Europe

[RWY]

Tomorrow Britain finally leaves the European Union. What dance music do you most associate with your memories/experiences of Europe (if you've visited) or your impressions from a distance (if you haven't)? I'm thinking here of any tracks which conjure images or feelings along the lines of Barty's situational synesthesia.

 

[luka]

I remember being at a wedding in France a few years back and the music they played was so bizarre and perverse and they had all these special dances to go with the songs. I'd never be able to find out what's it was though. All sounded fairly old, but with synths and that and those strange rhythms the Europeans like. Perverted ompah lompah disco. That force you into doing a comedy dance. Anyway that's a bit vague just saying it's like a foreign country over there.

 

[luka]

My general impression of European dance music is this sort of dated naffness combined with being a bit pervy and eccentric.

Like The Cheeky Girls.

 

[thirdform]

/end thread.

 

[thirdform]

still not as good as this, mind.

 

[thirdform]

imo euros are much better at making uncomfortable ice cold nord music much more than they are directly rnb influenced stuff. this starts even from the first wave of free improv, brotzmann, manfreid scheuf etc.


however eastern european pop music is the business, esp if you go to the balkans - well, i have a predisposed bias...

 

[RWY]

 

[Corpsey]

I know it's suggestibility (cos I knew it was made in the German countryside) but when I was in Germany last year, and it was sunny, in the very green city of Munich, this music made total sense somehow. But maybe it was me projecting onto it...

 

[yyaldrin]

I remember being at a wedding in France a few years back and the music they played was so bizarre and perverse and they had all these special dances to go with the songs. I'd never be able to find out what's it was though. All sounded fairly old, but with synths and that and those strange rhythms the Europeans like. Perverted ompah lompah disco. That force you into doing a comedy dance. Anyway that's a bit vague just saying it's like a foreign country over there.

maybe it was this one?

 

[luka]

Nah it was like, 80s at the latest I reckon. Whole genre of it. Dancing like a chicken to it and whatnot.

 

[yyaldrin]

 

[luka]

Sounds too cool.

 

[sufi]

Youm Wara Youm - Samira Said يوم ورا يوم - سميرة سعيد

 

[blissblogger]

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

in which Radio Soulwax, in an act of inspired genius, slows the Belgian version of that nonsense down to New Beat tempos and turns it into pure gold


the dancing also gets correspondingly more fun/less naff at slower tempos

it's about the most European (and specifically Belgian, besides rainy/muddy bike races on twisty cobbled country lanes in Flanders) thing I can imagine

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the haircuts (!!!), clothes, music, dancing, facial expressions

and really, more than just the same of its parts; an emergent property of (Northern) Europeanness

special shoutout my dude wearing Morpheus shades and a striped shirt that just says HARDCORE

I mean like 6 people are wearing Morpheus shades, but like

stomping distorted kicks, pulsing hoover synths, breakdowns on top of breakdowns

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I love that mix

also, guys come on

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

and Nico's solo harmonium records, the way in which they harken back to pre-rocknroll continental traditions

I know most of the canonical krautrock groups were trying to, among other things, get away from Anglo-American rock conventions

(undoubtedly often stripping out the black influences to varying degree, unless of course your peerless geniuses like Can who can do all things at once)

but I think those Nico records really nail it an effortless way

they are a direct spiritual forebear of Wolfgang Voight as Gas, the protean mists and depths of Germanic forests

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

perhaps a different idea of "Europe" from what the thread was initially looking for, I guess

 

[craner]