jess, it was a bigger surprise to me than it would be to anyone else. i genuinely think that, for me, house music may well have fulfilled its function. i'm not saying there isn't good music around, but i'm totally not into going out and checking it out at clubs any more (the isolee album for example is a great record). while i was surprised by quite how intensely fed-up i got on saturday, this has been a pretty gradual process, but one i never thought would complete its cycle - i always thought i'd have a basic enjoyment of 4/4 beats in big clubs. now i think simon is absolutely right re electrohouse/metrohouse etc... it leaves me totally and completely adrift these days. i'm actually wondering why this has happened - not enough development over the past few years, nearly 20 years of music reaching its natural creative dead end (ftr,i was MUCH faster to write off jungle, which i enjoyed far more intensely when i was enjoying it), me just getting older?
The realisation that you don't really like house music much any more...
- Thread starter stelfox
- Start date
bassnation
the abyss
stelfox said:
yeah, its easy to get tired of it - as you say, its 20 years of development. its getting a bit long on the tooth now. but i wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, like the peeps who say they can't stand any of it.
after all, dubstep, jungle and grime would not have existed without house music. it opened a lot of doors creatively in the uk (and internationally of course, not to be too parochial). the fact that you've caned the arse out of it doesn't mean that in its day it wasn't intense, alien and thrilling - much the same way i find grime to be now but for different reasons.
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hint
party record with a siren
Blackdown said:
yeah - brilliant, innit!
The pulse of your heartbeat. John Travolta striding down the street. That's rhythm.
I think it's a good thing that artists are sometimes forced to concentrate on making the rest of the track interesting rather than just switching the drum pattern up enough to make up for the lack of movement elsewhere.
borderpolice
Well-known member
dominic said:
that's one end of the spectrum, and over the whole of italo disco in the 1980s the less typical one.
i was thinking more along the line of things like baltimora "tarzan boy" or fun fun "happy station".
Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
Hey, if you get bored of "it", fair enough, even the best music in the world can get boring eventually, but...
... but 4x4, disco-influenced house-type-music is one of the magnetic poles of dance music. I really buy into the idea that that house, as in a kind of pulsing, metronomic, hypnotic, 4x4 music, is thousands of years old.
Lots of writing about why I don't share Stelfox' opinion right now here . Accompanying mix here.
BTW on the electro side of things, I think there's life in the old dog yet. Last year I did a load of tracks fusing ragga and electro. Right larf.
... but 4x4, disco-influenced house-type-music is one of the magnetic poles of dance music. I really buy into the idea that that house, as in a kind of pulsing, metronomic, hypnotic, 4x4 music, is thousands of years old.
Lots of writing about why I don't share Stelfox' opinion right now here . Accompanying mix here.
BTW on the electro side of things, I think there's life in the old dog yet. Last year I did a load of tracks fusing ragga and electro. Right larf.
anyway by no means all music that comes under the banner of 'house' has a kick on every beat of the bar. House DJs that play a constant stream of 4 to the floor are mostly dull as ditchwater, agreed, except for someone like knuckles who can bewitch you with beats like a metronome simply cos of the quality of the selection & programming
I think we need to distinguish between two positions here:
1) People who disapprove of the <I>inherent qualities of house</I> – the four to the floor beat, the tempo, the general <I>feel</I> of house (as distinct to techno, disco, broken beat etc.)
2) People who are sympathetic to house <I>as a genre</I> but aren’t particularly enamoured of the recent directions it’s taken, or feel dissatisfied with its perceived stasis.
These two positions seem to be elided together here, with people who (by their statements) hold themselves out as belonging to the first position seeking to assert the second position with some level of authority. They’re entitled to their opinion of course, but I’m also entitled to take them about as seriously as I might a person who claims to dislike rapping generally seeking to hold forth on the specific value or (lack thereof) of crunk.
Of course you might say that it’s not that simple, that (for example) the lack of innovation in house is one of its inherent aspects, one which tends to undercut the other values it might have, but a discussion of this would (in order to have any credibility) have to engage with what is actually going on in house much more than this thread appears to want to – for “innovation” internal to the precepts of a genre is something that can only perceived from within certain states of engagement, and when accompanied by a certain frame of mind. The paradigmatic example here is grime: we should all by now be familiar with the claims of partial US (or UK) hip hop fans that grime “does nothing new”, is merely a lesser reproduction of pre-existing techniques within hip hop. What can the grime fan say in response to this except that “you don’t get it” (an argument that is essentially “parents just don’t understand” transposed from an inter-generational antagonism to an inter-stylistic one).
I’m not trying to enforce pure stylistic relativism here: clearly some genres can perform better than others. But a dismissal of (for example) innovation in house would need to be balanced by a sense of how house can and should be innovative; i.e. if there’s no skerrick of engagement with the <I>phronesis</I> of house then I’m not sure how useful these sorts of discussions can be. Simply dismissing repetitive beats or divas reveals precisely zero insight about the music in question; the only positive function it has is the setting up of a weak caricature of a genre compared to which you can trumpet the positive qualities of yr preferred music - but why is this necessary?
Incidentally I know that Stelfox is more likely to belong to group 2 than group 1 – Dave what do you think has changed about the music or you since you made <I>All That Glitters</I> your favourite album of 2002?
1) People who disapprove of the <I>inherent qualities of house</I> – the four to the floor beat, the tempo, the general <I>feel</I> of house (as distinct to techno, disco, broken beat etc.)
2) People who are sympathetic to house <I>as a genre</I> but aren’t particularly enamoured of the recent directions it’s taken, or feel dissatisfied with its perceived stasis.
These two positions seem to be elided together here, with people who (by their statements) hold themselves out as belonging to the first position seeking to assert the second position with some level of authority. They’re entitled to their opinion of course, but I’m also entitled to take them about as seriously as I might a person who claims to dislike rapping generally seeking to hold forth on the specific value or (lack thereof) of crunk.
Of course you might say that it’s not that simple, that (for example) the lack of innovation in house is one of its inherent aspects, one which tends to undercut the other values it might have, but a discussion of this would (in order to have any credibility) have to engage with what is actually going on in house much more than this thread appears to want to – for “innovation” internal to the precepts of a genre is something that can only perceived from within certain states of engagement, and when accompanied by a certain frame of mind. The paradigmatic example here is grime: we should all by now be familiar with the claims of partial US (or UK) hip hop fans that grime “does nothing new”, is merely a lesser reproduction of pre-existing techniques within hip hop. What can the grime fan say in response to this except that “you don’t get it” (an argument that is essentially “parents just don’t understand” transposed from an inter-generational antagonism to an inter-stylistic one).
I’m not trying to enforce pure stylistic relativism here: clearly some genres can perform better than others. But a dismissal of (for example) innovation in house would need to be balanced by a sense of how house can and should be innovative; i.e. if there’s no skerrick of engagement with the <I>phronesis</I> of house then I’m not sure how useful these sorts of discussions can be. Simply dismissing repetitive beats or divas reveals precisely zero insight about the music in question; the only positive function it has is the setting up of a weak caricature of a genre compared to which you can trumpet the positive qualities of yr preferred music - but why is this necessary?
Incidentally I know that Stelfox is more likely to belong to group 2 than group 1 – Dave what do you think has changed about the music or you since you made <I>All That Glitters</I> your favourite album of 2002?
i think we should probably refer to tim f's remarks on the hater's thread -- about the tendency to "hate" what is close to what you like, b/c you don't want to be taken by others as a person who likes that sound or approach, or b/c you have a more passionate (if inarticulate) sense of what the genre should be but fails to be
at the end of the day i'm a house person (or that transitional species, the rave-ist), not a junglist or grime-ist, and certainly not a hip hop head or rocker or pop music fan -- accordingly, i'm a lot more stingy and persnickety about house than other genres, and more apt to make cruel and unwarranted remarks about house djs than other djs
and i can't recall a time when i've been pleased with the overall state of house music -- i.e., i've always been bored by the monotony of most house sets, or appalled by the cheesiness of so much house culture (not to sound elitist, but let's be honest)
(and yes, at the same time, i hate the whole middle-age, middle-brow, ex-paradise garage, ex-shelter nostalgia contingent -- and no, i never really liked that shelter stuff anyway)
(even so, stelfox strikes me as a person who's left the fold entirely -- maybe he should have dinner with bobby konders some evening -- they can compare notes)
at the end of the day i'm a house person (or that transitional species, the rave-ist), not a junglist or grime-ist, and certainly not a hip hop head or rocker or pop music fan -- accordingly, i'm a lot more stingy and persnickety about house than other genres, and more apt to make cruel and unwarranted remarks about house djs than other djs
and i can't recall a time when i've been pleased with the overall state of house music -- i.e., i've always been bored by the monotony of most house sets, or appalled by the cheesiness of so much house culture (not to sound elitist, but let's be honest)
(and yes, at the same time, i hate the whole middle-age, middle-brow, ex-paradise garage, ex-shelter nostalgia contingent -- and no, i never really liked that shelter stuff anyway)
(even so, stelfox strikes me as a person who's left the fold entirely -- maybe he should have dinner with bobby konders some evening -- they can compare notes)
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but my point about monotony is this:
when exactly was it decided that house djs should play nothing but 4-to-the-floor, etc???
and who made this decision on behalf of the "genre" and "community" as a whole?
again, i can see the merit of taking things hardcore if you're really pushing the sound in a "forward" direction
but if you're not a modernist a la grooverider, then what's the point and how is your approach justified?
when exactly was it decided that house djs should play nothing but 4-to-the-floor, etc???
and who made this decision on behalf of the "genre" and "community" as a whole?
again, i can see the merit of taking things hardcore if you're really pushing the sound in a "forward" direction
but if you're not a modernist a la grooverider, then what's the point and how is your approach justified?
bassnation
the abyss
dominic said:
not me. i was well into house music, even raved to the likes of jon pleased wimmin and in the northern clubbing meccas in the mid-nineties. it was a right laugh, had some of the best times of my life round then. back then you could go to a big club like cream and hear dj pierre play next to miss djax and felix da housekatt. it was a total buzz on almost on a par with any rave i've ever been to.
its just after so many weekends doing the same thing to the same music - it does get a bit stale after a while. plus in those days i took ecstasy every weekend. most of my house music listening in the week (outside of a club environment) was all about recapturing the vibe in my own head. since i can only manage one e every 3 months now being on my way to forty, i don't feel quite the same about it, no longer feel part of that unified group and generally losing purchase on the culture as a whole.
also tieing into what dave said, after a while the e's don't work the same in terms of enhancing the music. tunes generally sound the same now whether i'm on drugs or not. so if i've got tired of a particular sound, doing a pill is not generally going to make it any better.
I dunno Dominic, I see what you're saying with regard to mixing up four-to-the-floor beats with other stuff, but I get the impression you're talking about breakbeats here? I think <i>explicit</i> breakbeat house is actually really hard to do well these days without just becoming breakbeat (e.g. Plump DJs) or broken beat, both of which operate according to what I would consider to be quite a distinct groove logic. I broadly approve of the <i>idea</i> of breakbeat house because stuff like early Carl Craig (to be specific I mean stuff like "Desire" here) and 808 State etc. was among the first dance music I got into (albeit like 8 years after the fact). But the only remotely recent stuff I've heard which has been able to capture that vibe is Maurice Fulton, and then from the beginning of the decade. I may be forgetting some stuff.
Having said that I think it would be mistaken to assume that the choice is between e.g. a breakbeat and a simple monotonous kickdrum/hi-hat pattern (and even if it was I'd say that judging the creativity a house track or even an entire sub-style of house on just what the beats are doing necessarily ignores a large part of how house is actually structured - contra the sentiments expressed in this thread I think Tiefschwarz frequently craft really novel, really distinctive and unusual grooves, while mostly sticking with a house beat template, and they're just one example) .
As far as I can see <i>most</i> of the exciting stuff in the last couple of years of house has been the stuff which really seeks to re-invest 4-to-the-floor house with rhythmic personality - sure there is often a kick drum there but it's contextualised by complex, shifting snare patterns, odd rhythmic effects etc. - the entire purpose of which is to make it so that no house groove in a DJ set sounds the same as another one. And this is not something which is limited to the microhouse margins, or at least not anymore: my two favourite house DJ mixes of the year are M.A.N.D.Y.'s <i>Body Language</i> mix and Damian Lazarus's <i>Rebel Futurism #2</i>, both of which are resolutely dancefloor based - and the type of tracks they use are the ones that tend to shift the most records at dance music stores, at least in Australia - but are also really surprising, intricate listens (if anything, the M.A.N.D.Y. mix is so intricate, so gloopy and globular in its soundsculpting that it took me a while to get into it, I was looking for straightforward house grooves that simply weren't there).
Andy Battaglia (a great writer on dance music) recently wrote something on his blog about a M.A.N.D.Y. live set which sums it up quite well:
"Saw M.A.N.D.Y. at Tribeca Grand last night, who were awesome. Two guys who it’s said produce most of the tracks for comely Berlin label Get Physical. Colorful warping electro and Chicago house without the historical drag. Many spacey disco runs that would make Justus Kohncke’s blue eyes bluer. One track that made me think of Billy Ocean for reasons I can’t precisely figure out. Mostly, a 20-minute or so visitation of insane zipper-pull techno I’d quicker associate with Perlon or Playhouse than Get Physical, brittle minimalism atomized and injected with growth hormone (or maybe slightly rotten collagen). The kind of techno that made me think if only people not into dance music could hear this they’d pretty much have to fold their hand and thrill to concede that it’s not all the same, that nothing like it has (or could have) been made before, that the whole project is very much alive and spinning out ideas whose smallness is not a knock but a virtue."
Having said that I think it would be mistaken to assume that the choice is between e.g. a breakbeat and a simple monotonous kickdrum/hi-hat pattern (and even if it was I'd say that judging the creativity a house track or even an entire sub-style of house on just what the beats are doing necessarily ignores a large part of how house is actually structured - contra the sentiments expressed in this thread I think Tiefschwarz frequently craft really novel, really distinctive and unusual grooves, while mostly sticking with a house beat template, and they're just one example) .
As far as I can see <i>most</i> of the exciting stuff in the last couple of years of house has been the stuff which really seeks to re-invest 4-to-the-floor house with rhythmic personality - sure there is often a kick drum there but it's contextualised by complex, shifting snare patterns, odd rhythmic effects etc. - the entire purpose of which is to make it so that no house groove in a DJ set sounds the same as another one. And this is not something which is limited to the microhouse margins, or at least not anymore: my two favourite house DJ mixes of the year are M.A.N.D.Y.'s <i>Body Language</i> mix and Damian Lazarus's <i>Rebel Futurism #2</i>, both of which are resolutely dancefloor based - and the type of tracks they use are the ones that tend to shift the most records at dance music stores, at least in Australia - but are also really surprising, intricate listens (if anything, the M.A.N.D.Y. mix is so intricate, so gloopy and globular in its soundsculpting that it took me a while to get into it, I was looking for straightforward house grooves that simply weren't there).
Andy Battaglia (a great writer on dance music) recently wrote something on his blog about a M.A.N.D.Y. live set which sums it up quite well:
"Saw M.A.N.D.Y. at Tribeca Grand last night, who were awesome. Two guys who it’s said produce most of the tracks for comely Berlin label Get Physical. Colorful warping electro and Chicago house without the historical drag. Many spacey disco runs that would make Justus Kohncke’s blue eyes bluer. One track that made me think of Billy Ocean for reasons I can’t precisely figure out. Mostly, a 20-minute or so visitation of insane zipper-pull techno I’d quicker associate with Perlon or Playhouse than Get Physical, brittle minimalism atomized and injected with growth hormone (or maybe slightly rotten collagen). The kind of techno that made me think if only people not into dance music could hear this they’d pretty much have to fold their hand and thrill to concede that it’s not all the same, that nothing like it has (or could have) been made before, that the whole project is very much alive and spinning out ideas whose smallness is not a knock but a virtue."
hear hear marc. good to see people actually bigging up large northern clubs as the bastions of quality and variety they actually were. i used to live in liverpool and although i was always more of a techno person than a soulboy house fan, i used to have way more fun on my nights out at cream than i ever did at voodoo. even if my favourite djs of the time never played there, i remember checking out line-ups the kind of which you just don't see any more there, jumping all over the shop from the us to the uk to europe, from slinky to bouncy and downright grinding (having said that, though, one of the best nights of music i heard there was just david morales and satoshie tomie playing hours and hours of the slowest blissiest house and disco and if you really wanted to hear a completely batshit mental playlist you were much better of heading to any of the big homo clubs in the northwest).
feelings of variety and more importantly still, vitality, are key here - i don't get either from house music at the moment. going to big clubs today is a stagnant experience. you're unlikely to be surprised in any way. every room plays a microvariant of whatever the others are playing, everyone dresses the same and has that horrible cocaine hauteur even if they're not on it, people don't even dance properly, they just sway.
rave and disco were all about fun, hedonism, release, but what you're seeing today is about being there because there's nothing better to do - skimmed milk to the past's full-fat experience.
and in reference to tim's question of what's changed since 2002 and all that giltters, i'd have to say very little - and that's a large part of the problem. i know this doesn't apply so much to the chileans, but in general terms the accepted sonic palete is constricting with every new shift, whereas before it broadened. where hardcore was a demented bricolage of everything going from all around the world, michael mayer can't even tolerate a breakbeat. how terribly white, how terribly pallid things have become.
feelings of variety and more importantly still, vitality, are key here - i don't get either from house music at the moment. going to big clubs today is a stagnant experience. you're unlikely to be surprised in any way. every room plays a microvariant of whatever the others are playing, everyone dresses the same and has that horrible cocaine hauteur even if they're not on it, people don't even dance properly, they just sway.
rave and disco were all about fun, hedonism, release, but what you're seeing today is about being there because there's nothing better to do - skimmed milk to the past's full-fat experience.
and in reference to tim's question of what's changed since 2002 and all that giltters, i'd have to say very little - and that's a large part of the problem. i know this doesn't apply so much to the chileans, but in general terms the accepted sonic palete is constricting with every new shift, whereas before it broadened. where hardcore was a demented bricolage of everything going from all around the world, michael mayer can't even tolerate a breakbeat. how terribly white, how terribly pallid things have become.
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blissblogger
Well-known member
Tim F said:
wahey! Tim F on an anti-anti-intellectual rampage!
i don't know what either word means but i luvvit luvvit luvvit
*******
i've only heard their remixes but i can't actually hear the house in Tiefschwarz, they seem like something else altogether
that's what mystifies me a bit about 'electro-house' as term, can't hear the house and don't really hear that much electro
DigitalDjigit
Honky Tonk Woman
blissblogger said:
The electro is in the buzzy synths, the house is in the beat that goes Boom Slap Boom Slap (you know, the disco beat with the four to the floor and the snare on every even beat). What do you propose to call it?
I think the electro is from electroclash rather than electro per se. Electro proper doesn't really have those buzzy synths.
Stypod very recently had a good mix of this kind of stuff (at least from the tracklisting) unfortunately I missed it.
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Tim F said:
i like to chatter ad nauseam about dance music here at dissenus -- but truth be told, i'm not all that knowledgeable
so i haven't the slightest notion about the acts you mention above, tim
(maybe i've heard it, maybe i haven't)
my perspective is very much a punter's view -- i go out a lot and always have, i hear a lot of music out, but don't necessarily know what i'm listening to -- yet i don't think this makes me unqualifed to speak, so long as i speak in general terms
and i tend to like djs who criss-cross genres -- and not for the sake of "creativity" as such -- but simply to keep the crowd involved
and when i play records (emphasis on *play*, not dj properly), i try to cover a range of styles, albeit w/ heavy emphasis on early 90s sounds -- and i do this to make a kind of argument, communicate a certain understanding of dance music
however, there's plenty of people who play broken beats and 2-step garage-ish stuff alongside deep house, post-punk dance, reggae sounds, etc -- they may not be pushing music "forward" or breaking the next revolution -- but they keep things reasonably interesting
and b/c they take this approach, they're not going to be booked to play places like tribeca grand or be on the cover of some dance magazine, and they're not going to be the acknowledged leaders of the house scene -- but at risk of sounding elitist or po-faced, they're the true house djs -- not the people who you read about in magazines or whose mix cd you can buy
when the house scene first began, it wasn't simply about proper house music from chicago -- it was all kinds of sounds -- disco, funk, soul, hip hop, electro, some dance-oriented rock, and yes "proper" house -- listen to ron hardy on the deephouse page!!!
and then at some point ambitious djs began to specialize in ever more narrow sounds -- again, i freely acknowledge the value of artistic ambition and sonic focus in the manner of grooverider, who took things in an entirely new direction -- but djs who narrowed things down to the 4x4 were for the most part money grubbers -- let's not mince words!
sorry for the lecture
blissblogger said:
phronesis = something like practical wisdom in aristotle
i.e., only a gentleman knows how to recognize or "be" a gentleman
similarly, only a true citizen of house music knows how to identify the "good" and "innovative" in house
phronesis = the internal view, the participant's understanding
not some external critic's view
in other words, house music should not be judged by a rockist or modernist standard
correct me if i'm wrong, tim!