I buy more tech house than prog these days. My latest mix cd only has 2 prog tracks out of 17. Good decent prog records are getting pretty hard to find these days, and I agree some of it does sound the same. The hype surrounding tunes astounds me sometimes. Case in point: Habersham & Phil K - Cloud Brake, sure, this tune is kinda tough, but after 10 seconds I'm bored. I've heard it all before. Personally, knowing Phil & Habersham's potential as a production duo, I don't think its worth the wax is pressed on. Lexicon Ave definitely make up for it with a really good remix.

Prog needs to focus on getting butts back on dancefloors instead of trying to prick the ears of every 18yr old prog geek going around. It seriously has become pathetic what 'prog djs' think is cool. All this hoo har about how good Nathan Fake & James Holden are is fucking crazy. Sure, it sounds ok in your earphones, but 99.9% of the dancing public don't get it. And at the end of the day, thats what your trying to achieve, get an ass or two shaking. Its all very well trying to play what I like to term as: 'Global Underground CD Music' but that's all it is, CD music. Make people sit back, relax and enjoy the ride, but don't play the same shit on a dancefloor! you'll bore the shit out of everyone!

These days prog appears to be dominated by middle aged elite dj's (Sasha, Digweed, Nick Warren et al) who are trying to reclaim the past by playing old shit that was never really all that good to begin with, or, young little computer geeks who spend all day in their dark basements seeing how clever they can be by making up retarted little 'glitch' sounds with not much else, and walah! We have a prog record that all the little kiddies with their first pair of technics will buy!

Slade's Progressive Advice:
Don't play purely progressive, its boring. Play a mixture of styles that you can pass off as a 'progressive set'- a minimal record here & there, tech house, funky house, breaks, whatever its all good, just as long as it means something and isn't a mish-mash of shit. Keep people interested, you won't do it with the latest batch of Bedrock & Plastic Fantastic records.

Prog labels to look out for:
Toes In The Sand Recordings
Electrofly Records
Alternative Route Recordings
EQ[Grey] Ltd.
Institution Breaks

Other key mentions:
Eukahouse & Eukatech
Midnight Recordings
Big Chief Recordings
Jamayka Records
Freerange Recordings

This is purely my opinion, which has so-far landed me 0 big gigs, but hey who really gives a shit about the minor details?


Slade.

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www.myspace.com/djslade
www.sladedj.com

Its true slade its all true.
James Holden may be advanced prog.
but who the fuck here is an advanced prog dj/producer? - and when 99.99% of audiences arent advanced listeners, whats the point of playing sets of intelligencia?
just listen to everything, jeezus im getting into intec stylez techno.
its good like that, with my most recent 100 odd records im confident i could play anywhere from honky tonks to bass station and everywhere in between.

In the end - it is all prog. all of it.

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Last edited by Light The Fuse on Mar-08-2005 at 21:23

Mixture of style is key.
Back in the earlier days, DJs wouldn't be limited to playing one 'style' or another, they'd simply wanna put on a great set of good new music that a crowd could get down to. But in recent years DJs have been too bogged down with buzzwords and labels. As a DJ nowadays you're either one of two things...A DJ who copies other DJs style by fitting into a certain genre like progressive or techno, or you're a DJ who is nothing until a new label has been strapped to you and other DJs begin to copy your style.

Personally, I find DJs who can't switch up genres boring. I can't handle 6 hours of melodic trance, or 6 hours of ceaseless techno. I'd much prefer to see an up and coming DJ, able to mix a set with acid, tech-house, tribal, breakz, progressive, and dirty house instead of a travelling DJ who'll take the same show to 10 different cities.

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Not Everyone Understands House Music, It's a Spiritual Thing, a Body Thing, a Soul Thing

Posted this on ITM about a year ago:

quote:

Progessive needs to become "progressive" again. It's all starting to sound the same to me with this chuggita-chuggita *atmospheric break-down* chuggita-chuggita thing they've got going. I blame Mick Burns, Markus Schultz and this "new breed" of producers, who just seem keen to sound as 2001 as possible. There's still some good music out there, but it's just too much effort to wade through the crap. How many truly great prog tracks can you name from the past 12 months? Excluding anything Infusion have touched? Then excluding anything that draws from predominantly tribal, housey or techy influences? We're not left with much, are we? Even on the DJ side, Sasha just kinda lapsed into playing cliched, anthemic prog (Hoochie Koochie, Hazy Way and Cowpander every set?), Digweed disappeared of the face of the Earth, Deep Dish made it perfectly clear that they're more interested in promoting Yoshitoshi than developing the progressive sound and the rest of the big-name DJs and producers (Dave Seaman, Nick Warren, Satoshi Tomiie etc.) continue to tread water. The only ones who come through this unscathed are those drawing their influences from beyond straight-up "progressive" music like Sander K (house, tribal) and James Zabeila (tech-house, acid, breaks) and Danny Howells (House, tech, tribal) or those who actually try to push the progressive sound beyond it's current stagnant state, like Steve Porter, Chris Fortier and so on. I know I'm sounding a bit doom and gloom, but I haven't given up hope yet. The five hours Mr Catteneo treated us to at Room made me remember why I fell in love with prog in the first place and hopefully marks the end of a barren 12 months for progressive music. Until then, however, allow me to be the first to say "long live tech-house". 8-)

Then:

quote:

quote: Isn't the nature of "progressive" music inherent in its name? Progressive music progresses over time, so of course it will change over time, and it will take a different form and continue to live on. Important point, but only relevent where "progression" means "the innovation of new sounds" rather than the propogation of old ones. The prog that is most innovative these days is that which draws primarily from pre-existent genres - the unique, genre defying prog of yesteryear is fading fast. Prog boomed as a genre in 2000/01 precisely because it was presenting a new sound to the world. Remember Cass & Slide's haunting, techy brilliance? The sublime beauty of Sander K's 4 Seasons EP? The dark, subterranean drive of Chab vs Nukem? The flawless, tribal-esque atomospherics of Moshic (and occasionally Zidan)? The stripped-bare disco stylings of Satoshi Tomiie? The cold, spacey breaks of Ashtrax? The dirty, chunky-as-fuck house of Deep Dish? The uplifting drive of Max Graham and Starecase? The percussive funk of Timo Mass? The bass-heavy, other-worldly melodies of James Holden (pre-14U)? The trippy basslines of Steve Porter? The best of the "new-breed" of producers are undoubtedly exceptional producers, but the diversity of progressive music seems to be diminishing (everyone seems to be emulating everyone elses sound) and the new producers don't seem to be introducing a hell of a lot of ideas. Maybe I just have a rose-tinted view of the past, but there was something innovative and exciting about progressive music that - with the exception of a few producers (like our own Infusion and Luke Chable) - you just don't find today. Take a look at some of the newer guys like Mick Burns (Panoptic, Blue Haze), Digital Witchcraft, Sultan and The Greek, Matthew Dekay, Flash Brothers, Echomen, Filterheadz, Noel Sanger, Subsky, Yunus Guvenen and so on. All excellent producers with some damn solid tracks, but how many of them have introduced anything to the genre that we hadn't already heard in 2000/01? How many of them have been able to produce a genuinely unique sound? Even the better prog DJs of today (Sander K, Danny Howells, Chris Fortier etc.) are only able to continue to sound fresh and interesting by drawing from influences from outside of the genre. When I hear a killer set by one of these guys, I'm not thanking the innovation of prog-producers, I'm thanking the innovation of housey, tribally and techy producers. Perhaps I'm going overboard on this, but - unless someone can turn up to turn things around - progressive will continue to grow stale. I still have hope (like I said, I was very impressed with Catteneo 8-)) and will continue to support the genre, but I don't think many in here will argue with the fact that - at the very least - "progressive" is beginning to lose its cutting-edge gloss.

Then:

quote:

quote: So Panoptic, Digital Witchcraft, Noel Sanger, Dekay in particular are serving up 2000/01 era material? They're good producers, they're just too heavily influenced by older prog music. When I think of new-breed producers who are genuinely pushing the sound forward, I'm thinking of guys like Kingkade, Mert Yucel, Pig & Dan, London 909, Descent (and some of the other Source of Gravity guys), Prawler, Remy, Klinkenberg, D-Formation and the Aussie producers like Infusion, Luke Chable, Jono Fernandez, Vance Musgrove and so on (well.... they're not all necessarily "new-breed" so to speak, but you get the idea). The other producers I mentioned, with one or two tracks that can be excluded (Harmonic Germs and Yimanya kick arse for instance), just aren't doing anything we haven't heard before. And perhaps next time you might want to try a reasoned response before questioning my credibility just because I don't happen to agree with you?

Yeah I basically got my head kicked in by the chinstroker brigade for those comments, but I think I was right in making them. Haven't listened to prog much since then, so I'm not sure how much of it is still accurate / relevent.

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

well Digweed is back, and he plays disco

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CLICK HERE FOR SOUNDCLOUD

Werd to disco.

Seriously, deep house is the way to go. Ben Watt n his BuzzinFly buddies styles

quote:

Originally posted by Pointy Ben Watt n his BuzzinFly buddies styles

his Essential mix absolutely owns. Really soulful house, love that style these days.

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cbf

quote:

Originally posted by DaveBegic solution - write your own tunes guys.. the way you want it

Give this man a beer

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quote:

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. -Nicholas Butler (1862 - 1947)

Marsh - Distance (405 Recordings)

Hear the track on my Myspace https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html...133676/distance
http://www.discogs.com/release/1476900

quote:

Originally posted by S_madis his Essential mix absolutely owns. Really soulful house, love that style these days.

Man...seeing him live is a whole other ordeal. I never thought the beautiful soulful music he plays could be soooo damn energetic n pump so hard on a dancefloor His new BuzzinFly mix is teh lovely