EDM as in the huge megafestival megagenre thing

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Cos EDM is too short to search for I can use Nelson's "I see no ships" tactic to claim there are no EDM threads already in existence... please don't spoil that for me Version.

Anyway there is quite a lot for me to learn about this subject and probably quite a lot to be said about this whole scene that fascinates and repulses me in equal measure.

First off, what is it? My impression - which could well be totally wrong, feel free to correct me if so - is that EDM isn't really a sound as such. It seems to just be the tunes from techno, dubstep and house - and I've not heard d&b but why shouldn't it be included too? - that are most suited to playing in the largest imaginable rooms. The common theme seems to be big brash drops... inevitably built up to by looooong tantalizing beatless teases that finally come crashing down in the most brutal thumping crushing beat pile-ups which have the crowd moshing - not really dancing - wildly.

And to me that seems quite a bit part of it. It's called electronic DANCE music but do people really dance to it, in the pics the crowds look too tightly packed for any dancing. The other day some friends and I were talking about how the Prodigy changed from a rave act to a stadium rock band - EDM seems to be that trajectory writ large.

I got loads more to ask but gonna throw it open now after a few quickies. What's the history, how did it develop? Did it grow as a roots movement of sorts or did it sort of come out of the side of dance music fully formed?

Also, how much cross-pollination is there? Do EDM superstars get booked to play at, say, techno nights with proper techno DJs or vice versa? And same for tunes, are there any EDM tunes got picked up by, I dunno, Nina Kraviz say? Or vice versa. How has it developed, do the tunes change?

Also how is it so massive? How did it happen and how does it work? Does it exist in any form except megafestivals? Can you go and catch Laid-back Luke in an intimate cellar somewhere? Is a purely US thing or does it happen in Europe too? Where? Where do the DJs come from, what scenes? They seem to suddenly appear as fully formed stars, how?

Do they really DJ or just put on mixes?

Also what the fuck is Melbourne?

Ok, teach me, please! Thanks
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
roots go back to A) (ironically) the English/Dutch progressive house/trance sound of Sasha and Digweed, who were the first djs to break in a huge way stateside. It weren't no Ben Sims or Colin Dale, let me tell you that! and B) Big Beat like Crystal Method and Chem bros who again were marketted to a US centric rock crowd as 'electronica.'
This is proto-proto EDM.



as is this

then obviously that big room house/trance sound both in Europe and stateside evolved in a less anthemic, more electro direction.

At the same time, the harsher end of dnb was getting more bloc rocking and attracting ex-rocker idiots, and it was imported to the US as being a kind of white electronic heavy metal. Some of this neurofunk stuff is great music, but read through the prism of industrial techno, not through its rock aspects. I'm sure @droid will disagree, but he's never been as much of a techno person as myself so he doesn't hear the detroit/electro motifs I hear in certain Audio Blueprint/stakka/skynet releases etc. Apologies if I've got this wrong big D.

But also at the time, some blokes in North London were putting the dnb format to jazz funk songs, a label which I hate talking about but they're called Hospital records. Jerk rice vibes. initially the style this label was purveying was fairly mellow dnb with live instrumentation, but even then it was about sunny, upbeat vibes with very little reggae influences. These guys had record deals with big distributors in Eastern Europe, US etc. This music, although technically descending from the jazz/soulful influenced liquid funk of Fabio due to its lightness eventually ended up becoming a dnb approximation of trance. what is important here is not necessarily the sound of this music but just how big it sounded and how it was intended for the charts
and ultra-compressed internet radio. Very synthy, huge sound. Compared to even the most brutalist dnb which would soundtrack an s&M dungeon if anything.

A demonstration of this music.


If you think this music sounds like happy hardcore, you wouldn't be wrong. It's all maximum impact.

compare that Netsky to this. much more atonal, gnarlier, but it operates on the same big room principles.


It's cartoon music really, none of it can truly be called dark and nocturnal. And of course, because dubstep was the fashion at the time, it got absorbed by this template.


No, big room house and techno are their own scene. Nina might play 90s trance or contemporary white noise techno, but that stuff is fundamentally still club music. Whereas this stuff has devolved beyond that, back to baroque artistry. it is not really about interchangeable dj tools.

The closest in actual dance music is your Armin Van Buurens, Ferry Corstens etc. But Nina still plays/played to a hipster crowd. Although I've always found her big room direction unappealing I have more sympathy for her because she shouldn't be obligated to call out Putin (as if that even means anything in this context...)

Anyway, it's garbage music so don't ask me anything else about it.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I think @shakahislop can tell you more. I don't think any of this stuff is worth redeeming. Skrillex stuff sounds intense cos it's at 140 (which gives you time to listen to the folding pretzelizm) but actual dark dnb productions are way more insane. the layering and processing of neuro producers can be incredible (miles above most deconstructed club pitchfork weirdos) it's just a shame that the music they make is mostly static and does not want to evolve beyond that stasis.




mad tune, not even gonna front. micropointilizm ina di dance. I'd play this idgaf about subcultural cred.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Oh shit, there are loads of responses that I missed/ignored, gonna get my Chanel 5 on and go bed but tomorrow I get into the replies, cheers.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
thirdform said:
No, big room house and techno are their own scene. Nina might play 90s trance or contemporary white noise techno, but that stuff is fundamentally still club music. Whereas this stuff has devolved beyond that, back to baroque artistry. it is not really about interchangeable dj tools.

The closest in actual dance music is your Armin Van Buurens, Ferry Corstens etc. But Nina still plays/played to a hipster crowd. Although I've always found her big room direction unappealing I have more sympathy for her because she shouldn't be obligated to call out Putin (as if that even means anything in this context...)

Anyway, it's garbage music so don't ask me anything else about it.
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I kinda thought AvB was part of EDM so maybe he is the link in a sense.

Maybe NK was a bad choice of big name to randomly pick cos there is more stuff going on with her - I totally agree with the Putin stuff, she was unfairly put in this impossible position - and I intended an entirely neutral example.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Dusty said:
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I think we've discussed previously that blogpost thing where Aoki spends ages publicly debating with himself on the burning question as to whether or not he should continue to throw cake into the crowds. In fact, "debating with himself" doesn't do it justice, he wrestles agonisingly at length with the moral dilemma he faces, you can practically see the sweat dripping from his furrowed brow as he faces up to this vitally important conundrum. Should he allow the naysayers - haters even - in the press to detract from the pure pleasure of caking? He has the cruel pisstaking at times affecting him so much that it almost caused him to stop doing it, almost made him draw back from giving his hideously bullied fans the single greatest moment they can ever hope to have in their lives. In fact as I recall he tortuously goes through almost every conceivable position and ultimately, after a long period of rough, dry and painful mass debating he finally, bravely nay heroically, concludes "Yes, I will cake!".

I've never seen one in which he gives the same consideration to "white raver rafting" - when he chucks an inflatable float into the crowd and rides it - but I can only assume that he thinks equally deeply about that and everything else he does, having I can see understood what a huge figure he is, both for the culture as a whole and, at the same time, on a personal level to every single individual teenage fan, some of whom love him with an enormous, all-powerful love, almost as great as the one he himself for he himself.

TLDR = Steve Aoki is an embarrassingly self-aggrandising and self-important fool who takes his scene and, especially, himself WAY WAY too seriously.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Are there any big Australian DJs in this scene cos - to be completely childishly prejudiced - it sounds like the most Australian music ever.
 
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rubysay

Member
There's a style of laddish Australian house called minimal, which is slightly confusing, but pretty much just boils down to a bassier/techier and more simplistic version of like electro house/ dutch house which probably has a lot of stylistic debt to hardcore and hardstyle (drop structure, gross and silly sound palate) but I don't really know much specific detail. Like Scottish bounce/slow donk style music, it's actually nice to see these huge stupid commercial styles have little cottage industries around more developed versions of the sound. I went to highschool with a fairly regular middle class footy player kid who was really passionate about making and deejaying this stuff (Minimal and bounce). One time he really excitedly told me about a pair of cdjs he inherited from Will Sparks a very successful and prestigious local DJ, (to him at least)
It was very popular among quite trashy white suburban 12 to 25 year olds in the early 2010s, but I think it's largely been commercially and culturally superseded by psytrance and tech house in that demographic

I'll try to find some good examples of the kind of tracks you hear at 4 am in a kebab shop here. It's great at keeping you up lol.

In the meantime, here is TOP 40 MELBOURNE UNDERGROUND DROPS - BEST OF MELBOURNE MINIMAL/BOUNCE

 
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rubysay

Member
Screenshot_20230304-010040_Chrome.jpghere's a vertical screenshot of a reddit post lol.

I vividly remember kids at school doing the whole rap verse from Melbourne sound. And everyone clapped...

Harry potter bangers

 
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