SIMON REYNOLDS DISCUSSES CURRENT DANCE MUSIC IN TODAY'S NY TIMES

Yeah, that is a shame. Even with stuff like Thomas P. Heckmann (striking similarities to Nitzer Ebb) and Ritchie Hawtin's Nitzer Ebb sampling on "Decks, EFX, and 909" sitting RIGHT THERE.

but ronan, one of the big (if not *the* biggest) reasons that electronic music hasn't grown its U.S. audience in the past eight years is because hip-hop did, and it did so using some of the same sounds and textures as electronic music. It also has loads of other advantages over electronic dance music: it's homegrown, sonically it was sprouting in 97 whereas dance's culture of progression was sort of grinding to a halt, its club nights here aren't as likely to be age-restricted to 21+, to white suburban teens it may have the 'outlaw' factor mentioned by SR that is now absent from electronic dance music, it doesn't foresake the things that Americans already expect from pop music and pop stars, etc.

If one were to write an article like this - why is dance music not as popular in the U.S. now as it was in 97? - the longheld setbacks are still in place (geography, rural/urban divide, homophobia, discophobia, xenophobia, the labels' relucatance to spend money on dance music after overspending in the disco years, slower absorption of music trends here v., say, london, media bias, lack of names and faces to promote, etc.) and potentially not as central to the piece, but I think the biggest new reason is the emergence of hip-hop and its usurption of U.S. pop charts in part via electronic production + the emergence of nu-metal on modern rock radio with some of the same. the culture of dance music as you're referring to it was never mainstream in the U.S. as a whole, and the sounds of dance music are, to many American kids, made redundant by rock and rap artists who, in addition to up-to-the-minute sonics, also provide your typical pop thrills. It would be a bit shocking to not mention this. (That said, SR does mention it, so...I don't see why everyone is going around and around about it)

PLUR, dude, is a thread-killer.

Which seems to be the norm at the goth/industrial (=1995 trance with scary vocals on top) clubs these days.

(and yes, I know about downloading. That's how I, a guy who lives in the suburbs, keep up with dance music.)

Really? This probably depends on which crowd you move with because from day 1 this has been acknowledged as a big influence on house/rave/whatever. This was on a personal level where those who dived into rave circa 91 were all metalheads en EBM fans (and it was SR actually who made this connection early on, somewhere at the end of Blissed Out innit?) And the last few years it has been undeniable (again see DJ Hell's EBM mixcd or any Black Strobe rmx or Tiefschwarz DJ-set.)

this is no doubt heresy but I always liked the way Revolting Cocks sampled Phuture's 'The Creator' more that the original. :)

Brian Lustmord made up a Wax Trax! parody band called T.G.T. (The Genetic Terrorists) that actually got signed to Wax Trax! They got a couple of singles and an album out of it. The video to "Revo" is phenomenally stupid and hilarious. Best label signing story ever.

BTW I don't know whether we should be talking about techno and house being 'the European idea of dance music'. It probably owes more to Chicago. In turn, Chicago owes house to US disco. House could even be electronic disco, no more and no less.

Periodically someone comes in and points out that all music people dance to is dance music. This is a point worth reiterating again and again. The kind of music that isn't hitting in the USA any more is just one particular kind of dance music - UK post rave electronic dance music - a strain within a strain within a genre. It's a big world, the world of electronic dance music; and the charts are currently full of different strains of the stuff. The majority of the top 40 at any time is 80% electronic music which people dance to. For better or worse, the battle has been won.

Front 242 strongly influenced the darkwave/EBM-trance style which still remains popular, much of which is quite embarassing. So do dance music writers distance themselves from Industrial moreso because they don't like what it's become today, as opposed to feeling guilty about liking Front 242 in 1987?

I know I'm generalizing horribly about the "most critics in the US and the UK" thing, but it's the only rational explanation for the absence of perspective of dance music in the 80s and before in print today, aside from what critics have learned from interviewing today's artists, many of which were into dance music early on, or what have you.

The problem is that the public (here at least in Belgium) equated New Beat with the Confettis. It was dark and sexy but it was also not to be taken seriously at all.

(i wouldnt want to use rave as a descriptive here either, as i consider it a 87-94 term, before the formalization of club culture - though that is uk specific)

is dance/house/techno/rave/trance (please, people you know what im talking about, dont semantic me again!) as popular in australia as before? the impression i get is that there hasnt been an equivalent decline in australia as in uk/us

um where is this happening?

Last time i was in Vietnam, I went to a club that was playing like 100% new beat type stuff that I'd never heard before and assume was homegrown...

Japan has millions of its own weird microgenres, like that stuff that sounds like happy hardcore with japa-rapping over the top.

Philippines, Malaysia and Shanghai are all about hip hop, following the US lead.

But, apparently, head out to Chengdu or any other place out in the sticks in china and its hard house all the way. As is the case in Indonesia.

No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell...

So dance music/superclub culture was totally dominant throughout the 90s, right up until the big chart trance boom in 1999 (which might, in retrospect, have been partly responsibly for its commercial demise). Hardcore, house, drum and bass, trance and then garage were all big things (even if dnb never really spawned any big chart hits, if you exclude Incredible), you heard them booming out of car stereos across London. In 2004 you just don't, you either hear hip-hop, dancehall or grime in their place. To an extent the rise in hip-hop's popularity here has coincided with its incorporation of some of the sonic elements of dance music, and its now squeezing out dance music itself as a commercial force.

Why has no one mentioned geography here? The relative proximity of British cities to one another was a big factor. People used to drive from Bristol to Manchester to go clubbing for a weekend, or out into the country for a rave, or whatever, or out of the country and into London to go dancing. As more people did that, the more the local provincial clubs opened up their own house or dnb nights.

but it's an interesting parallel - that US rap took a while to peak here just as dance music (as WE know it) has in the States

erm once again we're back to the same pig headedness.

saying "dance music did take off in the US, hiphop IS dance music" is nothing more than an obstacle which prevents discussion of the subject of the above article and of electronic dance music.

the "us equivalent of dance music" is never going to be similar to the European one, it's not enough to simply say "it's all electronic dance music", is ambition so meagre in that respect that we actually consider it all part of the exact same scene and about the same vibe.

hiphop and house/techno are so different, in so many ways, and I maintain that the refusal to even discuss the success or failure of house and techno etc without trying to instantly kill discussion by saying you can dance to anything, that that refusal is telling in itself.

there's an arrogance there.

Where does grime fit in here? Obviously it has little mainstream profile even here yet, Dizzee aside, but its origins are in hip-hop and dancehall as much as they are in garage and jungle.

why did Simon Reynolds not mention Dirty Vegas? ;)

upthread i mentioned Carter having a big hit in the States. this is based on something i read years ago which claimed that 'The Only Living Boy In New Cross' was in the Billboard top 10! but it seems i have my wires crossed...

But that track falls somewhat outside the typical hip-hop boundaries surely, as with 'Hey Ya!'

You're saying Mo & Benoelie started New Beat? Or brought it back with their compilations? I'm confused now. They now play at the Culture Club - or used to, as I don't go there much more. My husband loathes'em. *shrug* Not surprisingly as he sees them in the same style as 2ManyDJs. :-)

I love when this list suddenly starts bickering about what dance music is. Trying so hard to prove Simon R wrong.