I think what Pinch is saying is what I was saying not too long ago myself - before I discovered deep tech, I basically thought that house taking over the UK dance scene was a bad thing, resulting in a lot of nights where I wondered if I'd ever be excited about raving again. Obviously UK Funky wasn't like this but after funky died we were seemingly left with a lot of deep house knock-offs from ex-dubstep producers. I was thinking that the 'solution' would be for a scene to develop without the 4x4 beat I'd grown so bored of - some sort of radical new rhythm. I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of ppl jumped on board the Juke/Footwork express - leaving aside how great the music often is, it was the radicalism of it which people were really yearning for.
Again, this is why deep tech got a bit of a lukewarm reception from people like me at first. Cos it sounded like ''just house''. Actually, although I'm sure you can find plenty of old house tunes which wouldn't sound out of place at Frequency e.g., I do think deep tech is something definitely of its time/place. Certainly tunes like ''Know My Name'' and ''Made U Look'' to name just two are far from being ''just house''. Ultimately I don't think radicalism can be forced, or at least it usually isn't. It comes organically out of the rave scene, out of the way people dance to things. To me this self-consciously 'experimental' instrumental grime/130 stuff that was recently being heralded as the next step forward (while ironically being entirely comprised of rehashed ideas from Eski/Grime given a bit of avant-garde polishing) was just too self-consciously directed towards a cognoscenti audience. It clears dancefloors. This is seen as a badge of honour in some respects cos it just shows that its ahead of the curve or whatever, but I really wonder if that is the case or if its just that these tunes are fundamentally not that good. Well, maybe I'm being unfair or that's just not my thing or whatever, but looking at the dancefloor at Frequency I know where I'd rather be.