Dance Music 101

Okay, off the back of this thread and a general desire to get up to speed on classifications for the sake of curiosity and for research avenues, i’d like some curated input on the seminal sub-genres of Dance Music, and if it’s not too wide a net, Electronic Music. To keep it narrower, there’s no need to venture into the experimental realms as this is its own genre i guess.

I have a broad taste in sound, but i always come to ‘dance’ music from other directions and influences and genres, so the idea of classification is not obvious to me. In a candid confession mode I can honestly say that i haven’t a clue about most of it, particularly the pioneering major genres and obviously the sub-genres. Patronise away and indulge the joy of sharing seminal works (preferable to favourites of a genre, although something referential and very typical will do the job too).

I probably can’t contribute much to the thread, but i’ll raid my vaults for stuff i have that i’d fail to classify and ask for insights into the lineage. Whilst i do know what hip-hop, Trip-Hop is or drum and bass e.g. (the easy ones) it could be said that others in the community of differing years or cultural backgrounds might not, so knock out any you see fit.

One request, one (sub)genre per post and please start it with a big bold heading, thusly …

HOUSE

I kid you not, if my life depended on it ,i probably would fail on all but an obvious multiple choice here ! So what’s house, why house, (wtf is Garage?) i should’ve gone to google at this point, but where’s the fun in that. This is community curation :slight_smile: (i’m fairly confident i couldn’t give a flying fuck about happy-house, just a hunch, let’s skip that, though it could be fun to know)

ps: Something like Autechre LP5 is one of my all time favourite top 5/10 albums, i’m putting that in Electronica/Experimental and possibly beyond the groove based remit, though it ticks all sonic boxes for me

Can anyone help me like dub step, i’m all for a bit of dub-techno, at least what i think of as dub techno ! What’s dark techno

I won’t like anything that has folks waving their arms in the air with whistles and glowsticks

Again, help me get ACID, i seriously hate squelchy resonant filters, the Korg MS filters are the first i could happily crank the res up on

E.g. I love this track, and all the Jimi Tenor stuff with this vibe , what is its dubby badge specifically, maybe not a great example of the areas where i’m missing even ballpark understanding

okay, one of my favourite tracks, makes me dance, makes the audience dance, lots of synth action, but is it dance ? can it be dance/electronica with too many regular instruments, presumably not, is it too loose to be a genre as such, therefore just dance(y) albeit i get the obvious post-punk and new wave influences, i was there man :wink: (well i was soaking it up whilst i was getting off on Eno, Berlin Bowie, Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra and european/scandinavian jazz and the likes)

Try to keep the posts as much like a Wire(magazine) Primer or show the connections that make similar BBC documentaries fascinating, i’m all ears, get those links (sound text vid) and bpm rules up. I’m fairly confident i won’t have heard of half the genres tbh …


Here’s a cheeky (zero electronics, ineligible?) indulgent one then from my formative years

DISCOTRONICS

i’m joking :wink:

So proper genres … tia

Acid is such a misused tag I think, it didn’t help with the UK media labeling the likes of Technotronic and Black Box as acid house!

Then there is acid techno, which is probably the stuff you don’t like? Often quite minimal faster and harder sounding, but also can be slower and more trippy.

A good example of acid house with vocals would be this track

Or this

But then there is also stuff like this

And of course acid trance like this

Which no doubt was heavily influenced by this

Then everyone started turning everything up, simplyfying and shortening the 303 lines, turning up the tempo, turning everything up again, simplifying again, then finally running the whole mix through the loud machine, and we have acid techno :slight_smile:

House generally started from a combination of early 80’s electro/funk and disco, until around the mid 80s it became a genre in its own right.
This was an early (and later much sampled) influence on house music.

Early seminal Chicago cuts like this

Or this

Which later would be called deep house

Then New York producers started doing stuff like this shortly after

or this

BTW There is always this for your edification and edumacation :slight_smile:
http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

Well worth an hour or so listening to all the clips on that link.

thanks daren, got through the first half, some subtle differences to my ear - not really a fan of the 303 sounding like that, though i adore what i can magic from a monotribe - anyway must fess acid is not gonna change my world (not limited to the last track which was a difficult listen), though i do like what massey did for bjork and i own this … (different direction, love Hassell)

looking fwd to scanning the house posts, cheers

Ha! I was going to post Flow Coma.
Still some contemporary people churning out solid acid, but the style hasn’t changed much in 25+ years.
Maybe a little more subtle.
Like:


If the endless repetitiveness of some acid gets to you, you could always try some of AFXs acid stuff.
Not really sure how you would categorise it. He’s kind of in a class of his own. Definitely not repetitive though.

Yeah acid is a bit marmite, and it does encompass a wider selection than just those I listed above, heh that last track was one of mine, but don’t sweat I don’t like it either :slight_smile:

Here is one of my less repetitive acid jams

Also recommend you to check out Andreas Tilliander aka TM404, this set is one of my faves

Yeah love a bit of Aphex acid miself, I think that is where he really shines.

so where was acid house created, i know the new order story on how it was imported in the uk. Was itin Chicago?

Yeah, chicago.
Many people credit this release (at least, as far as the name acid. Not sure if it was the first record to feature an abused 303).

Awesome faux pas :wink: yeah, as stated previously it’s the sound i don’t much like. Blimey, synthesis nerd doesn’t go for squelchy TB sound nor aphex for that matter tbh though i’d stuck with squarepusher for a few releases back in the day. I’ll not loose sleep over not joining the acid techno camp, especially as i can fess to liking your SL entry and marvelling at your druma creation chops and pro modding skills. Anyway i’ve had a bit of fun with rebirth, but only with the res down :wink:
Yet to listen to the other stuff properly, but it’s fine for me to not be so fluent on the acid sub-genres as the main ingredients are so off my radar and it’s also one i could probably pinpoint at the top level. For me chicago is(was) all about post-rock, http://youtu.be/cHCNeDdSQEU and that whole scene a while back

any post-rock acid band? (don’t say Big Black please : )))

Ok - I’m gonna stick my neck out (in the presence of actual acid producers, Darren :slight_smile: ) and widen the classification of ‘Acid’ - this was a MASSIVE hit in the UK Acid scene and has zero 303 present:

I would rather classify acid as ‘music for dancing to whilst out off your bonce on LSD’.

‘Acid’ is of course a common street name for LSD, this not the 303 bassline names the genre.

Broadly speaking, in the mid to late 80’s, early 90’s UK dance scene, Acid music was aligned with LSD and House with Ecstacy with lots of crossover of course, cos everyone was wasted and didnt care about ‘genres’.

Genre definitions that rely on production technology are tentative to borderline coincidental IMO - the average punter and NME/Sun journalist had no clue what a 303 was.

At the same time (mid/late 80’s, early 90’s) in the acid scene, the influence, diversity and importance of Balearic should not be forgotten - if you can stand it for an hour listen to this:

If you cant stand it - just check the classic album listing for a sense of the musical diversity at play:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Balearic-Beats-Vol-1-The-Album/release/5870

Again, broadly speaking, I’d look at House, Techno and Acid House more in terms of ‘tone’ - with House roughly colouring the lighter brighter shades (even in minor keys, relative to its peers) and Techno, Acid tending towards the dark side.

‘Rock to the Beat’ is ‘acid’ because of the spooky, sexy nihilistic vocal - the beats and high string reminding us that it’s derived from ‘House’.

TLDR: I’m saying that the ‘acid’ squelchy bassline associated with the 303 didn’t name the genre or define the style - the association probably came later and stuck.

Is this thread “origin of the species”?
While i love the 303, acid is a feel. Maybe defined by the repititious bassline?
Listen to “jesus loves the acid”. Absolute cracker, no 303.

Big fan on how this is turning out.
Everyone has an opinion, as usual

being too “young”, were the balearic, acid and techno identified scenes at the time? I have this idealized vision of original rave as a holistic club cultural shift. Like sexual liberation touched every class/gender/sexuality.

+1 for Jesus loves the Acid - absolute stormer in its day. Let’s not forget this little 303 filled beauty that also has the dark vocals and an obvious “Electro” vibe:

Think we’ve done Acid to death - anyone brave enough to tackle the Jungle/DnB/2-step lineage for the OP? Good luck with that :slight_smile:

Rozzbud - your vision is half correct - in my experience in the UK anyway there was definitely a sense of “one big scene” initially, but this was partly because we were witnessing the birth of what would later become distinct genres. In 1988 I couldn’t have told you the difference between House and Techno because a) I didn’t care b) I was off my face dancing to whatever. And in this regard I think I speak for the majority of “punters” at the time.

Gradually of course you came to recognise certain sounds that you liked - for many this was often influenced by the all important DJ’s and record labels (“Metroplex” = Techno or “Trax” = House or whatever), you’d be down the record shop trying to buy the 12 inch of some tune you heard at the weekend - so for some trainspotters like me, genre ideas would start to form around what certain labels were putting out.

In the club culture itself, you would start to see distinct “nights” advertised, or there’d just be various “rooms” - or rave flyers would have genre labels sometimes, but the main draw on the rave flyers would always be the DJ names - you’d know what type of sound to expect from the names, and the sound would often cross genre boundaries unless the DJ was known for just playing a certain thing - just as it is now I suppose, haven’t been to a club since the tunes started getting sponsored by Pepsi :slight_smile:

I read or heard recently that the whole Jungle and DnB genre is based on the “Amen Break”. Google that and you get plenty of hits. Even The Economist gets in on the act.

There’s even a fund to help the Winstons get some payment for it (the drummer is dead now unfortunately).

I lived in a quiet town and experienced it from a distance through the media really, but I remember it fondly. It just broke all the rules. Records got to number one in the charts without ever being played on the radio. And records like Pump up the Volume by M|A|R|R|S (which also got to number one in the UK) not only had no discernible melody, but also used bits nicked from other people’s records extensively. I loved how in your face it was.

When you went to a nightclub in 1986, the DJ would behave like a radio DJ, taking requests and talking between records. By 1988 he would be silent all night and only play the records he wanted to.

By 1990 it had got all spiritual, with bands like The Beloved, Shamen and Enigma emerging. They used religious themes and hippy vibes.

Then the corporates go into it, and “going clubbing” became a pastime, and it’s all a bit tired nowadays really.

would be good to have german elektronauts too talking about the emergence of clubs, techno and subgenres.

Of course, where would we be without the german influence?

This thread is really playing on my mind.
In the terms of, what constitutes dance music?
Should this be another thread?
Avantronica, i think layed out that this should be about the determining attributes that define subgenres. Thats cool but,
Where did it all begin?
Was it the evolution from disco? I still love disco and funk. Just coolness through and through.
People will probably shout me down but, in my mind, it all crossed over with georgio moroder when he did “i feel love”.
Was this the defining moment of the birth of the acid bassline? - obviously no 303.
Phuture is credited with that honour and on one hand i agree.

Is dance music, in our time, defined by the use of machines?
Is that what its all about?
When i was young, i used to go out to “discos” and they played rock, and people danced.
This however was NOT dance music (i hated it).

If you watch old clips of “soul train” they were dancing their arses off, yet, not dance music.

There are a million thoughts running through my head about this.
I think im confusing myself…
I do that sometimes…

Anyway, back to our usual program…

Dnb born from house to breakbeat house to jungle to drum and bass to techstep, darkstep to dubstep. Am i right?
:confused: