Hard News: Friday Music: The Story
115 Responses
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bob daktari, in reply to
you'll find more woman "DJing" in this sort of setting than pretty much any other electronic scene....
This is party culture - not music.... as a music person who loves electronic forms this leaves me cold for many others however it is the best time ever!
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I've never been particularly bothered (or enthused) by EDM, but since its fuckup (in the US) of what they label as "dubstep", I have beef.
I love the original UK dubstep, and sure, genres evolve. But I really wish Skrillex and co had labelled their stuff "EDMstep" or something.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
The entire scene appears to me to be about looking at everyone else and trying to get them to look at you.
That's something new? :)
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Tom Beard, in reply to
Arthur Baker was already working in the studio where New Order came and had the brilliant intuition of 'Blue Monday', and I think the context in which we see dance music was really created in the lofts and warehouses of American inner cities.
Yes, Arthur Baker/New Order was one collaboration that I was going to mention in that respect. But I think it's the phrase "the context in which we see dance music" that marks the difference between our two perspectives: I came to dance music via electronic music, but it seems like you came to electronic music via dance music. Would that be correct?
DJ Pierre discovering that a bass synthesiser didn't have to sound like a lame bass guitar but could instead be made to sound like nothing on earth was a pretty big moment.
Hell yeah, Acid Tracks! But I don't think that he was the first to see that a bass synthesiser didn't have to sound like a bass guitar: Giorgio and his modular Moog might have something to say about that :-)
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I think I need a Snickers bar to calm me down.
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Luke Williamson, in reply to
Touché
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Also produced by Georgio Moroder:
I have it on vinyl. Unfortunately it's about 100bpm with a 200bpm half-beat so impossible to mix with normal dance music.
(Friday afternoon game for militaria geeks - identify all missiles and aircraft shown in that video.)
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
reggae remix of Royals
https://soundcloud.com/namdrik16/lorde-royals-reggae-remix</q>
Shit, thought that was going to be a rocksteady remix of The Royals for a minute. It's all so confusing...
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Can I just have a moment to squee out about Killer Mike (one half of Run the Jewels) being at Laneway? I fucking LOVE Killer Mike. This is one of my favourites of his – obviously released in mid-aughts - and he was *pissed off*:
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Yes, Arthur Baker/New Order was one collaboration that I was going to mention in that respect. But I think it’s the phrase “the context in which we see dance music” that marks the difference between our two perspectives: I came to dance music via electronic music, but it seems like you came to electronic music via dance music. Would that be correct?
But we are talking about contemporary dance music, and while it clearly had many influences (the Chicago house DJs were known to drop Kraftwerk and YMO), what we recognise as "dance music" came from those inner city scenes -- which, of course, had to be brought to Britain to become mainstream popular culture.
Hell yeah, Acid Tracks! But I don’t think that he was the first to see that a bass synthesiser didn’t have to sound like a bass guitar: Giorgio and his modular Moog might have something to say about that :-)
Yeah .... but creating genius with a Moog wasn't quite the same thing as totally and permanently perverting the 303, which was literally sold as a device for the use of cover bands in bars. It's that thing about the street finding its uses for technology.
Anyway -- Acid Tracks!
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
I love the original UK dubstep, and sure, genres evolve. But I really wish Skrillex and co had labelled their stuff "EDMstep" or something.
Seems to me the original Dubstep out of the UK (likes of Hyperdub etc..) grew out of garage, jungle and drum & bass. These in turn sampled reggae drum and bass along with electro, hip hop etc... And that's why the sound is good, it comes from that solid foundation.
Skrillex OTOH, seems totally removed from those roots, he starts at the high end and creates a screeching mess with drops. I find that stuff quite painful and without reference point. I love electronic music but have to be able to sense the funk, reggae, punk, synth, new wave origins for it to get to me.
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Luke Williamson, in reply to
Thank you Danielle, that was magnificent and really hit the spot for me on a frustrated Friday.
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Danielle, in reply to
Yay, I'm glad you liked it! I have a lot of admiration for how hell-raisingly righteous that track is. His delivery is so good. (I believe he's also the dude who does the "I catch a beat running like Randy Moss" verse in OutKast's "The Whole World", to go back even further.)
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As much as I like Lorde I worry a bit that she could suffer as a consequence of the planned obsolescence of contemporary music--always looking for the 'next big thing'. This seems to be the possible fate of Kimbra.
There was a NZ bloke ( a 'multi-instrumentalist' who is appatrently big in the UK) on Later With Jools Holland last night but I have already forgotten his name.
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Tom Beard, in reply to
But we are talking about contemporary dance music, and while it clearly had many influences (the Chicago house DJs were known to drop Kraftwerk and YMO), what we recognise as "dance music" came from those inner city scenes -- which, of course, had to be brought to Britain to become mainstream popular culture.
True, and I'll totally defer to your knowledge of house music genealogy. It's probably just that my own discovery of house and techno in the late 80s/early 90s was filtered through a distinctly less hip and "inner city marginalised" culture of 70s Euro synth noodling (Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre) and 80s English synth pop (Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, anything that Vince Clarke ever touched). I had little awareness of the evolving house & techno scene in the US, so when I belatedly discovered techno I saw the similarities with other electronic music I'd been following rather than realising that it had gone through a different evolutionary track in Chicago and Detroit.
By that stage I was already more into the problematically-labelled IDM ("Intelligent" Dance Music) genre than dance music per se, and sitting at home listening to early Warp was more my thing than raves. And that track of electronic music has what seemed to me more European origins, despite their house & hip-hop influences (I only found out recently that Autechre, makers of fiercely difficult abstract digital glitchscapes, started out in the hip-hop scene).
As for EDM, in the David Guetta/Deadmau5/Calvin Harris sense, I really can't say how much of its origins lie in techno and house, and how much in pop, trance, Italo disco and over-produced 80s synth pop, all of which bring in as many elements from outside of the American house music tradition as from within it. Maybe.
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"chris", in reply to
Yeah …. but creating genius with a Moog wasn’t quite the same thing as totally and permanently perverting the 303
Which reminds me, oft sampled and drum machine pioneers Sly and the family Stone’s had the first number-one hit to feature a programmed rhythm track with Family Affair, though still in the funk/ soul vein. Anyway some random tracks:
In Time from Fresh (1973)
The mindfuck that is Spaced Cowboy from The Family Affair LP There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971)
with this comment:
this thing smells like the new york giants locker room after they have played 4 quarters plus overtime.
And of course:
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Gary Steel has reviewed Pure Heroine and likes it.
It interesting that while I picked on the me-and-my-gang undercurrent, he identifies the opposite:
Aloneness crops up repeatedly, and is raised to the main theme of the grand finale, the unusually downbeat ‘A World Alone’, which seems to be making the rather clichéd point that despite the incessant chatter of the modern world, “We’re dancing in the world alone… alone.”
The two themes are effectively the flipside of the one thing. She’s an interesting artist.
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"chris", in reply to
Cripes. I was going to ask for a link to her album but just found it's already been uploaded to the Chinese streaming site.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
By that stage I was already more into the problematically-labelled IDM (“Intelligent” Dance Music) genre than dance music per se, and sitting at home listening to early Warp was more my thing than raves.
And I was digging the same thing, but seeing it in a different context to you – or as an extension of a different thing. Interesting.
When I came back to NZ in 1991, I was asked to DJ in support of the Headless Chickens at the Gluepot, and dropped Unique’s 3’s ‘Activity’ at the end of the set. It sounded so great through the big PA. It was the kind of thing no one here would have thought of playing out at the time, but fortunately, I didn’t know that.
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The bloke on Jools Holland last night was Willy Moon. Anyone know anything about him?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The bloke on Jools Holland last night was Willy Moon. Anyone know anything about him?
No. He's been on Kiwi Hit Discs, so I presume commercial radio here plays him.
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I thought Gary Steel's
but if you ignore the lyrics, it works.
was a little dismissive, I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud at a couple of Ella's lines and delivery, inspired stuff. I never quite got "I've never seen a diamond in the flesh", But:
You buy me orange juice
I'm getting good at this
Dreams of clean teethUniversal...
For the same reason I loved that Phoenix Foundation track/ video...
Truth.
In the 90’s, dance music did a big fork into ghetto (rap, garage, etc) and posh (trance, house, psy. And hardcore, really
So..um, do you love your hardcore?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I thought Gary Steel’s
but if you ignore the lyrics, it works.
was a little dismissive,
But that was about one song, which I also find annoying. I don't think any sane reviewer would dismiss her lyrics.
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"chris", in reply to
Yeah, and I think it’s a compliment to Lorde that he seems to be employing quite exacting standards here wrt her lyrical content, for what is for all intents and purposes a teen pop record, vis a vis the competitors’:
“I got the eye of the tiger, the fighter, dancing through the fire
Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me ROAR
Louder, louder than a lion” =/ -
Yeah I don't think we can say the US sat out the EDM of the 90s - although it was possibly very garage/house centred (given where house got its name from etc). It always struck me that through the 90s you could see Europe's classical musical history vs the US's blues/soul history evolved in their EDM*
Wouldn't mind checking the Farina/Sneak/Carter tour I understand is happening up north recently...* I hate that term, why am I using it?!
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