|
| quote: | Originally posted by Stasis
I just re-watched the music video for Forbidden Fruit and it got me thinking about this...
The thing with older Paul van Dyk songs (and older trance really), is how earnest it was. It was really just kinda out there, heart on its sleeve and all that. Those Seven Ways tracks that System J reviewed (I just read your review by the way and great job), are just straight forward and, um, this sounds horrible, "honest" (?) (bleh).
In fact, the whole genre, the whole mood of the scene at the time, etc etc had to be built on that sort of earnestness/honesty. The whole "feel good", euphoria-kinda thing of trance just withers in the face of cynicism. As soon as either the DJ or the audience starts getting cynical, the whole thing falls apart (as it did). |
"Honest" is actually a good way of describing it. And "feel good" as well. I love the euphoric feeling some of those older tracks create. That's really what I'm after in dance music.
I can enjoy the sounds and atmosphere in the current wave of techno-tech house stuff, or the dark moodiness of deep house, but for me nothing in dance music ever compares to the way that the good old trance and prog tracks intertwined and layered a bunch of melodic elements to create that combination hypnotic-euphoric feeling. [cue remarks about unicorns and lasers]
Most of the tech stuff doesn't do that for me, and a lot of trance today seems "cynical" in comparison to the stuff that preceded it because of the way it has raped the same sounds and song structure for around ten years. Some psy-trance does the hypnotic-euphoric bit for me, but I find a lot of the time in psy the focus is put more on being "trippy" than on actually creating a moving piece of music, which can annoy me depending on my mood.
| quote: | | Today, Paul van Dyk just sounds cynical, and this is (I think) what nefardec was getting at--so are we. |
Your comments about cynicism reminded me of this thread:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...ance+music+life
Anyway, I don't think that the people who have really embraced the "tech" trends are necessarily "cynical," it's just that they don't want to be (or be seen as) over-earnest rave kiddies who expect their music to provide them with some wonderful sense of togetherness and euphoria and life-altering experience. That's not a "cynical" attitude as much as it is a self-conscious and cautious one. So they go for a more subdued vibe, because that's what suits their personality or attitudes toward partying and socializing. But the kind of earnestness I described seems to be what pervaded a lot of dance music ten to twenty years ago. And of course the drugs, ecstasy and hallucinogens, were probably a big contributor to that vibe.
Last edited by MrJiveBoJingles on Dec-10-2008 at 17:20
|
