The realisation that you don't really like house music much any more...

[Ronan]

now it's on! I think my post replies to dave's actually, his wasn't there when I submitted though.

I would just add that I think the idea that house is dying as a result of whatever changes have occurred is simply not true, like it or loathe it, it's all back on the upswing these days.

 

[stelfox]

i totally agree with the two schools idea and you know i always have. the most interesting point you make above is that house is *the* middle class dance genre now, though. i wouldn't necessarily say this, i'd say it's definitely a middle-of-the-road option, though, and the pallid nature of the particular subgenre enjoying dominance at the moment does nothing to refute this as far as i can see. all the music i'm talking about can be described in one word: "safe". it works, it "DOES ITS JOB" and is absolutely unthreatening in athat noting about it is alien to its middle-class white european audience i.e. nothong about it is at all black, it's not overtly gay, it's placeless and without discernible character for me. then again, it may just be that i like using music as a way to become a tourist in other people's cultures and this strain of house music is too close to home. most importantly, though, i just don't get a sense of fun or abandon from it and see little evidence that much of its audience does, either.

and i didn't mean dying commercially, just creatively. i feel it's heading into a cul de sac as bad as tech-house/boring sasha'n'diggers prog (is there really much difference between any of these styles - i know that i basically dislike the same things about them) ever created.

also just to dispute dominic's interpretation of what i was initially talking about even further - given the choice, i would *always* have rather checked out joe clausell, danny krivit, timmy regisford et al in preference to just about any other house djs. i love that shit and always have.

 

[Ronan]

well, I disagree obviously about both the quality of the music and the aesthetic, isn't there quite a strong gay aesthetic going through electrohouse?

as regards the actual music, I think you could apply the same criticisms to detroit techno or something, except that it was widely known that it was being made by black people. is UR stuff actually "blacker" than electrohouse sonically? we're getting into very murky waters with both the race and the sexuality things, I guess I'd argue that house/techno were always anonymous enough that eventually race and sexuality would become less pronounced, wasn't it kind of inevitable? The logical question to ask then would be: were/are racial and sexual undertones inherent to the quality and value of house and techno?

I think it's difficult to argue that they are absolutely essential, certainly trickier than in the case of hiphop or something. From minute one a white person could probably make a techno record and to a certain extent get away with it, the same is not true of hiphop or grime or whatever.

As a result I conclude that it's not really fair to criticise the genre for becoming white or whatever, I mean to a certain extent hasn't "music for music's sake" been a fairly dominant aesthetic in electronic dance music? (at least from my side of the divide!)

And musically I just don't think it's weaker, my opinion, and alot of people seem to agree. For the likes of myself this is the first time there's been a really coherent movement to get behind, it's odd, when I got into dance, in 2000/2001 at 17 and 18, I think it was the hangover from other peoples parties. I know alot of people now feel the same way I do, that this is our music, and you can criticise the sonics of it but I don't think you can call it a false dawn or the end of house or something, there are surely too many real house people behind this movement, commercially and critically, for it to be denied, y'know?

This calls to mind something Simon said on his blog about outsiders to a scene seeing something like electrohouse as a minor change and nothing worth praising while those inside it will go bananas, guess that's the point where basic opinion just separates people, but I would suggest that if anyone can predict the "death of house", and talk about cul de sacs, would it not be someone involved with house? sorry if that seems snooty, or perhaps plain wrong, I accept some insiders may never say die, but at the same time it feels weird defending house at a time where in my dance lifetime it's never been healthier.

I guess I invest alot of importance in crowds and popularity too, for whatever reason, maybe just cos I run a night that comes out naturally.

I mean looking back at 2003, I actually now consider that as a fairly grim year for dance, there was very little happening and anything good wasn't doing well commercially.

Oh yeah and I apologise if some of my observations about the early days etc are off base, I'm trying to work in as abstracted and logical a way as possible, I was born in 1983 so I don't really have first hand experience.

 

[stelfox]

what i'm saying above is all about my personal perceptions of the scene and the music, thus totally arbitrary and personal. of course, all my points can be argued until the cows come home and there are no right or wrong answers to any of this.
however, on the points of ethnicity etc, i do find electrohouse to be the whitest house has ever been. i don't think this can really be disputed.
the whole UR thing is a bit of a red herring as far as i can see because, as you say, people *knew* who was mking this music and there was a whole (often completely batshit) philosophy behind it - the black atlantic futurist thing of mad mike's interstellar fugitives, eps called "riot" and stuff like that.
kodwo writes incredibly eloquently about this in more brilliant than the sun; it's worth reading if you haven't already.
anyway, my baseline is that if people are enjoying something i'm not going to piss on their chips, but i do, genuinely think that there are grounds to criticise the way this music is heading because it's the (sonic and social) antithesis of the pluralism and openness that i first encountered in my early days of clubbing and i really don't like it. i also don't think it's productive.
oh, and i think i'm entitled to say whatever the hell i like because i've been on the inside a long time - in fact i've not yet closed the door behind me!

 

[Ronan]

I dunno, I can't escape the sensation, re pluralism, that some of your argument is the fault of spending a night with in a club with alot of "coked up twats", percieved or otherwise.

 

[stelfox]

no, it's been a bit more gradual than that. i'm not the sort of person to damn an entire style of music (and i haven't even done that really) because of one bad night. this has been a pretty slow anti-epiphany really.

 

[dominic]

so i'm inclined to believe that i gave him what he deserved

errr, i wrote this just before i went to sleep last night and under influence of alcohol -- kinda makes it sound like i bullied and slapped ronan around! -- "gave him what he deserved and broke his knee caps" -- i was merely being patronising, i.e., precisely the tack i'd take in real life -- i.e., i'm the sort of person who avoids physical confrontation at all cost!

no ill will, ronan

 

[dominic]

just to dispute dominic's interpretation of what i was initially talking about even further

i think only now is it becoming clear what everybody's position is!!! -- hard to keep track

i would *always* have rather checked out joe clausell, danny krivit, timmy regisford et al in preference to just about any other house djs. i love that shit and always have.

yeah, i don't want to knock them too much -- i.e., i respect the scene -- but by same token, i think there's always been more interesting currents in "house" or "electronic dance" than the shelter sound

 

[Tim F]

Dave I'm trying to see where you're coming from re this idea of a narrowing of the sound - I just can't see it though. Are there any specific examples of approaches that seem to have fallen by the wayside? Labels/artists that were firing on all cylinders that now aren't? (the demise of Force Tracks excepted)

As far as I can tell the reverse has happened - electro-house and microhouse converging has been beneficial for both because you have this sort of cross-cannibalisation where the ideas from one end of the spectrum are turning up at the other. I guess there's an argument that this has resulted in homogenisation but instead I see a multiplication of sonicd approaches. There's such a smorgasboard of sounds - contra your take, I was listening to the Tiefschwarz remix of Freeform Five's "Electromagnetic" today and thinking that they're basically like an electro-house version of New Horizons!!

BTW Geeta (who did the interview with Mayer from whence the breakbeat comment derives) has clarified that Mayer's alleged antipathy towards the breakbeat is taken from a discussion about drum & bass, specifically late 90s/early 00s "Hey Mickey" style 2-step d&b. I've heard Mayer sets where he uses breakbeat tracks - he doesn't hate breakbeats.

Dominic sez: "In line with your remarks, there's many varieties of cheese in the house scene -- some of the cheese i like (as w/ electroclash), and other varieties i detest (as with hard house, the trancier end of house) -- so kill me for being honest"

Sorry I didn't mean to give the impression that I was cornering you Dominic; simply pointing out that the crass populism/arty underground divide issue was already an elephant in the room prior to Ronan's arrival. Sometimes certain varieties of cheese turn me off too (although usually it's the fault of the mould on the cheese rather than the cheese itself!).

Re house's relation to pop, fashion and image, I was merely querying your statement that:

""moreover, house music in general is anti-image and anti-pop -- and it's long since ceased to be fashionable (though it might be said that nothing is particularly fashionable these days!)""

I wasn't trying to imply that you were being anti-image.

"moreover, you invoked this very model upthread in describing gay clubs suffused with amyl nitrate and heavy on the love vibe -- so we've been discussing house with reference to shifiting notions of what house is -- therefore, it's pretty to easy to say i've missed the target!"

Well the gay scene is interesting isn't it because there you get a real short-circuit between pop song and deep-scene trackiness - i.e. the soundtrack to your twenty-second amyl high may well be a Kylie single (I reckon "Love At First Sight" would work quite well!).

Anyway your point is well taken and pretty much feeds into my general point - the fact that little can be said about house <i>as a whole</i> with much certainty.

"yes, i've yet to break free of bliss blogga's influence -- need to work on that one! -- i.e., even when his arguments don't chime with my experience, i still find it hard to think outside of the terms he's set up!!!"

I wasn't referring to you specifically Dominic! And I certainly wouldn't claim to have broken free myself. Having said that I think many of my previously easily held critical positions have cracked and buckled under the pressure of well-executed polemics from other positions - Vahid who writes for Beat Research for example is the absolute master of the dance music counter-narrative and has made me rethink a lot of things on these general issues - often by taking elements of Simon R's ideas to very unlikely conclusions!

"however, that said, i do think electro sounds are "cold" -- profitable generalization! -- which is why i think we're in store after some five years for a move back toward "warm" sounds, "hippy" sounds, etc"

Actually this is sort of my point - yeah I agree that certain electro sounds are cold/robotic feeling (though Henry Miller disagrees with me on this point, or at least he did on a thread re Richard X on ILX), but this is not the sum total of what this really quite amorphous scene produces - that was sort of the thrust behind my post on Beat Research about Reverso 68, this idea of a warm/hippy angle emerging from <i>within</i> electro-house. This is not the sort of thing that would be immediately obvious to people not intently following the scene, so I am entirely forgiving about non-invested people making generalisations about electro-house specifically. But I think it's worthwhile in such cases pointing out that the generalisation isn't necessarily true, that there might be something

"i'm much lazier than you, yes...but really, why shoudl other people bother to undertake the same degree of investigaton and display the same diligence as you?"

Well i don't think there's an ethical imperative to either expand or contract one's range of listening (and laziness doesn't come into it really - I'm sure there's whole universes of music you're intimately familiar with that I wouldn't have a clue about it). It's not an issue of diligence but infectious enthusiasm - the idea here is to hopefully turn people's frowns upside down and interest them in records that I think are exciting! Of course I may not be as sucessful as I would like...

 

[dominic]

the whole sense of antisocial coke hauteur

i have no problems with cocaine -- it's not my favorite drug -- but i can't figure out why people think it's such a bad thing

probably resentment? b/c unless you're an addict, there's no great toll to be paid -- so while others go to bed early to work hard the next day, the people on coke are out on the town having a party

(by contrast the weed smoker slowly nods off in front of the television)

"blackness" has been eradicated from house music in this particular incarnation

yes, but precisely b/c house is not monolithic, the blacker traditions and trajectories persist -- i.e., there's still black people in the scene and they ain't playing strictly tiefschwartz

ALSO -- let's not lose sight of the decline of the dance scene in nyc and stateside in general, which is where most black contributions to house have come from (i.e., if we treat early jungle as a breakaway movement rather than a contribution)

germany is the center of the house world now, and the usa and nyc especially have decline markedly

so of course the music sounds (and is) whiter!

bored with the attendant drug culture of house music

i think drug culture is the redeeming aspect

saves the music and scene from being about socio-reality

unless house music becomes more expansive and embracing of other influences, then its days are numbered

yes, except that the pattern has always been a lot more complex

i.e., house absorbs influences, yes, but there's always been renegade factions that break away from house and yet continue to inform house from a distance

and to the extent that grime and reggaeton, etc, prove productive of sonic innovation, i see no reason to think that house producers won't incorporate such innovations to gain an edge

 

[stelfox]

tim, i think i've been very clear on why i think the music is constricting and don't think i really need to go through it again. the idea of electrohouse and microhouse coming together excites me about as much as the prosect of cleaning my bathroom, so i actually don't see how that is very significant in terms of my argument. i can see how it matters to you, but we both approach stuff from a pretty different perspective.

 

[dominic]

or is my allegiance to house more a function of genres like reggaeton, crunk, grime lacking a "psychedelic" or "boho" dimension?

or maybe the question is this -- What happened to the GAY black inner city as a motor of sonic and cultural invention?

that is, wasn't a great deal of black hipster culture in 20th century closely tied to GAY black culture?

why has all sonic innovation (errr, again subscribing to the bliss blogga paradigm) post-1990 been from the heterosexualist corners of the black urban experience???

why no radically new gay black music???

and how does this relate to white america's (and maybe europe's) tendency to portray black men as violent, hyper masculine, etc???? -- and do sounds like hip hop, grime, etc, play into and exacerbate this perception???

i.e., is gay black music less threatening to middle class whites -- and therefore in stelfox's terms more safe???

so maybe the persistence of house has something to do with its status as the last great sonic innovation of gay black america?????

 

[DJL]

i have no problems with cocaine -- it's not my favorite drug -- but i can't figure out why people think it's such a bad thing

probably resentment? b/c unless you're an addict, there's no great toll to be paid -- so while others go to bed early to work hard the next day, the people on coke are out on the town having a party

(by contrast the weed smoker slowly nods off in front of the television)

I have to disagree. I don't think it's bad every now and again but when it becomes as little a habit as a weekly thing like it has done over the last few years in my home town it turns people into arrogant, selfish cunts who will fuck you and anyone else over while maintaining a fake superiority. Thankfully people seem to be calming down round here now on the coke thing after realising this fact.

Weed on the other hand should be mandatory for everyone imo

 

[dominic]

errrr, the quote ascribed to tim f above is actually from a much longer entry that i had posted

so why it's credited to tim f, and why my entry disappeared completely save for that tidbit, is beyond me -- except that dissensus site is seriously malfunctioning today!!!

 

[dominic]

just to restate what i said in the entry that mysteriously disappeared --

i took issue with stelfox's assertion that house is safe -- in fact, i disagree vehemently!

perhaps it's safe sonically -- b/c it doesn't seem "new" (again, how to cope w/ bliss blogga's paradigm?)

but is house a safe and boring option socially?

seems to me that i meet a much broader range of people and more interesting people at house music venues than i would at other places

(or maybe i'm deluded)

if you want a safe and predictable social experience, go to the bunker in nyc!!!

and if things like grime and reggaeton and baile funk seem more "dangerous" than house as a social proposition, why is this??? -- couldn't you say that it's more like cultural tourism

whereas with house, the idea was for all comers to be a part of the scene truly (assuming they liked you)

 

[dominic]

A lot of the negative discourse surrounding house seems to be descended from (or at least in line with) the <i>Generation Ecstacy</i> polemic: the setting up of 'ardkore's pop-modernism against the pallid traditionalism of US garage, deep house, tech-house etc. This binary has the advantage of being easy to apply and, in many contexts, correct. But it's increasingly difficult to explain the current status of house vis a vis other dance music genres in these terms (<i>Generation Ecstacy</i> came out over 7 years ago!).

i had also commented again on this passage in my (very long) entry that disappeared!

yeah, i think the question has to be how has house managed to persist and stay reasonably fresh (unless you agree w/ stelfox), whereas genres like d'n'b, 2-step, etc -- all these breakaway movements that were initially more "modern" -- soon became stale, cul de sacs, dead, etc?????

and just to clarify -- i'm fence straddling on the question of how "fresh" today's house music is -- i actually do like a lot of the stuff on codek records (and not simply b/c he's a friend), and so i imagine that were i better informed i'd like lots of other stuff from switzerland, italy, etc -- and if i had the $$$, i'd probably buy dfa stuff, balihu stuff, etc -- but for the most part, when i go record shopping it's strictly to buy old house and rave music, plus other old stuff

One difficulty is that when we get down to it "house" is a largely empty structural device: the very basic simplicity of its formula (the four-four beat within a certain tempo range) allows it to be married to any number of other freefloating sonic, thematic, conceptual etc. signifiers - and this correspondingly allows for a limitless diversity of audiences, settings, atmospheres, philosophies. We can contrast this with, say, UK garage, where an expanded number of sonic/thematic/conceptual components appeared to be covalently bonded to one another (you cannot reduce 2-step garage to just the 2-step beat itself), and the music as a whole was tied to a particular audience or scene (in your terms, "population", yeah?).

is this really the reason? again, i'd like to see people wrestle with tim's claim here

 

[stelfox]

i.e., is gay black music less threatening to middle class whites -- and therefore in stelfox's terms more safe???

dominic are you actually reading anything i'm writing here?

 

[dominic]

dominic are you actually reading anything i'm writing here?

what i meant is something along these lines --

first, let's say that house music is the last great sonic innovation of gay black american culture -- at least if we apply bliss blogga's modernist criteria

second, house music has long been what you would call the "safe" and "middle of the road" choice for white middle class people

THEREFORE, is this b/c gay black culture is less threatening to middle class whites? or is it because gay black culture was somehow more open -- more hip -- more what???? -- than post-1990 developments in the "heterosexualist" sectors of black and latino urban sounds?

that is, maybe you could clarify what you mean when you characterize house culture as "middle of the road" and "safe"????

 

[Ronan]

well surely dom, not that I totally disagree with the tack you're on, at its erm.....blackest and gayest point, at first, house wasn't safe at all? at least it didn't appear to be recieved that way in the UK, though you can maybe add drugs as a factor to that negative reception.

 

[DigitalDjigit]

dominic, when stelfox says "house" in this thread he doesn't mean Farley Jackmaster Funk, he means Michael Mayer.