can you really be 'into' dance music without going clubbing?*

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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
*without going clubbing much?

i realised i barely go to clubs anymore.
actually, i never really liked clubbing to begin with (well, apart from smaller/not so busy places), and that was when i DID go fairly regularly.
i just liked the music, and DJing, etc.
but you cant really hope to understand dance music unless youre hearing it in a club right?
i think hearing mixes would be fine somewhat, but even then, the crowd are what give it the context and meaning i think, even if all theyre doing is drinking and staring towards the dj booth. also, with mp3s/ipods, the diff between hearing it on earphones to hearing it in somewhere like room 1 at fabric, seems so much bigger than before.
maybe ill just watch more boiler room.
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Dictating an environment mentality is hard, especially in 'raving' communities.

This isn't a mockery at his expense, but when I saw Keysound w/ Blackdown in Brooklyn, the main room vibe was great, but I had to come up for air in the sort of lobby area (DJ set up in the basement, then a main floor room with a projector.)

Kids in hippie garb swinging glowing orbs and all that.

Has no place with listening to grime, you know what I mean? But they felt obligated to do it b/c for certain dance music types, that's what you 'do'. But to do that while hearing Riko...

I aged one year that night.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't think you're ever really going to 'get' dance music unless you have, at some point at least, danced to it. Preferably in a room (field, hangar, barn...) with other people.

Yes, you can do that in someone's front room at a house party, or at a wedding in the back room of a pub, but it's not really the same as doing it in a nightclub, a warehouse or a big tent at a festival.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Nah, I don't think so, really. You can like it as something else from what its supposed to be but you aren't really going to get the full impact listening to something in your room or on headphones as you will in a club/rave.

I never really fully 'got' deep tech til I went to Frequency. Never really 'got' dubstep til I saw Kode 9 live.

I think this is one reason why more cerebral/'deep' music is overrepresented in music media. Music journalists might go to clubs a lot but they probably listen to dance music at home most of the time.

This is also why writing about dance music, especially, can tend to focus on it in terms of sonic architecture/texture, as if its a painting.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
In the last decade there’s been lots of “post-rave” (for want of a better phrase). This is music that employs dance music tropes but isn’t particularly danceable or club friendly. Burial is an early example of this. Lots of post-dubstep fits the criteria as does bits of machinedrum, etc.

There’s stuff on other threads about how clubbing is dying and how young people prefer a night in to a night out. Because of this the ‘club’ is increasingly becoming a psycho-acoustic headspace rather than a real place (much in the same way music feels ‘oceanic’, 'spacey', 'dystopian', 'techy' etc.). These days the club is largely an idea to be evoked rather than a real place to be attended.
 
trza

trza

Well-known member
I don't see how a person who listens to Shackleton or Cut Hands or the music written up in The Wire has any relationship to clubbing.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I take it you mean:

Corpsey said:
This is also why writing about dance music, especially, can tend to focus on it in terms of sonic architecture/texture, as if its a painting.
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...as opposed to dealing with the visceral sensation of really feeling the music pass through you? (And I mean that more literally than figuratively.) Something which you're never going to feel at home with music on headphones or even a really good home hi-fi system.
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I think most people who write about music have no idea how music is made.

I think most people who dance to music have no idea how to write about it.

I think it's sad.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
youre all right. and i know it deep down. i remember when i went to a uk funky club, the music suddenly got ten times better. even afterwards, i would imagine people dancing to it when i would listen to the tracks which changed how i listened to the music in my head.

sadmanbarty said:
In the last decade there’s been lots of “post-rave” (for want of a better phrase). This is music that employs dance music tropes but isn’t particularly danceable or club friendly. Burial is an early example of this. Lots of post-dubstep fits the criteria as does bits of machinedrum, etc.
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thing is, i dont even like this kind of post-dance dance. machine drum doesnt do it for me. burial i think had only a few good ideas and used them all up by the end of the first album. i like music that has energy and makes you want to dance. i just dont necessarily want to do that in a club. i do miss going to plastic people and hearing music on that system though.

could just be one of these types of situations -
tumblr_lbq6pfxU6Y1qczt9wo1_500.jpg

a wider existential issue to do with age, getting out of touch, and not feeling like being out of touch is quite so bad, even though there is no reason to not try and be in touch.
 
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Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
When I was about 11 or 12 I was really into cars and thought all the lads driving around in souped-up hatchbacks were dead cool. I had always been familiar with club music off TV or whatever but it was only after hearing it obnoxiously thumping out of cars around town that I started to take a serious interest. It was definitely a few years before I figured out that clubs and drugs were involved. I got decks at 16 and have still never learned to drive.

You can definitely be into it without regular clubbing but if we're honest you really have to have done at least the honeymoon period and got a few magic nights under your belt to comprehend the point and potential of it. No amount of home listening or small parties can prepare you for experiencing a proper club and amassing an eye watering collection of dancehall first pressings is only half the story if you never heard them on a sound system.

I always wonder about the successful DJs and producers who have been teetotal though.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
rubberdingyrapids said:
thing is, i dont even like this kind of post-dance dance. machine drum doesnt do it for me. burial i think had only a few good ideas and used them all up by the end of the first album. i like music that has energy and makes you want to dance. i just dont necessarily want to do that in a club. i do miss going to plastic people and hearing music on that system though.
.
Click to expand...

I suppose I was trying to say that the emergence of 'post-rave' is endemic of the fact that 'the club' has become an abstract headspace to lots of people. So someone can still use proper dance music to put them in that mind set.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
My music snobbery has stopped me from enjoying clubbing in the proper manner. I stand in the corner, at the back, nodding my head, except when shaking it, when the DJ has the gall to play something I'm not entirely enthusiastic about.

What's really wanted is a pill-boshing, shot-downing, shirt-tearing rinse out.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One of those raves where you leave at 7am completely goggle eyed and can't quite believe what just happened.

Problem is, these days, I'm all too weary of what happens in the days following the rapture.

It's easy to be cynical about clubbing (as it is to be cynical about everything) as you grow older but I think there really IS something religious about those early clubbing experiences, particularly (or exclusively) when ecstacy is thrown into the bargain. I've often thought that I will never recapture that naive eckied up fervour I had watching Andy C dropping Clipz and Pendulum tunes in 2005. Whereas nowadays that would be my idea of a shit time.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
This is also why writing about dance music, especially, can tend to focus on it in terms of sonic architecture/texture, as if its a painting.
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Dead right here. It's so rare for the reviewer to say something like "this makes me jump around" - the nearest you'll get is "this is designed to make people jump around" or maybe even "could make someone [me] jump around" but just reading it makes it clear that the reviewer is listening to it in the wrong place.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
Dead right here. It's so rare for the reviewer to say something like "this makes me jump around" - the nearest you'll get is "this is designed to make people jump around" or maybe even "could make someone [me] jump around" but just reading it makes it clear that the reviewer is listening to it in the wrong place.
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people are just embarassed about:
dancing
enjoyment
fun
 
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