As someone living in the south of the UK this is one of the strangest and most unexpected developments in global popular music in recent years.
I'm sorry if this sounds snobbish but I genuinely want/need to understand this, and I would appreciate any opinions or theories from americans as to how/why this happened and who/what forces could be responsible. Email in profile.
I can sit here and write an overly, but necessary long reply or recommend a couple of books. I'll do the latter, all of them by Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture; Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past.
Music history is filled with ambiguities and nebulous, complex definitions that have changed throughout history. What's more, how electronic dance music got from point A to B to C to D to E, and so on and so forth, usually sounds unintuitive to people who listen to mostly only very few music styles. A linear and extremely compressed timeline of electronic (dance) music can probably start as early as Kraftwerk in the early 70s, then NEU! and a lot of so-called 'krautrock', which morphed into things such as Joy Division, who is said to have influenced rave/club culture. Interestingly, the word 'rave' is actually 1960s British slang for modern day-like, club-like loud parties. These loans (both linguistically and musically from all periods in time) remain very common across all of music and makes it even more complex to explain. Anyway, the whole Hacienda club scene influenced club music in the 80s, especially when Ian Curtis died and New Order adopted a sound that allegedly Curtis had already thought of in the late 70s. The Human League shares a somewhat similar music development in the sense that early Human League incorporated more 'rock' elements with 'electronic' ones, and then mostly switched to pure 'electronic' elements. With the help of hip hop (borrowing and sampling music to form their own music), a type of 'explosion' in electronic music occurred. There were some artists already making electronic dance music but it hit mainstream in the early 80s when hip hop started sampling from other artists and using non-traditional (for that time) ways of making music with electronic equipment.
You get bands such as Duran Duran to DJs 'mixing' to, basically, C+C Music Factory. Then comes probably the epitome of rave and electronic dance music: UK garage, dnb, 2-step, jungle, etc.; that all-encompassing term 'rave music'. This is probably when every type of electronic and electronic dance music was created and the rest is history.
See, the problem is that by the 80s, electronic dance music had already been invented and various locations took those ideas at the same time, so people sometimes emphasise New York (electro), Chicago or Detroit (house), and at the point the music from these places 'sounded' more like what we relate to 'house music' now, many other places (in the UK, especially) were doing the same thing. If we look back at Chicago and Detroit before this time, they still had house, but it sounded like funk or disco or dance music with upgraded gear. In other words, it was funk, disco, or dance music using more electronic sounding equipment that we now equate to an '80s sound'. It wasn't electronic music using dance elements. It was dance music using electronic elements.
The funny thing about the States is that in the 90s, electronic music switched to a mainstream emphasis. There were still raves in the States, interesting DJs, and a thriving club scene, but it was underground. The American 90s were characterized by the rise of underground 'indie music'/'rock'/'grunge'/'alternative' music. As much as I hate to admit it (because I don't like them), but Nirvana is a good example of this, as are bands such as Pavement, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.
If that makes sense.
I have also read the Reynolds book, and most of what I said is backed up by what he writes in it.
You can trace things back to the Paradise Garage, the Warehouse, to the Electrifyin' Mojo, to Amnesia on Ibiza, to David Mancuso's loft, to Kraftwerk, to the Human League, to the 100 club, to the flower children and their "happenings," to Wigan Pier, or you can go back to the Radiophonic Workshop, Musique Concrète, Léon Theremin, you could cite the Dancing Plague of 1518 or ancient african ritual dances if you wanted. Nothing new is ever invented, etc.
I still think that what Reynolds calls the Hardcore Continuum and its assorted tributaries started in some meaningful sense in Chicago and Detroit, as much as you may always be able to eventually link everything to everything else. The influence of records like Strings of Life is writ large in a way that is separate to the way in which the Human League and Giorgio Moroder are still influential on other strands of music history, despite their common sonic signatures. This is especially true if you consider the cultural/political identity of the scenes as separate from the musical evolution: the mythology of proletarian urban militancy surrounding rave arguably started in detroit with Underground Resistance. That must be the element most conspicuously missing from the current Diplo-fuelled chapter in rave history :)
I suppose we inevitably tend towards taxonomy and categorisation as a cognitive survival strategy.
EDIT: re-reading what I wrote, I admit that bold-facedly stating that the US "invented" EDM was perhaps rash.
We disagree on a couple of contentious issues, which is fine :)
I'll try to re-cap very briefly (Argh! No time for long, deep conversations, anymore!)
I think the keyword is 'meaningful'. I think Reynolds would agree that music genres and movements aren't linear or unorganic. They start, have hiccups, move and are flexible. They're dynamic. As you kind of alluded to in your edit. So, I guess we half-agree (?) on this.
The African thing is a bit of a stretch, no? The comparisons I made are in-tune with each other and had stronger (and direct) ties and similarities. This is the tricky part of comparing conceptual/theoretical ties within music periods and sound, from a musicology point of view. The treatment of sound within my comparisons are much closer, I think.
Also, remember that the 'electronic dance music' that is now popular in the States wasn't so in the 90s--it was underground--whereas you can make a case for it being popular in the UK in the 90s. If you hear people like Kevin Shields talk about music in the US vs. the UK back in the 90s and 80s, he talks about how the UK had a larger audience that was 'thirstier' for newer sounds and it was more accessible to 'mainstream audiences', whereas the States had a strong disparate audience and division.
For example, talk to anybody in the US and ask them if they think The Smiths is mainstream. They will tell you they are not. Yet The Smiths was an extremely popular band in the UK.
The same sort of thing occurs now in the radio up until now. So-called 'indie' or 'underground' music in the States is popular or listened to at a wider scale in the UK and even Canada.
Firstly, I've never liked trance, so I'm not trying to defend my pet genre from infiltrators. On the contrary, I thought I'd seen the back of it ten years ago, outside certain areas of continental europe. then, suddenly, it's the thing in the US.
Now, the united states has always had its own rich history of electronic dance music, indeed they invented it. Pretty much all electronic music from the last 30 years worldwide is derived from Detroit techno and Chicago house. That lineage has continued unbroken in those places to this day, yet that type of dance music has never really attained popular success in its own country.
So, why is this form of very continentally-european music suddenly achieving populaity in what is actually its distant ancestral home? And why now? These things usually lag about three to five years as you say; trance has been a creative cul-de-sac for at least four of those cycles.
The stateside rise of dubstep and electro house makes more sense to me: it's a substitute for nu-metal and radio rock. Trance, as I say, is an absolute non sequitur.
However, some of us had younger siblings, and cousins. And they grew up looking up to someone they though was cool and loved this music. So they thought it must be cool too, and showed their friends. At the same time, many of the people I grew up with were graduating college and started to work, and putting their favorite electronic music in advertising and websites and music soundtracks etc. Why didn't it catch on earlier, as it had in Europe? I think much of it had to with American attitudes and policy toward drugs and the control of the record companies on music promotion. The only place you might hear electronic back then was late night college radio or MTV late Saturday night. There was a sense that this was very much dirty underground druggy music, and event promotion was still very much by flyers and word of mouth. That kind of thing will never catch on in the US mainstream, where there needs to be a sexy, familiar face on the posters and TV advertisements.
>However, some of us had younger siblings, and cousins.
This in particular fits. The "cool older brother" thing is a perennial motif in the evolution of dance music.
The race/class/geography aspects of EDM history are fascinating. First you have upper-middle-class often gay black kids in detroit rejecting the polyrhythms and rowdy attitude of the hiphop and funk around them in pursuit of the perceived sophistication of androgynous european synth-pop. Then this gets picked up by white working class british teenagers who add syncopated hip hop drums and dub bass in pursuit of the street legitimacy of US hiphop and jamaican dancehall. This leads eventually to dubstep, which then gets crossed with stadium rock and exported back to america, to the center of the mainstream. When music makes these geographical leaps it is shorn of its sociocultural context and meaning, leading to the sacking of old sacred grounds and the sanctification of new ones. The acceleration of this cycle in the internet age is fascinating. I'm sure many here will see parallels with the spread of hacker/startup culture.
> I think much of it had to with American attitudes and policy toward drugs and the control of the record companies on music promotion ... That kind of thing will never catch on in the US mainstream, where there needs to be a sexy, familiar face on the posters and TV advertisements.
All of that has always been true in the UK as well. When rave music started to penetrate the charts at the start of the 90s, that wasn't via involvement from the music industry. Those hardcore tracks were getting in the top 10 purely from ravers going out and buying 12"s in independent record shops, tracks which were pressed and distributed by companies owned and operated by the artists. The huge, often illegal events where people were going to dance to these records were similarly done with no involvement from the music industry, at least at first.
The major difference, at least where the UK is concerned, is the impact of pirate radio, which until very recently provided a framework to promote the music, the events and the culture entirely unmolested by the establishment. This in turn is enabled by high population density: more people in your signal footprint, and social housing placed in convenient 20-storey towers on which to mount your antenna. The US's low population density, which you would have thought would make massive unregulated parties in remote locations easy to execute, makes pirate radio broadcasting uneconomical and unviable. Again, one could draw interesting comparisons to the communities based around local BBSes and how that changed with the spread of internet access.
E.g. they largely got rid of the infamous "scooter kickdrum" (aka "poland kick") that was the hallmark of the 90s standard template.
Still I agree. It's often a little embarrassing when americans suggest electronic music these days (for us euros that is - we should really pay more attention to what material we leak overseas...).
For working there is nothing better than repeating, simple melodies and patterns. What I consider to be a good song is something that you can work along with and not even notice it. This can be classical (Arvo Part, Philip Glass), but I often find that electronical music with a baseline beat is more mellow and fluid.
Here are my recommendations (some really good stuff): http://soundcloud.com/juliengray/julien-gray-gondwana-extend... http://soundcloud.com/monca/djuma-soundsystem-les-djinns
That said, based on what you've linked, have you checked out the DATAMIX podcasts by Designer Drugs? I loves 'em.
http://soundcloud.com/designerdrugsmusic/sets/datamix-mixtap...
#12 is a good place to start. And #04.
If you're looking for similar electronic music sets, here are a couple I've been digging lately:
Kaskade's set from Coachella, soundboard recording. http://www.themusicninja.com/live-set-full-kaskade-coachella...
Porter Robinson's BBC Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/porter-robinson-essential-m...
Knife Party's BBC Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/knife-party-essential-mix-l...
Luvstep 2.5 (There are several other mixes in this series, though this one is my favorite) - http://soundcloud.com/dirtysouthjoe/luvstep-2-5
Straight Bass to the Dome - Coletrain http://soundcloud.com/cberra88/straight-bass-to-the-dome
Flux Pavilion’s BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/flux-pavilion-essential-mix... | http://soundcloud.com/qrip/flux-pavilion-essential-mix
Somejerk's Moombahton over Miami VI live mix - http://soundcloud.com/somejerk/moombahton-over-miami-vi-some... (this might make you run/code funny... try it while doing Zumba?)
The Island Pt. II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBIYl88Zwyc Witchcraft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AooMCiV2eb4
Their other albums, In Silico (Showdown, the Temptest) and Hold Your Colour (Slam, Blood Sugar) are also fantastic. My favorite band, personally.
Milkman and Super Mash Bros is good too but I just don't get the same feel.
If you're looking for a full-album experience, check out the Kleptones. Here's an awesome HTML5 visualization of their album A Night at the Hip Hopera: http://mashupbreakdown.com/nhh
And, of course, Girl Talk
http://open.spotify.com/user/czstrong/playlist/2Vw6VBC3BDKGc...
For more chilled stuff, Bonobo and DJ Krush.
http://www.mixcloud.com/alec_empire/alec-empire-atari-teenag...
It also helps you run a 5K faster than you might have originally imagined :)
Anyone who likes remixes/house/dubstep I'd encourage you check it out! The spring break mix is an hour long and it's full of goodies.
http://soundcloud.com/kapslap/kap-slap-spring-break-mix
p.s. I'm only evangelizing this stuff so much because honestly if I set out to run 10k I'll listen to this and it will help me get there more than anything else. Or if I wanna kill a new comp or a handful of bugs, [PLAY] and it sucks me in like a vortex.