Dance Music: Where are things at?

Showing my age here... We used to go weekly to a club in Birmingham called the Base place at a venue called coast to coast. Id roughly say a spell through the very late 80's early 90's. One evening one of the regulars, Simon "bassline" Smith managed mid set to slot in Phil Collins "in the air tonight". You could tell by everyone's face nobody was sure. It was a low ceiling hothouse of a club with very a very heavy sound system ( ears ringing for a few days heavy ) but in the smoke filled strobe lit area "in the air tonight" really worked.. So much so 30+ years later it will pop up in conversation of reminisce.

There have been other instances like Luciano playing big fun at the "old" Ushuaia beach club which seemed to go down quite well with the punters in 2008.

As for the vengaboys being wedged in i can think of that as some sort of social experiment, not unlike some of the clothing Balenciaga has rolled out in recent years, maybe in hand in hand... Of course just my opinion and no offence to anyone out there and each to theirs which is, after all, the beauty of the game.
 
Moondust said:
Showing my age here... We used to go weekly to a club in Birmingham called the Base place at a venue called coast to coast. Id roughly say a spell through the very late 80's early 90's. One evening one of the regulars, Simon "bassline" Smith managed mid set to slot in Phil Collins "in the air tonight". You could tell by everyone's face nobody was sure. It was a low ceiling hothouse of a club with very a very heavy sound system ( ears ringing for a few days heavy ) but in the smoke filled strobe lit area "in the air tonight" really worked.. So much so 30+ years later it will pop up in conversation of reminisce.

There have been other instances like Luciano playing big fun at the "old" Ushuaia beach club which seemed to go down quite well with the punters in 2008.

As for the vengaboys being wedged in i can think of that as some sort of social experiment, not unlike some of the clothing Balenciaga has rolled out in recent years, maybe in hand in hand... Of course just my opinion and no offence to anyone out there and each to theirs which is, after all, the beauty of the game.
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a sunset classic!

*My advice to budding djs is to play whatever you want. There’s no rules. Don’t be intimidated by the rigid genre police
 
Good Intvw here with Simon Dunmore where he discusses the current state of play. He’s certainly not the most charismatic interviewee but he does make a lot of good points about the gradual death of djing as an art, esp the pressure to bang out the hits to get that clip on instagram to maximise followings. (Yes, that cynical..) Also the decline of specialist venues and residencies. And the impatience of newer djs increasingly unwilling to graft like say Honey Dijon.

Listen – DJ History

djhistory.com djhistory.com
 
Johnny Vodka said:
"Interesting" article on current pop music, mentioned here because much of it seems to sample big 90s dance hits. Can honestly say I haven't knowingly heard most of the new tracks mentioned.

www.theguardian.com

‘It’s a risk to put out something completely new’: why pop is so heavily plundering the past

The charts are stuffed with dance-pop songs that brazenly lift from 90s hits. Is this a clever blend of nostalgia and freshness – or a sign the industry has run out of ideas?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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I've heard most on the radio in the car. Almost always stuff that was lowest common denominator even when it was new, but the Robert Miles 'Children' one is sacrelige.
 
tech changed the industry completely. anyone can release anything digital now with minimum effort and cost. Put a telegenic face on the video and bingo, it's a win-win for the marketing men. the kids couldn't care less about tribal allegiances we had and tbh it doesn't really bother me either. the point of the article is I guess to provide middle-aged fckers (the core readership of Guardian Music) with some kind of intelligence about what the yoof are into. Ultimately though, nothing that had any sentimental value in the 90s matters any more because the 90s at one level never really ended - virtually everyone from the era is still going...
 
Or back in the 90s, pop music sampled music from the 70s and 80s. They had videos then too... it's just people actually watched them. As alluded to in the article, I guess a lot of the target audience are exposed to pop music these days through watching Love Island and the like.
 
that is true, a lot of house sampled disco shamelessly. People got away with things a lot more then because it was pre-internet, people didn't have access to as much of the history and there was less exposure to the originals unless you were a real digger. everyone thought massive attack and daft punk were amazingly new at the time but the truth is they were ripping people off all over the place and it only came to light later on. the revival of Kylie and Kate Bush is interesting too - the whole consumption of music has changed. the old rules no longer apply now because as you say, people will randomly find music on streams and binge tv series
 
'new' Beatles track using AI to isolate Lennon's vocal. This track never saw the light of day cos it wasn't er very good.. but the interesting part is the tech. I just think copyright is surely going to collapse if nobody can claim ownership on a simulated voice, and this is going to cause chaos across all of music.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1668526251030487045
 
SOS Sargantana said:
'new' Beatles track using AI to isolate Lennon's vocal. This track never saw the light of day cos it wasn't er very good.. but the interesting part is the tech. I just think copyright is surely going to collapse if nobody can claim ownership on a simulated voice, and this is going to cause chaos across all of music.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1668526251030487045
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Using AI, instead of a real person, you can imitate anyone, you can 'Imagine all the people'! :lol:

(Yes, *TAXI*)
 
None of them actually slagged him off though or even named him. Can't say the same about their followers in the replies and retweets however

Raises the wider question of how much impressionable kids look up to and worship these guys, for the pretty inane career of playing other people's records. I get it. It's aspirational, but they're hardly good role models for the most part and incidents like this prove how quickly a frankly very reasonable observation turns into an online pile-on
 
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People should be free to criticise sets, so long as it doesnt get personal and nasty. If we are saying that every set must be praised then thats a bad world we are slipping into and sometimes artists need that nudge to perform better.

And im sure some will have had a good time watching that cheese...but its the kind of thing youd expect a DJ to play down your local Yates' not a 'serious' festival. Theres a time and place for it.
 
Interesting that he mentions East End Dubs, a guy who has made his career out of making edits of bait pop songs. Don't think he's much better tbh
 
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