skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Growing up in the Eighties, you couldn’t help but be touched in some way by the birth of dance music. Chart hits by the likes of Black Box, S’Express and M.A.R.R.S. are probably responsible for many a current dance music producer discovering the genre. As a listener, I’m no different. Those songs paved the way for me getting into the likes of The KLF and Moby in the early nineties, and my deep passion for more esoteric techno and electronica which really started in earnest with Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman.
Between 1994 and 1998 I really immersed myself in techno and all its spin off genres, accumulating a collection of albums, 12” singles and mixtapes which has lain dormant for over a decade. Not being the most gregarious person, I never really went to clubs, at least not the types of places that would play the stuff I wanted to hear, and instead just listened at home intently.
Over the weekend, perusing the contents of my iTunes shopping basket I noticed a couple of Underworld mixes of Spooky’s ‘Schmoo’ which I’d tried to track down back in the day to no avail. Listening to those two Underworld remixes this past week – and the intriguing new Toykult album a week or so ago – has once again encouraged me to listen to whatever dance music I’ve had lying around in my iPod and I’m even contemplating heading loftward to dig out more old CDs.
So I’ve found myself trawling through my Orbital singles collection, reminiscing about how good songs like ‘Halcyon and ‘Sunday’ are; listening to Plastikman’s edgy minimalist techno on Musik (the track ‘Marbles’ is ten minutes of spiky acidity) and delving into stuff salvaged from a couple of old compilations – The Science Behind The Circle and The Serious Road Trip. Artists as diverse as David Holmes, Laurent Garnier, Egebamyasi, Higher Intelligence Agency, Loop Guru and Andrew Weatherall have graced my eardrums, bringing with them a range of genres from urgent acid house through to chilled-out sounds incorporating Indian samples and percussion.
Feeling that warm and slightly fuzzy feeling of rediscovering something long forgotten, I even went out and bought Mixmag. Mixmag seems to be the only surviving dance music magazine; my old favourite, Muzik, seems to have bitten the dust many years ago. What surprised me the most was that it really hasn’t changed at all.
Sure, there seem to be less proliferation of genres as things like jungle and garage have moved out of favour, but essentially the key cornerstones of club music – techno, electro, chill-out / ambient and house – are all there. And modern dance music doesn’t sound that dissimilar to how it did when I was an avid listener, as evidenced by the eleven free tracks I downloaded from the Mixmag website (the key track of which was Rex The Dog‘s Yazoo-sampling ‘Bubblicious‘). About the only thing different from when I bought dance music magazines was a proliferation of pictures of half-dressed, sweaty girls in clubs and a rather odd – and unnecessary – fashion section.
I find dance music really hard to write about hence why I haven’t really focussed this week on any particular artists or tracks. My wife says this is because it all sounds the same, which I totally disagree with. This week I feel like I’ve resolved my issues with dance music and I expect I will be listening to much more over the next few weeks. Right now, after a week of largely instrumental music, I think it’s high time I listened to some singing again.
Back when I was making music, I adopted the moniker Scanlines and recorded several tracks that had a techno vibe. Among the last tracks I ever recorded was this one. It’s sat on my hard-drive since about 2001 and no-one’s ever heard it before. Enjoy.
Download : Scanlines 'Polarity Flicker' / .mp3 / 5.1mb
‘You’ll love this,’ said my father, handing over a CD of At The Foot Of The Mountain by Eighties comeback kids a-ha. I looked at the front cover and thought to myself how odd it was to be receiving music recommendations from my parents. ‘It’s like Depeche Mode,’ he added. Though sceptical I thought I’d listen to it, you know, be charitable, and write here scathingly about how unbelievably naff it was and add it to the blogosphere.
Unfortunately, I can’t do that, much as I’d like to. Okay, so it’s not all to my taste – and some of the songs veer into Take That-style pompous balladry, while Morten Harket’s lyrics are occasionally horribly twee – but my dad was right in places about the Depeche similarities. More specifically, the 1981, Speak & Spell, Vince Clarke-era synth pop sound best evidenced on the track ‘Riding The Crest‘. So overall, I was pleasantly surprised, however, if you want a genuine modern take on the 1981 sound – as deployed on Soft Cell‘s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Human League’s Dare and the aforementioned Mode LP – you are advised to check out Vic Twenty’s excellent Electrostalinist, described by Daniel Miller (producer of Speak & Spell and founder of Mute Records) as ‘too 1981’. And he’d know. (My interview with Adrian Morris of Vic Twenty is available here).
Elsewhere this past week I’ve been listening to In Sides by Orbital, the fourth album from the Hartnoll brothers. I’ve probably listened to it more in the past week than I have since it came out in 1996, as my cumbersome triple vinyl edition has been languishing in a record bag since pretty much the week it was released. Though not as good as their second album (colloquially known as The Brown Album), it’s a definite improvement on their third (Snivilisation), being six tracks of decent but not self-indulgent electronica.
The 7” box this week turned up something that I’d never listened to before, the single ‘Less Of Me’ from Guildford band Fourth Quartet, now sadly defunct. Released in 1998, it’s lo-fi post-rock with a slight tilt toward Radiohead introspection. Highlighting its indie credentials, the single comes in a handmade, stapled sleeve. They went on to record one album, which after finally listening to this after owning it for 11 years, I might attempt to track down.
Also defunct are the band Action Plan, who supported Razorlight and who had the potential to make it big; two singles in and the dream abruptly ended, leaving a few concert appearances and a smattering of recorded songs as their only legacy. After seeing them at The Garage – my favourite London venue by far – I downloaded their online demo, which was fantastic. Very Pixies-esque and reminiscent of Mute band Foil (also, it would appear, lost for good).
Other stuff in the eardrums this week includes a bunch of songs downloaded legitimately – the upbeat Low-life remix of Moby’s ‘Mistake’ being one (download it here), a new track by David Byrne and Dirty Projectors (get it here) being another – the debut single ‘Fake Blues’ by excellent New Jersey band Real Estate (some free demos, including an early version of the single are available at Stereogum), and the breakthrough album Sally Can’t Dance by Lou Reed.
