when did IDM become to dance what undie is to hip hop?

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Tim makes a good point with the idea that in some ways IDM and dance are closer... I remember reading that IDM started to splinter from techno way back when there would be ambient tracks on dance 12"s and people started to think "hey why not just put this on an album instead"? A lot of laberls like Kompakt are now putting a lot more ambient music on their 12"s again...

and I think that Reynolds may have already provided the answer to this problem didnt he? his biggest frustration it seems (when he was more of an evangelist, iguess), was that people were unwilling to accept dance on its own terms... the music itself doesnt really matter as much as whether it is received as "proper music, not dance shite for the proles", ya know? I mean, really, the key to Reynolds and maybe even to all of dance is the quote he put in the intro from Hoskyns (sp?) about losing "knowingness". wasnt the problem with indie always less the music itself, but more how it became so unimportant in the face of snobbery, tribalism, and the search for obscure knowledge for the sake of the egos of the searchers? I mean, superchunk is just a pop-rock band until the rhetoric is added...

my stake in all of this is really similar to what has been mentioned upthread by others... what Ronan said about "an electronic style which runs contrary to almost all the things I enjoy about the electronic music I like, while at the same time enjoys more critical acclaim and becomes the default option, an easier option for people"...
Ronan what do you think of the tapes? ;-)

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 01:59 (twenty years ago) link

Aaron's second paragraph seems to nail exactly what I was trying to get at, "dance on its own terms". Yes!


Aaron I will mail you this afternoon about the tapes.

Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 09:27 (twenty years ago) link

"I wonder whether it will all dissolve in favor of some better, purer pop sounds anytime soon."

i dunno,i think that,whatever you think of it,and i love some of it and some of it just wrecks my head,but surely electroclash was dance music dissolving in favour of pure pop?

robin (robin), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 13:55 (twenty years ago) link

Ronan no rush just kidding around a bit, really ;-)

Can I add that maybe what worries me is that, well, the thing that always got be about rock was, at its worst, bad rock criticism seems to think that any schmuck playing a guitar is automatically more real, intelligent, authentic, etc., than anybody playing anything else (ie worst folk artist better than best rapper), and I worry that IDM/indieelectronic could repeat that scenario, simply replacing the guitar for laptop... and I think a lot of this has to do with being in America, where the scene is small and vulnerable and could easily fall prey... of course, maybe I am just feeling paranoid this morning ;-)

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:12 (twenty years ago) link

I mean, superchunk is just a pop-rock band until the rhetoric is added...

But even Chuck Berry, or the Blackhearts, had a rhetoric, even though maybe it's faded and hard to remember now. Folk singers in the 50s and 60s had one too, among other things in their implicit rejection of the things Chuck Berry could use to make you move. But rhetoric isn't added, like you'd add milk to coffee, it might have been what made them form the band in the first place. I don't see anything wrong with having a rhetoric.

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:30 (twenty years ago) link

what i meant about microhouse being a move away from dance music is that,while i know you can dance to it,in my experience people don't that much,it is played in the morning when there's not many people dancing,or often mixed with stuff that's towards the glitch end of things...
i think a lot of the time people listen to it not as dance music (and this is people who do like dance music)but in the same way you'd listen to glitch or idm-sitting around,with possibly a few people dancing
again a generalisation,but it certainly doesn't seem to be "used" as dance music as much as techno or house

robin (robin), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:38 (twenty years ago) link

rhetoric = probbly a better word for the various things the word "influence" is usually used at

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:39 (twenty years ago) link

I guess "snobbery" isn't everyone's non-dairy creamer. But I've got no beef with "tribalism" "or quest for obscure knowledge" necessarily. Though actually, experimentalist microhorse is more anti-tribalist than, as Tim says, most other dance music from the past 7 years, in that it doesn't pummel its genre identifiers into the ground, set its boundaries, or work exclusively within itself. (There is a boutique aspect to a lot of these releases from BPitch and Kompakt and Italic, their album art and the intimate kinds of sounds you hear on the records speaks a kind of luxurious hand-polished language. I'm not so into that rhetoric but a lot of people get off on that.)

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:50 (twenty years ago) link

Tracer is right in his original critique, and maybe I should rephrase... when I figure out what I meant ;-).. but I know I was thinking more of criticism and not the beliefs or intentions of the band, which really are very seperate... I mean, whatever we may think of the White Stripes' music, we can probably agree that there is a certain disconnect between the band and what they doa dn how they are received. the band, well, they put lots and lots of effort into cultivating an very specific image, and many seem to buy it as "authentic"... I think maybe this really revolves around the question of "does making a certain specific artistic choice automatically indict that or those which you did not chose?" What I mean to say is that making undanceable electronic music can either be intrinsically an anti-dance statement, or it could just be music with rhetoric added later, I guess. Does that make sense?

I mean, is art creation or filtration? Does it gain its power from what is made, or from what is left out?

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:52 (twenty years ago) link


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