Club Music in 2019

[pattycakes_]

(SOLVED) Club Music in 2019

Never at any point in dance music history have tastes been so broad, lineups been so eclectic and sheer volume of new music releases been so copious. There's more people going to clubs on the weekend, and festivals through the year. We're living in a time when all the information is out there to make it easy for anyone to play sets as good as, if not better than any dj has ever played. Practically all necessary knowledge is available. From legendary set lists to room acoustics. The technology is there for us to mix infinite styles of music seemlessly, with a little help from the elastic audio algorhythms of software like Ableton. The possibilities are all there. Everything is in place.

So let me ask you, when it comes to club music as of 2019, are you more of a glass is half full or glass is half empty person?

What are the pros and cons of the current environment? What are the main differences between when you started clubbing and now?

Do you still go clubbing? What was your last memorable gig, good or bad?

What do you think makes the current landscape fertile ground and what do you think holds it back?

 

[thirdform]

stopped going late 2016. i just thought, that whilst technology was opening up infinite possibilities market forces were suffocating everything and everything became either parasitic or socialite. i have no problem with revisiting sounds, I'm not an innovation nut by any stretch of the imagination, though I do value recombination of existing elements highly, and i do tend to gravitate to the darker or more machinic side of psychedelia. but i do think on a technical and musicological level we have it better than the 90s. but if clubs have been turned into pleasure prisons then I might as well stay at home.

 

[thirdform]

I don't think for instance post-dubstep really killed anything it was just a symptom of this trend. a lot of people forget that clubs were patronised by organised crime back in the day, and once they became business, they had to adopt to those demands, without of course making income from other avenues such as having their own dealers or suppliers in the club.

or controlling the door, for that matter.

 

[droid]

• Technology has increased homogenisation rather than improved skills by breaking down barriers to entry.
• DJ's are mostly shit and only a small % really take advantage of technological possibilities.
• Diversity is mostly confined to variations within a techno framework.
• Tension between genres had broken down, and with it, identity.
• Dancefloor innovation is increasingly scarce, and arguably hasn't happened at all in the last 15-20 years.

 

[thirdform]

that's a very old man fetishising clubs as something immune from market trends perspectives droid, albeit i agree with some of it.

for instance there's still good stuff being put out




this is old stuff but reissued:


really clubs need to escape the 'club music' categorisation. but again, market forces.

 

[thirdform]

https://bastiengoat.bandcamp.com/

 

[thirdform]

Rebel Up SebCat oh wow, the urban Singeli sound from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) is just wild! Think of hardcore gabba the african way, with a punch of Jagwa music, Tarab sounds, dancehall horns, sirens and heavy rapping. For lover of ravey sounds, balani, shangaan, gqom and any other awesomely fast Afro-electro style. Album of the month, 2017 top10 material

 

[thirdform]

 

[thirdform]

the problem is like i said, the dissensus framework tends to crumble because the most cutting edge or rediscovered *club music* is not being played in clubs.

Barty acknowledges this by shifting the framework away from the dance into rap. I acknowledge this by shifting the framework away from the hollowed out dancefloor into the realms of experimentalism. after a point it comes a bit weird to cling ontothe dancefloors as focal point of all innovation in *this country*

But this doesn't mean people aren't making innovative dance music, but like most things today it's functionalism for a crowd that is not. I wouldn't think about applying the 'idm' binary to it.

 

[droid]

Far from ignoring market forces most of these problems are the result of them. There's always good stuff coming out, but the trends are clear.

 

[thirdform]

Far from ignoring market forces most of these problems are the result of them. There's always good stuff coming out, but the trends are clear.

no i agree, but then I'd say well, people aren't going to clubs. or at least, the kind of consumer we thought of in the 90s. clubs are precisely more popular than ever because they've managed to fill the casm left by the death of indie rock. we can all diss James Blake in this regard but as a business man he was quite smart and ahead of the curve. In his own way he understood all that back to 80s thing you would get from the franz ferdinand and Erol Alkan types, but whereas those people were operating in a nu wave continuum, he managed to apply that impulse to the nuum.

 

[thirdform]

2010s are the decade which signify the death of radio 1 type jo wiley music on a large scale. But none of us being very qualified in this area (maybe with the exception of Woops) we can't do its autopsy.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Last memorable experience: last weekend, RAMJAC, who apparently was a big deal back in the day (like the 1988 day). He was playing off a couple of analogue reel-to-reel tape decks plus hardware sampler. Fucked if I know how it all worked, apart from that. The set starterted out as a sort of dubbish techno with these offbeat ska-stabs of synth, then morphed into proper weebly-wurbly acid house. It was fucking great. Helped that I managed to buy this like fucking monolith of MDMA off some guy.

But I'm not out very often these days and it'll go down to almost never soon, what with bairn on t'way.

 

[thirdform]

the afrobeats and afroswing is a very specific sound confined to a certain section of london's african middle class. I wouldn't extrapolate much from it. There's always been that sweet, delicate and aspirational music in club culture, be that soulful house or whatever.

 

[thirdform]

But also I hate to break it to you droid but reggae is like trad jazz to most kids. just not in their vocabulary at all. things really changed after 2003. and most of the new generation grew up after that last gasp of mainstream dancehall. me and barty are its last surviving relics.

like you can say this generic so-called 'bass music' doesn't really sound like jungle (and you're right) but it couldn't even if it wanted to.

 

[luka]

"Tension between genres had broken down, and with it, identity."

"Multiculturalism is overrated"

 

[thirdform]

looool luke. check your pm.

 

[droid]

"Tension between genres had broken down, and with it, identity."

"Multiculturalism is overrated"

Well yeah, its a recurring theme. One of the central theses of retromania.

 

[luka]

Well yeah, its a recurring theme. One of the central theses of retromania.

Barty merely plagiarising ancient Reynolds riff alleges droid!

 

[thirdform]

I guess my question is, who cares? Who wants to go regular clubbing in 2019? not me. and that isn't all about the music. if anything the music generally takes secondary importance in a club, it's really when you go back home and analyse the records that the retroactive rushes hit you back. kind of like a psychedelic experience in that sense, at its best, you're far too enthralled in the throb and deafened by the sound system to start deconstructing a tracks mixdown.