blissblogger
Well-known member
Shawn Reynaldo's latest newsletter asks what are the defining sounds of the first half of 2020s and also talks about how the current scene is dominated by revivalism:
Yet even as dancefloors have warmed to a wider range of tempos and drum patterns, they’ve also remained stubbornly in thrall to the past. Recycling has always been big in dance music, and the 2020s have put that tendency into overdrive. Aside from the aforementioned revivals, the past few years have also seen large-scale flirtations with electroclash, bloghouse, trip-hop, progressive house, Eurodance and numerous other ghosts of dance music’s past, many of them from the late ’90s and early ’2000s. In purely aesthetic terms, Y2K-era cosplay has dominated the decade to date, and that, in combination with the current affinity for breakbeats, should have theoretically cleared the way for one specific sound to come steaming back into the dance music conversation.
That sound? Nu-skool breaks, which oddly doesn’t seem to be one anyone’s radar...
The readable-by-nonsubscribers bit ends there, which is a good cut off point, because
a/ it's where I burst out laughing
b/ it's a nice cliffhanger (have to wait until the whole newsletter becomes readable to all to find out what his argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having its moment in the retro sun would be)
It did get me wondering though
1/ What could be Shawn's argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having untapped revival potential?
2/ Has everything else that could be revived already been revived, in fact? What are the other things that haven't been recycled yet? (Thinking specifically in dance music, but could be a wider span).
3/ What things are unrevivable? That no one will ever touch with a retro bargepole?
Yet even as dancefloors have warmed to a wider range of tempos and drum patterns, they’ve also remained stubbornly in thrall to the past. Recycling has always been big in dance music, and the 2020s have put that tendency into overdrive. Aside from the aforementioned revivals, the past few years have also seen large-scale flirtations with electroclash, bloghouse, trip-hop, progressive house, Eurodance and numerous other ghosts of dance music’s past, many of them from the late ’90s and early ’2000s. In purely aesthetic terms, Y2K-era cosplay has dominated the decade to date, and that, in combination with the current affinity for breakbeats, should have theoretically cleared the way for one specific sound to come steaming back into the dance music conversation.
That sound? Nu-skool breaks, which oddly doesn’t seem to be one anyone’s radar...
The readable-by-nonsubscribers bit ends there, which is a good cut off point, because
a/ it's where I burst out laughing
b/ it's a nice cliffhanger (have to wait until the whole newsletter becomes readable to all to find out what his argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having its moment in the retro sun would be)
It did get me wondering though
1/ What could be Shawn's argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having untapped revival potential?
2/ Has everything else that could be revived already been revived, in fact? What are the other things that haven't been recycled yet? (Thinking specifically in dance music, but could be a wider span).
3/ What things are unrevivable? That no one will ever touch with a retro bargepole?
