convince me that House isn't dead.

Josh One-Contemplation

Underground Resistance-Transition

But I bet you'll hear these and still say house is going the direction of the superclub anyway, so I don't really know what to tell you, except that I disagree.

But indeed as Ronan says, if you have slowly grown to dislike the genre for whatever reason, no great tracks will convince you otherwise.

Another case like this: trance. While loads of people quickly became bored with it and considered it "dead" quickly after the 1998 revival(which I don't really condemn - especially for the non-fanatic it's easy to become bored with it), it is still going strong. Every year I expect to see the creative end of the genre (encouraged by magazines who are in their sixth? seventh? year of proclaiming that "trance is dead, long live genre X"), but the amount of quality tunes has not decreased and loads of solid and even refreshing tunes are still being made and excellent new producers emerge every year.

It's the same with house, once in a while I get bored with it, but when I look back a year later the genre is still producing its share of classic tunes, even chart hits. Its worldwide foundation has become so solid that it can't really "die" within the time frame of a few months/years (like more locally based genres like goa, jungle, uk garage or gabber/hardcore did). House will surely die but the decline will be more gradual and will take more time than everybody currently assumes, I predict.

Shed My Skin (esp the Peter Heller mix) really stood out for me among loads of current house tracks that are good, but mostly just solid dancefloor grooves and little else. And I just love the video with the old man dancing on the beach...

I want this on a tee-shirt NOW.

Archigram-Carnival*

Thomas Vs Filterheadz-(don't know the title of this record, it may be called "Haka" but I'll find out for sure)*

Harry Choo Choo Romero-Keep Your Head Up

Medicine8-Ape Can't Kill Ape

Golden Boy featuring Miss Kittin-Rippin Kittin (X-Press 2 Remix)

Mutiny-Ya'Self

Who Da Funk-Sting Me Red

Finger Fest Inc-Auto Porno

Harry Choo Choo Romero-Corruption

Felix Da Housecat-Silver Screen Shower Scene (Les Rhythmes Digitales Thin White Duke Remix)*

Jolly Music-Jolly Radio (Agent Sumo Remix)

Agent Sumo-Why (Sumo Bass Remix)*

I could go on and on and on if I bothered to look at my blog a bit or ask what I'm forgetting. I put a star beside ones I think are shithot

blueski - maybe that's because you're not 'in to it' and i don't mean that facetiously.

It is possible to like both, but we have to accept there are loads of dance fans who will never know the latest club hits unless they enter the charts.

(Also I've never bought this notion of things not working well at home, I realise things have their context but I decide what I want to listen to because of what I feel like listening to, not what I want to feel like)

but how easy is it to know all the tracks being played out anyway?

this thing about albumdance is puzzling also. it might be that i've never really thought of chemical brothers as dance music (i suppose underworld and orbital its easier to see, but i dont really get to hear that kind of stuff very often - although i did buy a couple of orbital records recently, and liked them too!)

And if that's rockist, well so be it. It's no different to me than the difference between listening to a Motorhead live recording and a Love Spirals Downwards album. It's very possible to like both, but it does take a totally different approach. And these bands do attract a significantly different audience.

And my 2 cents re: Chemical Brothers: I was always puzzled why they were so popular/critically acclaimed with the debut (which I still think is boring as hell), but a few years later "Block Rocking Beats" and "Hey Boy Hey Girl" did win me over.

Hey, I can go with that comparison. :-)

This is sort of the ultimate in the current mainstream club style, isn't it? The hallucinatory intensity of the bittersweet central riff is straight from French house, but the spangly pristineness of it all is pure tech-house, while at the same time its going for X-Press 2 sized anthem-level ubiquity. Really though what this reminds me of most forcefully are the really old ethereal-balearic masterpieces - Orbital's "Lush", "Papua New Guinea" etc.

hey, i've been trying to tell everyone about that tune for months, too.

*sulks*

Originally, it was a bootleg of the Black Legend track and the Madonna acappella (credited to "Erdbeerlimes" sometimes, if you search for "Madonna vs Black Legend" you can find it quite easily on any P2P network). It was a huge success on the floors in 2001, so a couple of clever producers (I'm too lazy to find out who) hired some girl to sing new vocal track, and sequenced a new instrumental underneath that was as close to the BL groove as they gould get without getting sued. Voila, Madhouse.

They did the exact same thing with the follow-up Holiday BTW.

Apparently the UK didn't catch the Ameno (Mauro Picotto ripoff with Era vocals) and Boombastic (Shaggy through the Eurodance mincer) Quicksilver singles last year?

Yeah when it kicks in is amazing, the greatest whoooooooooooosh noise in house music in years, the whole song seems to just burst out of the speakers and pour all over the room. Wait till you hear it in a club Tim, it's a great record on any soundsystem but it really really really seems to bounce on proper club speakers.

"At Night" is certainly the poppier of the too, I'm not sure even the vocal remix of Take Me With You really works as a pop track, I think it's a track where you need to have a love for the sonics involved, and the vocal is simply riding in that vehicle really, I can imagine people hearing it on the radio and just not getting it, I can imagine if I heard the vocal version first it could easily slip by.

This is exactly what I thought actually. The Roachford vocal is fine and doesn't harm the song, but there's no reason to listen to it when you can just go straight to the longer instrumental version.

I think Carnival is a bit like it actually Siegbran.

I have to say I love the vocal remix, but the instrumental already was one of my favourites this year when I first heard it.

"otherwise" seems to be doing fine, but deep, french and latin look a bit tired these days

The vocal version might end up on Total 6.

Biz, everyone calls Isolee house.