Chef Napalm
Lost in the Supermarket
This and this, but especially Simon's assertions regarding eclecticism have got me thinking about harbingers of The Next Big Thing.
With all due respect to the blissbloggah and all of the haters of eclectic sets, I think you’ve missed the mark. It occurs to me that radically cross-genre sets have heralded the coming of disco, northern soul, house (both US and UK incarnations thereof), and techno to name a few. In each case, pioneering DJs assembled eclectic sets from a dizzying array of genres, each track interlocking into the next though one element of commonality. In the case of techno, May, Atkins and Saunderson constructed self-conciously convoluted sets revolving around the central axis of Kraftwerk. Prior to the coining of disco, Mancuso, Grasso, et. al. mixed up-tempo soul, funk and r&b records into an intentionally danceable soundscape. Knuckles and Hardy made and played vocal free disco dubs that eventually became house. The point is that maybe the element of commonality in the current crop of eclectic sets is not at all anti-scene, as Simon contends, but is, in fact, the early strains of The Next Big Thing.
Not that I have a sweet-jesus clue what The Next Big Thing is, but all the negativity floating around was bothering me. I for one embrace the diversity and will be very interested to see what rises to the top.
With all due respect to the blissbloggah and all of the haters of eclectic sets, I think you’ve missed the mark. It occurs to me that radically cross-genre sets have heralded the coming of disco, northern soul, house (both US and UK incarnations thereof), and techno to name a few. In each case, pioneering DJs assembled eclectic sets from a dizzying array of genres, each track interlocking into the next though one element of commonality. In the case of techno, May, Atkins and Saunderson constructed self-conciously convoluted sets revolving around the central axis of Kraftwerk. Prior to the coining of disco, Mancuso, Grasso, et. al. mixed up-tempo soul, funk and r&b records into an intentionally danceable soundscape. Knuckles and Hardy made and played vocal free disco dubs that eventually became house. The point is that maybe the element of commonality in the current crop of eclectic sets is not at all anti-scene, as Simon contends, but is, in fact, the early strains of The Next Big Thing.
Not that I have a sweet-jesus clue what The Next Big Thing is, but all the negativity floating around was bothering me. I for one embrace the diversity and will be very interested to see what rises to the top.