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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
you cannot fight chicago Oliver! you must submit to sodomy! You can fight straight detroit but not robocock chicago.



and then you will surrender and you will become Cardiff ra.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I agree with this. I love house but I hate house historicism or at least house historicism and homage as it exists now, how it feels and how it’s sold

Ironically it was our nuum lot who did that more than the small scene of detroit techno purists - who i still maintain, virtually got very little to no club airplay. first with jungle, then with garage going 2step, then with grime (dj petchy et al) then with funky, circle saying nah nah our stuff is mature funky, none of that african warrior/migrain skank bizniz!
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
detroit purists have their issues but a return to mature adult contemporary vocal house was not one of them, and sometimes reading Energy Flash (well when i re-read it in 2011) you get the feeling (sidenote speaking to Simon I more clearly understand what he's getting at) that he's trying to argue that these steps in the history of the continuum are a return to chicago/detroit, but they aren't really, mostly new york in a very specific, British soulboy continuum. I'm not saying Si argues this position, I'm merely observing that sometimes people like corpse love to bang on about hardcore/jungle/garage being a futuristic music, (as the dissensus orthodoxy) but there were quite significant rearguard histories.

As a sidenote I don't think detroit purists really exist in any meaningful way today, outside of the proper deep house crowd, all of which are aging 70 by this point..
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I agree with this. I love house but I hate house historicism or at least house historicism and homage as it exists now, how it feels and how it’s sold

It's quite funny to think that stuff like this at the beginning of the 2000s was kind of castigated by UK dance people, even though it was miles above any marcus nasty house show from 08.

This is what the non-continuum house/techno heads were listening to. And yeah its def more house than techno, much more disco-y.
this is a good un also.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
@craner - euro auteur continuum

Sannie Carlson (best known as Whigfield) is the name of a lady with Danish origins who decided to make a mark in the history of pop-dance music by selling millions worldwide.
In 1994 she gained a place in the Guinness Book of Records with the song "Saturday Night" as the first artist to go straight to number one in the UK singles chart with a debut single. Her discography is extremely impressive including numerous hit singles all over the world & four studio albums, a career spanning over a decade which for a pop-dance act is extremely unusual.
After many years on stage Sannie has decided to concentrate on the other side of the music industry, writing & composing for other artists in the business, both DJs & singers with names such as the Grammy winner Benny Benassi, Adam K, Ann Lee and In-Grid.

Follow the continuum!
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that is always the danger with a return to house as 'house'

and not house as a post-disco continuum that is an adaptable template
yeah definitely

I happen to have been listening almost exclusively to ca. 77-86ish dance music lately in the course of preparing a post-disco top 100 and the more you listen to the more clear it becomes just how smooth and uninterrupted the transition from disco to house was, both in a "house is a feeling" and a more literal sense. which is I think is received wisdom at this point for anyone knows/cares about such things - that there was no house music year zero - but the seamlessness at a more granular level is still impressive. and it really is a continuum in the same sense as the nuum - producers, labels, DJs, etc all carry over as well as the records themselves.

and obv to dehistoricize "house" is to sever from its roots (i.e. queer communities of color) which I assume is at least part of what you're on about

not to pile on @craner

more of a Jam+Lewis etc type than me but he's always been a strong advocate of 80s black dance musics in general
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
yeah definitely

I happen to have been listening almost exclusively to ca. 77-86ish dance music lately in the course of preparing a post-disco top 100 and the more you listen to the more clear it becomes just how smooth and uninterrupted the transition from disco to house was, both in a "house is a feeling" and a more literal sense. which is I think is received wisdom at this point for anyone knows/cares about such things - that there was no house music year zero - but the seamlessness at a more granular level is still impressive. and it really is a continuum in the same sense as the nuum - producers, labels, DJs, etc all carry over as well as the records themselves.

and obv to dehistoricize "house" is to sever from its roots (i.e. queer communities of color) which I assume is at least part of what you're on about

not to pile on @craner

more of a Jam+Lewis etc type than me but he's always been a strong advocate of 80s black dance musics in general

I'd say gay rather than queer - queer kinda means something different these days, in a sense that D.A.F is gay but not really queer, it's hard to explain. detroit techno in this sense originating from the harder directions the embrionic house was going in, so a subgenre at least until the second wave where it developed somewhat of a more continental sound.

What I like about 77-86 chicago house is that house was more a philosophy, a kind of morph beat, it can be mapped out as a loosely defined set of parameters, so it isn't just a feeling, generally minimalistic percussive 4x4 music which decentres the vocalist as the main performer but does not get rid of the song entirely, heavy focus on disco rhythmic breaks and electro funk.. Ron Hardy used to play the residents.

hardcore continuum reversions back to house only really get the tail end of this, strictly rhythm ca. 92-93, by which point it had already turned into a kind of formula. yes you had dubs and songs, but all the industrial/techno/electro/disco rhythm guitar influences had kind of separated from the vocally garage sound.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the Italo thing is also pretty interesting in re the dialogue between the American and Euro-disco continuums

as you @thirdform surely know, the proto-house trackier end of Italo featured much more heavily in Chicago, specifically Hardy and the Hot Mix Five guys, than NY. Levan played some Italo records, but in a more general context of new wave, synth-pop, left-field, etc - which Hardy did too ofc, we're talking a matter of emphasis. you can really hear the difference in each city's respective transition to house and proto/early house records. NY is a straight transition from post-disco under the heavy personal influence of Levan (and his followers like Humphries etc); Exodus - Together Forever, Status IV - You Ain't Really Down, various Boyd Jarvis/Timmy Regisford things, etc. With the possible exception of Jarvis it's very songs > tracks. the earliest Chicago records like Knight Action, Jesse Saunders etc are very Italo. another way to put is things like this are a very literal blueprint for acid - this could be an early Phuture demo (and obv it's also not far off the slower end of EBM and all the other dark Northern European biz that lead into New Beat etc).

I find it interesting that the Italo revival generally, if not entirely, skewed toward the other end of Italo i.e. the cheesy bad English vocals, which as you say Italian heads at the time scoffed at. while the shit that mattered at the time was these crazy proto-house instrumentals.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I don't think eurodance was unfaithful to house in that sense, but it is in contradiction with his love for garage in '96.

Being more a chi house person more than a nyc/london house person (i mean I'll play nyc house no problem) I don't have this problem, chi house never defined itself as an antagonist to more up for it dance music.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the Italo thing is also pretty interesting in re the dialogue between the American and Euro-disco continuums

as you @thirdform surely know, the proto-house trackier end of Italo featured much more heavily in Chicago, specifically Hardy and the Hot Mix Five guys, than NY. Levan played some Italo records, but in a more general context of new wave, synth-pop, left-field, etc - which Hardy did too ofc, we're talking a matter of emphasis. you can really hear the difference in each city's respective transition to house and proto/early house records. NY is a straight transition from post-disco under the heavy personal influence of Levan (and his followers like Humphries etc); Exodus - Together Forever, Status IV - You Ain't Really Down, various Boyd Jarvis/Timmy Regisford things, etc. With the possible exception of Jarvis it's very songs > tracks. the earliest Chicago records like Knight Action, Jesse Saunders etc are very Italo. another way to put is things like this are a very literal blueprint for acid - this could be an early Phuture demo (and obv it's also not far off the slower end of EBM and all the other dark Northern European biz that lead into New Beat etc).

I find it interesting that the Italo revival generally, if not entirely, skewed toward the other end of Italo i.e. the cheesy bad English vocals, which as you say Italian heads at the time scoffed at. while the shit that mattered at the time was these crazy proto-house instrumentals.

Yes this is all true. Also as a whole nyc house has less emphasis on the percussion. The percussion is there to augment the songs, like in disco, so you get a shuffle/groove of course, but chicago goes into an almost american version of gnawa trance feel. pure rhythm and texture. Incidentally what was so great about 93 darkside.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
D.A.F is gay but not really queer, it's hard to explain
I know exactly what you mean and it's true of D.A.F., as well, more or less, all post-Cowley Hi-NRG etc

the high days of pre-AIDS explicit gay male sexuality

but speaking more broadly of disco as a whole I still think "queer" is better - there were always trans people around, and while there was/is absolutely an explicitly gay male element in disco there were also parts of disco that embraced gender and sexual ambiguity. early Prince comes out of that tradition, as well as obviously from (the very straight, albeit p-funk less than James Brown) funk. the symbolic unifying alliance is Cowley-Sylvester.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I love how the comments in this are a rebuke to the Kirk Degiorgio view of Hardy did not play euro music.

Gerald V Woodall Jr6 months ago
1984 live at the music box in chicago on michigan ave! I was 13 years old dancing with adults to this! lol


Donato Not1 year ago
Ron Hardy king of dj
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Also as a whole nyc house has less emphasis on the percussion
idk about "less", maybe more like a different emphasis

NY is more about texture - the massive influence of dub on Levan and his followers - fx, echo, etc - songs

Chicago percussion is more complex - multitiered, obviously electronic - tracky
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I know exactly what you mean and it's true of D.A.F., as well, more or less, all post-Cowley Hi-NRG etc

the high days of pre-AIDS explicit gay male sexuality

but speaking more broadly of disco as a whole I still think "queer" is better - there were always trans people around, and while there was/is absolutely an explicitly gay male element in disco there were also parts of disco that embraced gender and sexual ambiguity. early Prince comes out of that tradition, as well as obviously from (the very straight, albeit p-funk less than James Brown) funk. the symbolic unifying alliance is Cowley-Sylvester.

Ah yes of course. I just meant that in 2020, (rhetorically) gay still carries an inner city urban connotation - working class trans people prefering to use gay than queer if they are not het in my experience, whereas queer is more a suburban, almost punk thing, but you are right that you can't belabour that point too far. You know, the music box was not a safe space, people did pcp and shit, a lot of public sex, I think it was either farley or Saunders who joked in a documentary about hardy's babies.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
gotta pay the bills - including presumably medical bills - and his glory days were long gone by that point sadly

not that he (or Hardy or Knuckles or anybody) were against "cheese", they played whatever they thought was good and worked

Ive even heard Jeff Mills drop dead or alive in a techno set tbh.

The djs who are truly really against cheese are people like mr. C, and he's been peddling pretty average tech house for 25 years now, so go figure.
 
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