BEARDO DISCO (finally fixed for vahid) - not idjuts / lindstrom - harvey, rub'n'tug, map of africa

re: the bit above about this not really being an actual "movement" - it isn't, in so far as it's been labeled and people can knowingly subscribe or unsubscribe to it - but I'd wager there are hundreds of DJs and would-be DJs out there who get off on krautrock and psych and prog and who knows what else, and also happen to want to spin beats - and then end up mixing them all up. That's really why I find this thread interesting, a place to talk about these kinds of incidents.

The only reason I initially considered it a movement was after seeing Harvey, seeing Run-N-Tug and thinking huh, a bunch of dudes with longish hair and beards playing the Doors' American Prayer mixed with disco.

To me there's a very specific aesthethic that's hard to define, but actually relates to indie-rocks recent ironic or not interest in so-called Yacht Rock, just an interest among disco DJs playing not only classic rock, but smoothly produced 70s stuff and even 80s stuff that was written off as being pretty cheesy for quite a few years. Sure, Steely Dan's Peg and the like have always been dance/disco classics...or have they? But it's deeper then that, and I find myself playing all these classic rock covers...Locomotive Breath by Cat Gang, Les Rocket's On the Road Again, For Your Love by Chilly, down to more conventional disco covers of rock songs like Queen Samantha's The Letter or Revelacion's House of the Rising Sun. I think maybe it's all indicative or rockers getting into disco, whether for the first time, or long-time disco djs rediscovering their childhood rock faves and just having the freedom to mix it all up. I think Harvey helped pave the way to that, at least from what mixes I've heard.

On a practical side, especially when playing to rock crowds, a lot of this stuff works really well.

i think that optimo are different to the cosmic/disco crowd, psychout seems to put forward their view of psychedelic in a similar way to chuck eddy's definitions of genre. i think optimo have a magpie approach that wedges disparate things into their own vision.

lindstrom/terje/idjuts et al are purists through and through, and i think that beardo house does have that feel of soulboys with baggier, browner knitwear. and i think they fit into the disco/cosmic canon in a way that optimo just don't want to. i love both approaches tho,

the todd terje edits i have are the best of the new crop, i think. he thickens the tracks and extends them without you really noticing as a listener. he reminds me of danny krivit in that respect, who is the don of the edit style. i like terje's new-age picks too, 'dancing digits' and dave samuels' 'dance class'

who did that edit of andreas vollenweider's 'belladonna'? that is so nice!

todd terje's edits are really great. his tangoterge edits on supreme have been particularly good. his turtles, 'aquarius' and kraftwerk edits change those tracks but at the same time make you think they should always have sounded like that.

I think, on the big pitcure level, dominique, I always say that music seeemed really, and I say this a lot, "stratified and ghettoized" through the 90s. Even within genres there were distinct threads without tons of people crossing their boundaries, while some of the more interesting acts that did totally fell through the cracks and dissapeared. I think post 2000 there's been a big breakdown in those walls.

the track cosmic is one of my faves. kind of done in a ron hardy style. could up it if anyone's interested. anyone got any others to share?

who would have thought greg khin band would have been in my crate five years ago ?
not me... i also suppose as i get older i understand the need for nostalgia and i gives me
some perspective on how (too) many years i've been doing this...

incidentally, there's a steppers scene in chicago with djs who have the same ambition
to melt the faces and hearts of dancers with obscure tunes... new kids on the block (extended!) anyone? i guess that's a whole other thread...

really? i guess i haven't heard enough of them. that cosmic one is super repetitive, similar to the stuff that ron hardy's nephew has been putting out, but i didn't hear a lot of seams at a casual listen and i don't know the original, so who knows. maybe is a product of doing them on a reel-to-reel? i image it's a lot more complicated to do crazy edits, but then steinski and the latin rascals managed ok.

i heard one of them is a silver apples tune. anything interesting done with it?

btw, someone posted the rub n tug beastie boys remix here:
http://www.djhistory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13843

Like why must there be these discussions of new non-house/techno DJ forms without someone suggesting they are replacing the latter because it's stale etc. No offence to gato, it was just that post that got me thinking about countless articles over the years.

Is it a self loathing thing? Why must these new trends REPLACE house and techno? Maybe it just shows how old house is by now that people now constantly talk of its impending to death, like rock.

See I think the reason for the success of this stuff is to do with the a similar back to basics ethic which has had a real presence in house and techno too recently. The way dance music, or whatever we need to call some of the newer forms, beat music which DJs are playing sort of bleeds from genre to genre at the moment, and this seems to me what is making it all so good.

There are so many "unifiers" at the moment, like for example "Eurodans" by Todd Terje, it's really peculiar to have the older DJs in Dublin who play alot of funk and soul and disco in bar type settings and the young guys all talking about the same record, I mean utterly peculiar.

I dunno, I just don't like to isolate this sound from house and am probably way over paranoid about any biase towards real instrument music, not sure if it's fair to accuse gato of such a biase, I just was keen to bring up my initial point.

ronan. i don't think there is any bias towards real instruments, at least i hope not. for me, house and techno aren't being replaced, they are just being enhanced by playing other things along side them that seem to sit well amongst the current sounds. it's funny that every time i play something like say 'supernature' someone will ask what it is, presuming it is something new.

i don't really get the fuss with 'eurodans' though. imo, he has done far better tracks that haven't caused nearly as much buzz.

anyway rub'n'tug already use 303 tracks in their mixes, harvey never really "left" house, etc etc ... so it's sort of jumping to conclusions to posit a house / beardo divide.

we're already halfway to detroit techno by playing manuel gottsching and so on.

west coast house was there 10 yrs ago w/ respect to sampling boogie records, post-punk and ESG.

etc etc ...

also still waiting on the YSI for the rub'n'tug mix for aNYthing ... (AHEM)

and at the whatever we want website, there's promise of an mp3 store, fingers crossed...

if you look back you'll see I said a version of these sentiments as well, but to clarify, for myself as well as this thread, when I talk about the stratification of stuff, it's not to knock a specific genre. I'm as into "house music all night long" as anyone, but at the same time, part of me digs the broader approach. I really enjoy the sets that I do and am suprised that lots of people don't, that they'd prefer to hear me just play old-school hip-hop all night, or 80s all night, or house all night, or detroit techno all night. I'm trying hard to play all kinds of stuff in a way that works and makes sense and am suprised more people don't feel that. Maybe now they're coming around.

The ironic thing is that during the birth of House, it was an exceptionally broad/open/eclectic thing, whether you're talking about the deep house Knuckes/levan kind of thing pulling from disco, rock, world music whatever...or the WBMX mash-up of deep house, italo-disco, pop music and early house. I just find most "house" djs have a much more narrow view.

I find it funny that it works a parallel path of the rocker/celebrity DJ mash-up can't DJ "eclectic aesthethic".

I know stirmonster hates the term "eclectic", perhaps that connotation is why?

And not to get all DJ theory or whatever, but I'm not saying my eclecticism always has to-or wants to-flow so smoothly...jarring changes in style/tempo/volume, etc, can be great.

What is this in reference to?

No matter where you look, whether it be DJs in the small venues or super-clubs, everyone seems to be building complimentary genres into their pre-existing formulas. Look at the evolution of the Fabric series...

I wasn't so much seeking purism as a rule, tho I guess I like Lindstrom/Reverso/Chacona/Stranger etc etc mainly for just being new and interesting ways to skin a cat. Listening to that Lindstrom at Our Disco mix it strikes me how raw some of this stuff sounds, it's really close to some of the early house tracks, that kind of faintly psychotic actual "acid" and tribal feel.

So often the stuff that constituted nu-disco that I'd hear would be really slickly produced and you just think you might as well listen to house.

I wasn't worried that this style would replace house etc, just sometimes the discourse surrounding new forms of DJ music always implies this. And that does an injustice to the new stuff too.

The eclectic thing is interesting cos I sort of hate the term too, in so far as what it means to the man on the street, and also its status as a sort of holy grail, I mean people love to say "I like all kinds of music".

That said Dan's points are totally reasonable, I do think it takes a certain type of DJ to play a real mix of stuff, also I find the fuller the club the more I tend to plough a similar furrow. I mean I think anyone who's DJed well knows you have to vary it even within say "house music all night long" or people drift, but sometimes it can be a weirdly conservative force, the dancefloor!

I'm not saying I ever play stuff I don't like, just certain venues tend to have a certain crowd, and I find myself playing to that.

Oh yeah and finally about "Eurodans", I think it's pretty cool tho not as fresh as some of his other stuff, it's very Metro Area, just with that sloppiness added. The B-side is probably more interesting if not as big a hit.

sorry, didn't mean to infuriate anyone as to the current state of house music. but that being said, yeah, i find it as annoying as
the current wave of polyester smooth jazz. of course i'm painting
with HUGE GIANT LARGE unrelenting brushes here, but it's just my opinion and nothing more... i guess my point was brought up by one
of the worst offenders in my book, kerri chandler... when he did that "raw" track... he even said himself... and music journalists do indeed overstate things as trends... it sells magazines and keeps
them employed. my mother loves "eurodans" thanks to that times piece on the next new new newiest...

also, i DO think mixing matters and it takes a certain charm in order to connect all the dots properly... again, there are many different approaches...most djs (professional) get a booking agent and get slapped with some type of journalist jargon and leave it at that... thats what makes for on the floor club shit so boring in my mind...i suppose i am indeed looking for new avenues for something i find "old hat"...but in my case more like "old hater."

btw/ how many of you are musicians ? i've been a drummer since i was a kid...i used to have a preference for instrumental/experimental music and now my appreciation is toward song form... maybe that evolution as a player(hater) has something to do with it...?

(i'm guilty of the following... so jump-in... i probably deserve it ... ;))

when it comes to AM GOLD, rupert holmes, or our imaginary band CHARDONNAY as well as christopher cross, loggins messina and the like the term is not YACHT ROCK... besides soulstrut.com came up with MARINA ROCK even before all that mess. My peoples records store crews here in detroit are calling all of you out by like five/six years... the journo-term is "DIVORCED DAD" music. learn it. love it. feel it. then replace it with the next thing...

but the sencerity test is like the scene from the film FLASH GORDON where he had to stick his arm in the creepy log, or THE NEVERENDING STORY (btw/ LIMAHL is also a style of music... possibly the next thing?) where he needed an open heart to pass through the gate... i'm serious about this michael mcdonald stuff. i grew up on a sailboat... no hating...

carry on...

Keeping an open mind and having a large pool of things to play from can never be bad, even if it's a large pool of the same genre (like house.) I know that some people like it when it sounds like the DJ is playing the same record all night but I don't. Disco and house were built on playing non-disco and non-house records in a certain way that made them disco or house bcz there weren't any (or barely any) real disco or house records tat the beginning of those genres.

raw patrick's post has reinded me i haven't played 'ace of spades' out in waaaay too long. must remedy this.

That's why I had a hard time engaging with house in the 90s. It went from those 80s sets that would have disco and funk and new wave in them to DJs who would only spin deep or tribal or hard house sets, and nothing else. I don't even consider those niche sounds to be house.

I always thought house was "anything and everything you can dance to..."

but I guess I was wrong....

The ironic thing is that during the birth of House, it was an exceptionally broad/open/eclectic thing, whether you're talking about the deep house Knuckes/levan kind of thing pulling from disco, rock, world music whatever...or the WBMX mash-up of deep house, italo-disco, pop music and early house. I just find most "house" djs have a much more narrow view.

Also, during the last decade or so house has found a way to integrate previous instruments and their related technical/improvisational proficiency. The same can't be said for techno, recently grown out of aimless tribal banging and endlessy fascinated with the sound of it's own postIDM-twiddling Euro-kraut navel.

People here also keep mistaking house music with jazzish, 100-CD-changer-in-the-BMW type lounge drivel. Or forgetting that house, like techno or most music for that matter, has the usual 95% to 5% shit-to-good ratio (and then conveniently forgetting to discuss the top 5% altogether). Keep looking the other way folks
/rant

sorry i don't have much to contribute thus farly, but great thread, carry on... (though i must say, i don't get the fuss over map of africa's "black skin blue eyed boys," i'd much rather listen to the original. shit, i used to play it quite a bit, actually! before i went all euro-kraut navel-gazish, that is.)

Confused about wording here but if you're getting at what I think you're getting at could you supply some examples that aren't, say, "jazzish, 100-CD-changer-in-the-BMW type lounge drivel"?