What really fascinates me is the idea of minimalism, so opposed to the current mainstream of vulgar over-design
In a nutshell, this is why I'm finding Cassy's "Panorama Bar 01" mix
thrilling and vital at the moment, but the glossy and arguably overproduced likes of Booka Shade, Trentmoller, quite a hefty chunk of electro-house and quite a lot of basically-interchangeable-with deep house stuff... not so much (generalising wildly, apologies).
I suppose I'm just dissapointed in general at how heavily massaged into existing preconceptions a lot of this music needs to be for actual
dance music fans in the UK to not write it off from the word go. What happened?
Rock audiences get a slating but honestly I think conservatism is rife across the board in a lot of ways. "Dance" enthusiasm for innovation seems just as much trickle-down spoonfeeding as your archetypal NME reading kid sometimes.
By which I mean a lot of the so-called underground BIG records that have broken through in some small way seem to have actually been very heavily promoted through the usual channels of Radio 1 and Mixmag as much as they've had success at ground level. "Washing Up" (played by Zane Lowe!) Mylo ("first good dance album in ages" (and only one we've heard) sez NME/R1) Body Language/Get Physical breaking to Radio 1, record/label of the year in DJ Mag quite a while after the fact, Mixmag
finally stumbling across minimal as a "discovery" when it reaches critical mass @ DC 10, Ibiza. Border Community being but a whisker away from old-prog (and Holden himself somewhat Sasha endorsed). All that said, it (minimal) is definitely gaining ground all the time, but in conjunction with all the other things as Freakaholic said.
And you can slate the likes of The Killers and The Monkeys for being depressingly '80's and adding bringing little new to the table but I'm still unconvinced that electroclash (which I'd say was for a while a "good thing") didn't in the end simply birth el-
retro-clash (Cut Copy = ugh. I'd like to ban cliched vocoder use for the next five years) and the Klaxons just fucking suck. Vampiric and desperate. And pointing out the indie-Warp-fan allergy to actual dance beats (despite the label history) has been beaten to a puree long ago now.
The whole DFA/punkfunk/indieclash thing seems still nominally more interesting to me somehow, as does the Justice-Nu-French-House end... but I'm getting off the point here.
I do think theres a strong argument to be made that Prole House in general, as Tim F rightly points out to be the commercially breaking end of things in reality (as defined by prescence in the Top 40/radio/clubs outside London i.e. Bodyrockers) might actually be
more open-minded than people intently focusing on the "next big thing" (w/old roots) but... 1) it's just not to my taste (cheesey, tho' sometimes fun) 2) the argument is somewhat undermined by the heavy amount of (re)releases on labels like Defected, Data, MOS compilations etc, again the channels of influence still mostly tweak on the status quo of fierce heterosexuality, big tits, big hooks & big vocals.
The argument however
does stand up, when you look at the chart success of say, UK Garage & proto-Grime (which I'll admit to innocently loving the 'hits' of, but passing me by completely as a 'movement' at the time) which was innovative, successful but widely disliked for the appearance of flashiness (hello sexy-funky-house fans???) and probably having the wrong colour skin to be validated by certain sections of the media.
Okay, this is about the longest most foolish thing I ever posted to dissensus and I'd like to tidy it up, cut it shorter, chase away the strawmen and received wisdom but I'll risk it as is.
Britain really, really, needs to lose it's cloying attachment to "happy" and "uplifting" dance forms to have any return to the glorious late 80's-90's, and for minimal techno to have any chance of "blowing up" IMHO.
In fact I'd put money on Dubstep doing it first (via the d'n'b club network) and (real) minimal surfing in on the shockwave, I just don't think it can do it alone right now (if ever). And when that happens Ricardo Villalobos will probably be the "new Aphex Twin"... and Flat Eric will make a sudden comeback.
Edit: baah this... this is more venting than anything constructive or worth reading I think, and partly me being annoyed at my own naivety ... every time I discover something I find exciting, always wondering "why isn't
this big then??" and then actually finding out (very gradually) a perfectly decent explanation why that has nothing to do with people being just fuckwits. I enjoy the discussions here but I'm deleting my login, for fear of getting sucked into yet another board and getting my bile up unnessecarily often. Toodle-pip!
