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| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Sorry, I don't agree.
Firstly, I've posted several links and quotes as to where the term came from and they all echo each other. I can't make up these links.
Just google the term: progressive house definition. It's all there about structure and elements being intrinsic to the definition. As I said earlier the misquoted alignment is secondary. It's not a internet wide conspiracy, people - progressive house was termed as such to describe it's form. That's what I believe and what people called that music. |
Of course you're not going to agree. You've had an idea of what progressive house is for probably 15 years, you're not going to surrender it suddenly in a thread.
What misinformed people on the Internet post is not proof of anything. Most clubbers aged 18-23 now derive their definition of progressive house from Beatport. The average clubber now will swear Deadmau5 is progressive house. Popular consensus is not fact. The sound of progressive house had changed a lot when it resurged in popularity around 1999, just as it has from 1999 to today. Listeners who got into the scene around then (when it was at its all-time peak) had their own definition for the music, which is what you'll find plastered all over the Internet now. Doesn't make it any more factual than an 18 year old's definition.
Progressive house was a journalist's term. It was coined in that Mixmag article, it was propogated by journalists, particularly rock mags who jumped on acts like Leftfield and Underworld. I could pull any number of quotes from that article to prove a point, but here's one from the owner of Guerilla, and if you deny that Guerilla Records were the single most important label in progressive house history we may as well stop this discussion right now:
| quote: | | For Dick O'Dell, whose Guerilla label is putting out some of the finest Progressive (DOP, React 2 Rhythm, Spooky for instance), the new breed is more of an evolution. "It's a totally natural progression from what's gone before. Because house music must progress and take elements from other types of music." |
This origin of the term progressive is rooted very much in a specific moment of history and context. Importantly, it quickly became totally irrelevant as the landscape of electronic music changed drastically after 1992. The meaning of the word "progressive" quickly lost its relevance, and it became simply a marker referring to a sound, which is how it has remained ever since. As I said, in practical terms progressive house referred originally to energetic, melodic British house music with lots of eclectic genre influences, notably dub, trance and techno. After a couple of years, everyone forgot about the origins of the term. Again, as I said, it doesn't describe the music in any meaningful way, it's just become a term arbitrarily attached to deeper, housey-trancey music.
That's why label owners can ID a track as "progressive" straight away. Think about what you're saying - if progressive house was actually defined by slow progression, addition and subtraction of layers, how could you ID it as prog in "a few seconds"? Actually, you can play a few seconds of prog, hear chunky house percussion and bass combined with atmospheric trancey sounds and know it's prog. Not because of structure, or development, because of the sounds it contains. If you're being honest with yourself, you know that's the right answer.
The bottom line, and the source for this ongoing confusion is this: yes, progressive house was so-named for being forward-thinking and doing new things. But that definition went out of date within a couple of years and the name simply stuck around. So no, it's not an accurate way to definition any progressive house made after about 1993. Equally, progressive house does not mean "house that builds layers over long periods" or any of that nonsense. That was a reverse engineered theory that became popular in the late '90s when progressive house came back in a big way, with longer, slow-building tracks and everyone was wondering why it was labelled "progressive". And that definition is just as temporal as the one touted by Deadmau5 fans in 2012.
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Mixes:
> Live @ J00F Editions, 30.03.13 [Chill Out]
> Time & Space [Mixtape]
> Ain't Nothing Going On But The Funk [Breakbeat Classics]
> The Singularity [Drum & Bass]
> Distant Places [Progressive Trance]
I Am Not A Music Journalist.
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there is no post house or post trance genre, and progressive was definitely used for elitism ("House is gay and shallow, Trance is cheesy and formulaic - we're better than this"). Like any good elitism, it was based in part on conservative values, on purity; going back to an idealized point of reference in the past when everything was better, when professional cheeseballs hadn't dragged the genre from obscurity and the underground into a the pop mainstream, when a track didn't have to have (uh-oh, full circle!) a verse, and a chorus (and chords, and so on). 
