It really seems a shame to leave this site with such a negative post, particularly one as reactionary as the one I wrote a few months back. I’ve been digging around in the network of blogs that get aggregated by the Hype Machine and Elbows, and I’ve found a lot of very interesting music. I would say that ratio of good to bad is just the same as in any other genre of dance music at the moment, it all takes a lot of work to sift, no matter what style you feel the most affinity for there is alway significantly more chaff than wheat.
What has been unnerving is that since I’ve abandoned the sphere of what is considered critically defensible dance music is that a lot of the artists that get ignored are very aware of what is going on inside. Dubstep has become a huge influence on indie electrohouse, and there is a sort of hybrid genre emerging. Mostly this is a product of slapping Caspa style wobble over very stiff and loud House drum patterns, along the lines of Crookers Kid Cudi remix from last year. And the group of producers responsible seem to have mostly cut their teeth in DnB, the same Dogs On Acid guys that I used to rail at when I was Mr. Purist Dubstep Head. I’ve grown up a bit, and I definitely would no longer sit on a bus for 24 hours just to meet a dubstep DJ. Mala was nice and all, but I’m significantly more impoverished than I was then.
So off the top of my head I can think of at least 4 or 5 mainstream DnB acts getting into this weird genre that still gets called Electro. There’s Treasure Fingers (Evol Intent), Noisea are recording under the same name, True Pseudo are 2/3 ex DnB, and I’ve got my suspicions about all of the LA guys I like. I’d really be shocked if Le Castle Vania and Computer Club didn’t used to hang out on DOA. Anyways they do bring a slightly higher standard to their productions than say the Bloody Beetroots or Aoki. This is all music that sounds like its stealing riffs from Ratt or Skid Row and playing them threw soft synths, it sounds a little Bobby O to me. Basically the same starting point that MSTRKRFT had, only with less of an actual interest in Disco proper.
Electroclash beefed up and made safely hetero, basically.
But this only makes me want to drag in a bunch of really really gay sounding High NRG to balance things out a bit, and I’ve been toying with stranger ideas. I found myself mixing some Baltimore club with really tracky Disco Edits the other day. I think it was a In Flagranti edit actually, I’ve been liking their stuff a lot. They’ve done some really funny edits of Slade and KISS that got released on RVNG, and their mixes are awesome. They’ve found that perfect sweet spot between muscular boogie and rock with actual swing to it that the Skatt Brothers were exploiting. And Walk The Night was huge at the Warehouse. Anyways In Flagranti, and some of the Swedes have been making some really sleazy stuff. Cosmo Vitelli’s I’m A Cliche label has an artist called Azari on their new comp that is working in this vein as well.
There is a lot of room in this scene for experimentation.
And I’m so fucking bored of Euro Deep House I could scream.
Posted by ecchi 
