its popular with DJs?

is it really a morbid fascination?

sort of

i think there really is a drive to make some of this stuff unpleasant. if you check out turntable lab they use "obnoxious" and "ridiculous" all the time as positive descriptors for fidget house

maybe i should have said "unhealthy fixation"

"re your point #1 - i don't agree, i think the ironic thing is that people like the DJs and producers who make this music are probably more aware than anybody else of all of the minutiae of chicago house, detroit techno, UK hardcore and rave, etc etc."

only on a purely aesthetic level though, which is the point i didnt make well.

yeah, i mean these guys are aware of history to a certain extent and they are consciously trying to make something 'edgy' and 'new' that selectively references that history. and in the end they wind up just completely fucking with those sounds and having little sense of respect for the history of dance music

see you dudes are good at making me WANT to like this stuff

this is gonna sound challopy so i'm sorry, but srsly what constitutes having respect for the history of dance music and why should someone dancing give a shit? also why are there like a billion genres of house lol XD

basically the same as what icecraem was sayin here

>>> and a lot of dance music is pretty intensely emotional and weird then theres shit like this thats jut lol dancing right

― ice cr?m, Saturday, December 6, 2008 2:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

ok!

i duno, i think a lot of people don't give a shit and that's probably ok. it actually explains the appeal of this music to a certain category of people

can we not redo this kind of debate plz thnx -- see i think this stuff suxx but i dont care how much or little these dudes know about dance music history

sorry deej!

dont ruin deejs precious frankenstein dance thread

i just want recommendations for ass-shaking jams

no no u dudes are fine im just not wanting to hear from guys who think the problem is kids these days, they just dont KNOW or CERTAIN PEOPLE who just care about FASHION instead of MUSIC or whatever it was going on upthread

black ass thread for Confounded xp

to this day i just assume confounded is the man photographed here
black ass thread for Confounded

would make sense considering the caption

deej = #1 thread robocop

what do you know

xp --- what are u talking about j0rdan weve moved on to discussing the black ass thread

quit talking about a funny dude and get back to work discussing frankensteinish dance music and what the hell is up with it anyway

chill gbx i was cool with good times jokez too