House Is A Feeling

Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m actually too young, but I can’t help but feel that dance music is in a weird timewarp these days. Perhaps it’s not just dance music that’s in this stasis, or even just music.

This isn’t even a controversial theory, is it? It reminds me of Fukuyama’s theory about Western Capitalism. Although it didn’t spell “the end of history” in terms of world events (9/11 NEVER FORGET etc) , it always is a theory that I think of in relation to art and postmodernism.

Gigantic cultural movements like rave where people really get behind something en masse and it changes the way they live their lives are now far more likely to be due to new communication and interaction technologies rather than musical or artistic things. The net is awash with this sort of thing and it will get bigger and bigger (and smaller and smaller) Myspace is an obvious example! (Owned by Rupert Murdoch, which puts a depressing sheen on this.)

I’m not saying nothing new can ever happen again in art, but with a lot of art right now, and with dance music, new trends are old trends. Who knows how many times some of these dance music themes have been recycled by now?

This isn’t a criticism necessarily, there are some acts doing innovative stuff (and innovation is not the be all and end all anyway), but it is very difficult to determine in what direction dance music is now moving. Forwards? Backwards? Perhaps twirling, ever twirling erm…sideways? What does this mean for the genre? What does it now stand for, if not futurism? Music for music’s sake?

With the massive boom in German house music in the last few years leading to “minimal” becoming hugely popular in clubs in Europe and around the world, it seemed for a while like things were leaning towards a futurism and determined innovation (AGAIN), but now not a month goes by without talk of the “return” of house or “bleep techno” or something similar.

It’s a very strange scene right now, I feel a real sense that people are waiting for one of these revivals to take off and dominate, whether it’s techno, a resurgent US house sound, or whatever. But all the while the resilience of “minimal”, is still quite remarkable. These trends and revivals are coming and going, and minimal seems to stay, as a backbone and a canvas for all of them, in a manner which is almost perfectly similar to the way house incorporated other genres into itself throughout its history, whether it was dub, disco, or rock. The continued success of “minimal” in capturing public imagination and luring new cohorts into the scene leads one to wonder if indeed the redefinitions of house and techno that have happened in the last 2 or 3 years could be somewhat permanent. Is this incarnation of house and techno with us for the next 10 years or so?

It’s a well established cliché by now even to decry the genre name “minimal” as useless or complain about how little it describes, hell it’s probably a cliché to decry any genre name for these things, but it is also true. The labels which are considered “minimal” can put out an utterly maximal screaming techno record one week and a deep house one the next. Many of the big labels (especially Kompakt or Get Physical) have started off with a specific niche sound and as their popularity reached its peak, began to release their take on quintessential timeless “house” or “techno” or “trance” sounds. This is Get Physical’s plan for 2007 it seems, what with Dixon of purists Jazzanova enlisted to mix Body Language 3. .

But you know, by now, I think any fan or DJ in the house and techno field who doesn’t bother checking these so called “minimal” labels is missing out on a lot of the best house and techno, period. The only sense in which “minimal” is useful as a term is in that it tells people you’re in the club, that you like popular dance music 12s made beyond whenever the exact point minimal replaced other catch all terms like “tech house” or “techno”.

“Minimal” as a genre name does all a genre name should do: it identifies the user as a member of a subculture. Terms like “techno” or whatever are just as meaningless anyway. Afterall in plenty of places “techno” just means any and all dance music (blame the Americans, tho I’ve seen Irish people use it this way too), and the only reason you can’t moan about “techno” even more as a genre name is precisely because it has NO OTHER MEANING in the real world, at least not that I know of, unlike “minimal”.

As for me, I think this sense of “minimal” as a codeword for “German house and techno I downloaded from blogs and Soulseek and read about in Philip Sherburne’s column” (a horrible strawman I know! I can practically hear the Richie Hawtin fans foaming at the mouth) will continue. Even as other styles emerge regularly to inflect it, these are often just microtrends. So it’s US house quirks one month, spaced out techno the next.

And of course almost a microtrend in itself is Carl Craig’s recent revival. Again I have to wonder am I too old, or just too young when I say this seems weirdly familiar!? I mean, surely Carl Craig has had several revivals before? I don’t remember any but it just seems like something that has happened before (is there a name for feeling deja vu about things that may not have happened? maybe it’s “old age”!). If anyone wants to tell us about the last CC “revival” then that’d be interesting.

All these things having been said, Craig’s remix of Faze Action’s “In The Trees” is utterly brilliant. In keeping with this post it has this new sheen to it but the sounds and the feeling seems old and familiar. It’s one of those records which reminds me of being 18 (more time-warping!) again, just that electric shock when a track ends which makes you want to play it again and again. I still get goosebumps when I hear tracks like this. Could anything encapsulate more perfectly everything vital about the nightclub? And then the strings come in…this one is definitely “techno”!

(Edit: On my 20th listen or so to this CC remix, a thought strikes me, anyone else getting a serious EBM vibe off that opening? Could almost be…Black Strobe?)

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