The Dance Music Nobody Talks About S & D

that’s exactly why that “Afro-House” moniker is so confusing: DJ Malvado comes at this from the house side of things, so “Afro house” is a very apt description for what he does, even if he incorporates kuduro/batida into his sound like in this track, whereas the stuff I’m talking about (including this and the other tracks I’ve been posting) does this the other way around (note the name of the YouTube channel the track I posted is on!) - the format is 3-minute beat-heavy joints with chanted lyrics (maybe the latter aspect is what makes it ‘kuduro’?)

You could make a comparison with Nigerian zanku (which came up later), where the beats were (initially) processed from Uhuru-style SA house and (later) gqom, but which otherwise stuck to the Naija pop template.

(btw I don’t mean to imply that these are two different musical worlds at all: Malvado and Vado Poster have worked together on several occasions for instance)

this ~tries~ to explain it (couldn’t find anything better tbqh): http://kizombalove.com/en/kuduro-versus-afro-house/

wow @ this Jayda G mix, why didn't I listen to this sooner?!

When "Both Of Us" comes in it is like someone parted the clouds for a pure beam of sunshine

https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=756

Roza Terenzi, proggy and trancey and excellent

hell yes, her solo productions are amazing. i'm especially fond of this EP: https://rozaterenzi.bandcamp.com/album/lets-ride

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/arts/rashaad-newsome-assembly-exhibit.html?fbclid=IwAR29Cwi9nOHB_hBGiE_70Ljlxj0l-kFgBeTTHu7NdsPcrIRpmJH4jdz0Xzs

Vogueing in Rashaad Newsome exhibit/ performance/ discussion/theatre/ art piece in NYC

Vogueing runs like a thread throughout “Assembly,” Newsome’s grand, opulent and smart exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory. The project goes light years beyond his formal forays into vogue, weaving together a video installation, collages, sculptures, an hourlong performance with dance and singers; and a workshop conducted by Being, a cloud-based artificial intelligence that Newsome designed. “Assembly” is a rich sensory experience, as well as a springboard for rethinking the roots of American culture.

I feel like we're on the cusp of a hard house revival. I'm noticing DJs dropping tracks in Boiler Rooms and Essential Mixes which were considered naff even the first time around for being bouncy and over 140bpm. I'm into it, to be honest.

Yeah hard house and trance are defo back

My DJ mate who's heavily into early 90s rave revivalism told me recently that hard house and trance were just around the corner, and that we should think about putting something on that spanned this spectrum. Meanwhile, I went to Trade's delayed 30th birthday event at Egg last month, and danced to hard house for the best part of 12 hours, something I've not done in over 20 years. Damn, that felt good.

I feel like the trance revival has been ongoing and in different forms for the past few years - all that "deconstructed" Lorenzo Senni stuff, for example. Whereas hard house, as a seperate thing, seems to be making a rehabilitation in a way I've never really picked up on before. Even someone like Ben UFO is in Instagram videos playing Tony De Vit singles, which I couldn't have forseen a few years ago.

I wish I had been old enough to go to Trade, both the culture and the music sound amazing. I love this documentary from Channel 4 from the late 90s about it.

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

I went regularly to Trade from 1994 to 2000. Just the best club ever. The vibe was once described as “frenzied and mellow”, which sums it up perfectly.

I’m looking forward to no longer having to talk about the hard house 12”s I put out in the late 90’s /early 00’s as some kind of guilty past I have to atone for.

My first underage club visits were to jungle / D&B but my real clubbing honeymoon was to hard house and trance at the Hip’po in Cardiff and tbh I had a whale of a time bouncing around to joyous nonsense like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5xXGbSd_o0

Used to love Hippos. Was a regular there in the early to mid-90s (and also the techno night they had downstairs on a Friday)

Yep ‘ID’ and ‘Sacred Grooves’ (I think) downstairs, fun times.

Went to Trade a couple of times in the mid 90s. Loved the club, loved the culture, didn't love the music. :)

As an aside, in the mid 90s a friend of mine ran a successful Thursday night club playing ultra deep house and techno. He used to go on and on about how he had the most sophisticated audience in the city. I was always a bit cynical about his bold claims and figured people mainly just liked going out to that particular club and were not really too invested in what he was playing.

I would play there from time to time and decided to try out an experiment. I mainly stuck to the vibe playing Mood II Swing and Basic Channel type records. But about an hour in, I decided to mix in this Hard House promo I’d been sent that week that was completely OTT, with every BIG record trope imaginable including having a 128 bar mega roll breakdown. He ran over to the booth in total horror to ask what the **** I was doing. I just pointed at the dancefloor which was going off to a level never previously seen at his night. The entire club was on the dancefloor, going bonkers, the bar staff were up on the bar etc. etc.

I don’t think he ever fully forgave me.

128 bar mega snare roll breakdown.

Haha, nice story!

Trance has definitey been a thing for a fair few years now among trendy DJs - and TBH there’s not much between the large commercial techno popular now and hard house.

I want to know what this 128 bar snare roll track is now :D

i wish i could remember. Some long lost white label promo.

Probably easier to list all 10 hard house / trance tunes without that kind of breakdown

Haha, very good.

I feel like I missed a trick 10 years or so ago when I had a friend who lived in Brixton and was always raving about the vibe at the hard trance nights at the sadly departed 414 club. At the time the idea of dancing to anything above 130pm filled me with dread.

love stirmonster's story. i had a similar experience last summer but with an old vocal house tune. never put too much stock into other djs is my motto, trust yourself. no one knows anything, you know as much as anybody. anyway, i know absolutely nothing about hard house other than i'm staying in my slow 130 bpm and below lane for now. xp lol

itt: stirmonster pretends to have forgotten the joy of playing "Cafe Del Mar"

never put too much stock into other djs is my motto, trust yourself. no one knows anything, you know as much as anybody.

need to put this on a card and frame it or something

itt: stirmonster pretends to have forgotten the joy of playing "Cafe Del Mar"

coincidentally i recently found a circa 92/3 mix tape of mine and it has the Kid Paul mix of "Cafe Del Mar" and i got the chills listening to it. i can almost imagine playing it again now (pitched down).

i'm staying in my slow 130 bpm and below lane for now.

i love that 130bpm could be considered slow.

I also love that story.

130 is pretty much my basement tempo, yup. :)

i am in my 50s, and yet one the things i would still like more than anything is to experience a stirmonster session.

it's never too late!

last party i did there was a bunch of 18 year olds having their 1st ever time in a club (they were infinitely more mature than i was at 18) and a guy celebrating his 70th birthday. They all got along great.

I was working the cloakroom tonight at an event that was about "90s techno" and the last ninety minutes played was all from the Ministry Of Sound/Kisstory axis of "trance classics." But it was all what I would consider the worst end of it - Sandstorm, Seven Days & One Week, Children. I'm unreasonably fond of the stuff that works as pop music - your Sash and Alice Deejay type of stuff - and I say "unreasonably" because I know it's beyond reasoning. I also love the tougher, more muscular stuff that goes towards hard house - Time To Burn, The Launch, Synth & Strings - it feels so much more camp in its dramatics. But ninety minutes of ~moody pads~ and protracted snare build-ups is hard going, the genre's rote moves feel emotionally austere and the grooves aren't interesting enough to be rhythmically captivating, plus all those cheap preset textures.

Basically I want the revival to be more Tony De Vit and less Paul Van Dyke.

Is this finally time for the reassessment of Richard humpty vission’s “big floor funk”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEPc6T4PiFo

Worse still is psychology of un voyeur, das person who is aware of his highest moralism but copes with perversions in his worldview that justify morality. Bovine Marquis De Sade, a bizarre all-encompassing childish claim, possesses the qualities necessary to criticize judgment. A liberal Autonomous Dustbin. But wherever my gaze wandered I was in the same extraordinary position: apart from the two responsibilities, sometimes shrill cries of joy and many blasphemies, sometimes loud, there was no sound that one would have liked to hear. Perfect order prevails over everything that was in motion; if there were very rare clashes, a gesture by the presidents or censorship would soon lead to silence; the most appropriate activities cannot take place more calmly.
problem is, Americans didn't know how to do the MDMA all together fratboy homophobie, so they never came home hauzemuzik even though they invented it! pop music is not to overthrow Protestantism, obviously wrong. Before puberty, your civilised CV want to make feel supreme, and in that case you would NEVER copulate like innocent, brutal, and angry dog. At some point I find this negative very pathetic, completely immature!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VMSWE-gjMg

Damn I was just going to say that

neo-hard house
https://davequam.bandcamp.com/album/aether-binge