Dance music well and truly dead?

[Tim F]

Simon I get the good vs great distinction - that's what I meant about the oscillation, the fact that this music seems good not great b/c of abundance and/or because it's actually good not great. The technical production-centric explanations for this abundance of <i>good</i>ness does go a fair way toward filling in the gap I'm talking about...

"i do think of the whole micro-haus/German thing as being like sacrificing innovation to save pleasure.... or perhaps scaling back the role of innovation and also the standing of innovation in the scheme of things..."

But what is this comparison in relation to Simon? B/c the German trend has led mainstream clubland to a point of being more detailed, more intricate, more wideranging etc. than it has been in a very long time, while still much more propulsive and anthemic than the "proper" microhouse of a few years ago. The pleasure and the innovation are not opposed to one another (I'd go further and argue that this is the <i>house</i> legacy: innovations are always innovations in pleasure).

I know you like the M.A.N.D.Y. <i>Body Language</i> mix at least a bit - can you see how something like "Safari (Holden Mix)" is simultaneously a bit of a choon and a very unusual, boundary-pushing production?

Joe:

"I haven't heard any of those songs. Well, I've heard Cardiology and I've heard Isolee, but I haven't heard the Isolee remix of Cardiology. I woudn't call either formally innovative I probably set the bar on that a bit higher than you tho. Because I have heard Jacques Le Cont, and I thought his thing was doing recreations of 80s electro pop. At least that's what it sounds like to me."

Yes, well, obv. innovation is rarely universally perceived (old man re <i>any</I> dance music: "it's just repetitive banging sounds innit"). As I said what I think Le Cont is doing that is inventive and unusual is fairly subtle (and cleverly hidden within unsubtle frames) - it's not the sort of thing that can be picked up without first engaging with the music, without at first being prepared to admit that recreations of 80s electro pop might be the site of innovation (although I'm being unfair on Lu Cont in allowing this description of what he does - go and download e.g his remix of The Faint's "The Conductor"). This is a truism of course - it's much easier to perceive micro-innovation in the styles of music we care about than in those we don't. But that will equally apply to your standards of innovation as it does to mine.

Having said that, I wouldn't say that what Lu Cont is doing that I think is interesting is just "micro-innovation" - it's not solely innovating within the strict terms of his chosen style but rather has implications for a much broader swathe of dance music, how we think the relationship b/w dance and pop etc.

Re the bar - that's why i wanted yr definition of innovation. Because if you say Isolee isn't innovative then i wonder if there's any current music that is innovative - in which case my point still stands that dance music is a currently a relatively strong performer.

 

[joeschmo]

<i>Yes, well, obv. innovation is rarely universally perceived (old man re any dance music: "it's just repetitive banging sounds innit"). As I said what I think Le Cont is doing that is inventive and unusual is fairly subtle</i>

Actually, my definition of formal innovation would be when it <i>is</i> universally perceived. It's sticking a toilet in an art gallery, an all-white painting, turning a 3 minute pop song into a 12 minute disco epic, rhyming in a sing-songy verse over other people's records. If it's subtle, it's not really breaking form.

 

[Tim F]

Sticking a toilet in a gallery is not universally perceived as innovative! Let alone disco, hip hop...

But anyway I understand where you're coming from, but my point <i>still</i> stands: how is dance music falling short of other contemporary music in this regard.

indeed, by yr yardstick there mustn't have been any formal innovation in music for <i>at least</i> the last ten years, if not twenty...

 

[joeschmo]

<i>Sticking a toilet in a gallery is not universally perceived as innovative! Let alone disco, hip hop...</i> Eh, you're splitting hairs here. The reaction might be acclaim or revulsion--actually, that's kind of a marker of formal innovation, there's no wishy-washyness about the way you respond to it--but everyone can see something new/different is going on.

<i>indeed, by yr yardstick there mustn't have been any formal innovation in music for at least the last ten years, if not twenty...</i>

Yeah, I'd say about ten years or so Luckily, as I said, I don't prize formal innovation above all other qualities, so this doesn't bother me so much.

 

[Grievous Angel]

You don't like it, fine, fuck off from the dancefloor and give the rest of us some space.

And as Mark puts it, what is "dance music" in this instance?

Music for dancing has never been fashionable, and has never gone away... and has always been among the most vital expressions of the human spirit.

 

[joeschmo]

Are you talking to me? If you are, you haven't understood what I'm saying.

 

[blissblogger]

I know you like the M.A.N.D.Y. <i>Body Language</i> mix at least a bit - can you see how something like "Safari (Holden Mix)" is simultaneously a bit of a choon and a very unusual, boundary-pushing production?

.

i think my burn of MANDY hasn't got the track titles on -- which tk number is it? i'll get back to you with a verdict!

but you know i might agree or i might not with you with that track, but what i'm talking about is the premium that's set within the scene on innovation, which i think is reduced now -- i mean you read interviews with mayer or whomever and they don't tend to bang on about making giant steps or striding into the future, at least c.f. the way techno people did in the early 90s or drum'n'bass bods did and still do, the poor deluded fools. so that tells you something i think.

i think meme's somewhat belligerently (or annoyedly praps) phrased point actually highlights the problem for "dance music" (in that narrow sense of the word). in so far as innovation/futurism was a central plank of E-lectronica's unwritten manifesto, and if that's dropped away -- as it has with the rise since late 90s of various retro-dance styles, and then the recombinant stuff like electrohouse and microhouse--then what does that leave? Cos if it's just "dancing and having a good time" then... there's loads of other
musics that provide that function. r&b rap ragga etc etc

musics are perfectly capable of surviving, even thriving to an extent, without any kind of manifesto obviously... but the question re "dead or not" isn't really about popularity or intra-generic bustle or even a steady supply of quality music, but more about a perception of cutting-edgeness/being the place to be/momentum/expansionism... exploding into the wider world, advancing into the future...

 

[xero]

An example: 2003 was probably a relatively weak year for dance music (and rock of course), but it was an awesome year for dancehall

'dance music' was an invention of the british music press of the nineties and I hope to god it's dead & buried.

Then we can move on from the kind of distinction Tim is making here. I mean if dancehall isn't dance music then what the hell is it?

 

[Lichen]

'dance music' was an invention of the british music press of the nineties .

and calls to mind hefty blokes playing records for plastic people by Miami swimming pools.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Are you talking to me? If you are, you haven't understood what I'm saying.

No
"it seems where we are now in 2005 the genre, sound whatever it is, is completely redundant."

Dancing and music for dancing is never redundant.

I'm from Essex. I grew up dancing to jazz funk, disco, electro, dancehall and post punk. Yes, DANCING. Whatever your 'dance music' is, it's not mine. So you can fuck off from the dancefloor along with all the other chin strokers. I think it is significant in this thread that the haters never talk about /dancing/.

if it's just "dancing and having a good time" then... there's loads of other musics that provide that function. r&b rap ragga etc etc
Yeah -- I'm with Borthwick on this -- the greatest contemporary British dance music is reggae. But I still like house, and at least some techno, and grime, and obviously I'm a massive dubstep fan.

t'ing is tho -- and bb may or may not agree -- dance music's ideology, which so many of the chinstrokers (I bet they never DANCE, sirnosed'voidoffunk) on this thread think is exhausted, didn't originate with dance music. It went back to Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, Tackhead, the Slits, The clash (certainly sandinista era), it goes back to the Stones (when they were good, right up to emtional rescue), it goes back to... I think you get my point...

... and it will always, always be under threat from those who want to clingfilm it into submission.

... and it will never, ever, go away.

 

[mms]

well that mixtape is no way representative of what is going on in 'dance music' perse, i think the whole thing needs to be rethought in a way - the approach - as you say it's very ninetees, the whole thing is even more global than it has ever been and there are lots of new blips, genres and outposts, new sonics, reasons and scenes - Matt's Shanty House vibel is a good approach imo.
Anyway dance music seems to be at the same level it always has been really - everything sells less now tho - so when that argy track on poker flat gets top ten in germany - a techno tune by an unknown artist you can see that there are many things happening at least in germany anyway.
BTw anyone heard that d.m. project track habibi - dj marlborough produced track - big arabic strings over planet rock/rio funk breaks ? tasty . this is rushed as i'm busy btw

 

[Landfill Elektronikz]

No
t'ing is tho -- and bb may or may not agree -- dance music's ideology, which so many of the chinstrokers (I bet they never DANCE, sirnosed'voidoffunk) on this thread think is exhausted, didn't originate with dance music. It went back to Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, Tackhead, the Slits, The clash (certainly sandinista era), it goes back to the Stones (when they were good, right up to emtional rescue), it goes back to... I think you get my point...

Oh yeah I get the point - up the fucking arse like a black mamba! Damn that hurts so good baby, do it to me again!!!

... and it will always, always be under threat from those who want to clingfilm it into submission.

... and it will never, ever, go away.

Yes yes YES! 2Step I worship at thy alter. You nailed it. Fuck the biterz. Fuck theory. Fuck art. Let's dance!!

 

[zhao]

culture has become not a unified diversity that is accelerating, but merely a scattered mass of cultural activity - it is just a bunch of people doing stuff.

There is no Greenberg around to show us where to go, it is all a relativity and thus we must learn to treasure those parts that resonate with us personally, accepting the heterogeneity of the entire spectrum of activity.

I'm not sure if Greenberg was entirely the intellectual tyrant that people make him out to be. I don't think he simply pointed his finger to a random drunk, and Pollack became the next big thing. Perhaps closer to the truth is that like any good critic, he possessed an acute ability to perceive the heart of what is happening, the zeitgeist if you will, and subsequently used his persuasive powers to champion it.

the current period of cultural production has been termed Pluralism. not sure if he coined the phrase, but the critic Hal Foster wrote an essay called "Against Pluralism", in which he is nostalgic for times when ideas and actions mattered, when artistic practice was integrated with a healthy critical discourse. in contrast to what is happening today, where the theoretical framework crumbles, value systems fragment, and all styles are available in the great supermarket of culture, packaged for easy consumption.

"everything is permited, nothing is true". (who said that? a part of me thinks it was Aleister Crowly)

he further posits that this Pluralism may at first glance seem democratic and liberating, but a closer look reveals a complacency and apathy governed solely by trends and the market place, a cynical hyper capitalist mode of artistic production bordering on fascism, destructive of creative potentials.

I sympathize with this view. that there is more than meets the eye with Post Modernism. that the myriad of forms and the layers of referentiality may be only hiding a frightening vacuity in the center.

I certainly feel this when I go to art openings: it is 99% BULLSHIT. and the drooling idiots who gather around the great piles of it like flies.



ofcourse, all of this has more to do with art than music, but some of it applies to both...

it's interesting that perhaps music has retained some of the vitality of Modernist modes... that one can still pin-point vital movements in contrast to "dead" styles, and that it's not all subjective... (grime is more alive than Dixieland, I don't think anyone will argue with that)

perhaps because music is a more direct expression compared to art? in the sense that it is less mediated (by rhetoric, by tradition, by culture itself)? and thus an inherently more "democratic" or "pure" form of expression?

more thinking needs to be done on this... for now I have to go put together a presentation for some cable tv network...

 

[DJ PIMP]

"everything is permited, nothing is true". (who said that? a part of me thinks it was Aleister Crowly)

Hasan-i Sabbah

"The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened."

"When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will."

"And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: 'Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise'. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly."
- Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273

First came across him when Burroughs referenced the quote you mentioned.

 

[Canada J Soup]

Buick6: ...it was basically the sginifier of the END OF DISCO around late 1980-81

I don't feel like disco ever really ended....it's mainstream popularity waned and it spent five or six years underground turning itself into house music. Maybe the Stars on 45 phenom could be seen as a harbinger of dance music entering a period of reinvention?

Logan Sama: I really think that the internet is slowly killing off the profitabiliy of art, and therefor stiffling it's ability to experiment.

Has experimental art / experimentation in art ever really been that profitable? It seems that anything experimental has to be around for a while before it makes money. The people I know who are truly driven to create art and music that is completely 'new' are rarely primarily motivated by money, particularly when in their most experimental phases. Bear in mind also that the same advances in technology that allow anyone with a computer and an internet connection to freely access music that it would have been impossible for many of them to hear as little as five or six years ago is also providing a an environment where the same people can create and distribute their own music just as easily and freely. Sure there'll be more crap out there, but there'll also be plenty gems...

The kind of paradigm that I see the 'music industry' moving towards is one where collectively experienced (be it live or DJ'd) and recorded music (which is eventually going to be predominantly digital) exist on separate levels. The shifting of units of CDs and records will become less and less of a source of income for creators compared to public performances and physical merchandise. Taste selectors (hey, good news for mp3 bloggers, DJs and music critics!) will take over the middle ground that record companies now occupy...filtering the free garbage mp3s for a fee. All the internet is really killing off is the profitability of media distribution.

(Edited for clarification)

 

[DJ PIMP]

To that end... Wired article on myspace closing the gap between fans and bands:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/myspace.html

 

[mms]

Hasan-i Sabbah

"The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened."

"When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will."

"And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: 'Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise'. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly."
- Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273

First came across him when Burroughs referenced the quote you mentioned.

it's this way around - 'nothing is true, everything is permitted', burroughs is most famous for using it after hassan i sabbah, apparently it's what i sabbah said on his death bed .
but i think there are probably a great number of myths and misunderstandings about the ismallis especially their apparent use of hashish, note this explanation is written by invader marco polo, so it might be better just to attribute it to burroughs.

 

[zhao]

why don't you just tell me what formally innovative dance music you've heard this year. I'd genuinely like to know. And please don't say Kompakt.

oh my god I just clicked REPLY thinking "I'll sort him out" but now that I'm typing my head is completely blank...

 

[zhao]

speaking of dixieland... I think on this thread it would do well for us to remember that trad jazz -- big band, swing, dixieland, etc, at the beginning of the 20th century, was purely dance music. it served the same function techno does now... but after 100 years it's function has entirely changed.

what exactly are the repercussions of this line of thinking I'm not sure yet... if only the client would leave me alone!

 

[Martin Dust]

No
"it seems where we are now in 2005 the genre, sound whatever it is, is completely redundant."

Dancing and music for dancing is never redundant.

I'm from Essex. I grew up dancing to jazz funk, disco, electro, dancehall and post punk. Yes, DANCING. Whatever your 'dance music' is, it's not mine. So you can fuck off from the dancefloor along with all the other chin strokers. I think it is significant in this thread that the haters never talk about /dancing/.

if it's just "dancing and having a good time" then... there's loads of other musics that provide that function. r&b rap ragga etc etc
Yeah -- I'm with Borthwick on this -- the greatest contemporary British dance music is reggae. But I still like house, and at least some techno, and grime, and obviously I'm a massive dubstep fan.

t'ing is tho -- and bb may or may not agree -- dance music's ideology, which so many of the chinstrokers (I bet they never DANCE, sirnosed'voidoffunk) on this thread think is exhausted, didn't originate with dance music. It went back to Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, Tackhead, the Slits, The clash (certainly sandinista era), it goes back to the Stones (when they were good, right up to emtional rescue), it goes back to... I think you get my point...

... and it will always, always be under threat from those who want to clingfilm it into submission.

... and it will never, ever, go away.

...and that right there is why I'll always have your back, honest and with a fucking passion, word 777.