Are any of the people currently residing in the musical realm of househeads beginning to feel as disillusioned with the direction of house music these days as I am starting to? It’s not the fact I’m thinking the music itself has lost it’s value, but I’m beginning to see a troubling trend that has plagued any number of genres irrespective of whether it’s classified as ‘electronic’ or not. What I’m referring to is that instead of exploring the most diverse of all forms of dance music, I’m finding that most DJs are jumping on the sound of ‘what’s hot’ at any given time. Musically speaking, the current sound to the electro/minimal that every DJ under the sun is playing. I’d be a hypocrite if I’d said I don’t enjoy the sound, it’s just that going out and hearing the same style and sound from DJ to DJ seems less attractive than not. Gone are the days when a house DJ will walk into a club and cater the music to the crowd, or bring their own feel to their sets. More and more I’m finding the DJ will walk into the club, saying “well this worked in Montreal, and it’ll work here too”. But the problem isn’t just that the DJs are homogenizing, but the producers themselves seem to have lost the courage to break away from the norms and are only producing the one style of music. Whatever happened to funk and soul in house? What happened to instruments like strings and brass, or a bass guitar providing some old skool funk to the low-end? What happened to tracks that made you feel like you were at a party and not in a dark grimey room? I love the grime, but I appreciate the ability to mix it up more. One doesn’t have to look further than trance to find out what happens without ingenuity and experiment in a sub-genre of music. Everyone jumped on the uplifting sound, and although that gave mass-exposure to electronic music at the time, but because it was so identifiable as a sound in itself, producers and DJs were afraid to break away from the mould of what worked and the style stagnated. Is anyone else as afraid as I am that house is headed down a similar path?
Someone please dissuade me of my opinion.
jeeper_095
I'm asking myself the same thing
Silky Johnson
jeeper_095
quote:
Originally posted by jennypie
that's some of the good stuff..right there.... nice find, Jenny!
patpicos
where have the paragraphs gone ?
DaRoZa
i dunno... i think there is a lot of variety out there... and DJs like manzone&strong and mark oliver always seem to have a completely different style at every venue. even in the darker techy stuff there's stuff like axwell - i found u (dubfire remix) that still fit in and keep things a little old school - hopefully more stuff like this comes out
EvilTree
House needs more funky, deep and jazzy house.
Oh and diva house. Can't forget diva house
Sly_Guy
quote:
Originally posted by DaRoZa
i dunno... i think there is a lot of variety out there... and DJs like manzone&strong and mark oliver always seem to have a completely different style at every venue. even in the darker techy stuff there's stuff like axwell - i found u (dubfire remix) that still fit in and keep things a little old school - hopefully more stuff like this comes out
Well I'm comparing more toward the big international headliner house DJs out there. As the supposed 'leaders of the genre' they're starting to sound all too similar these days.
But really, I had turned on my iPod today, and I began realizing that most of the sets I've been playing with consistency have been older sets, ones which even pre-date my entry into the scene, and how different each one of the DJs sounded from each other from days past.
Silky Johnson
So don't listen to the "leaders of the genre"...dig out stuff YOU like and support those artists/DJs instead. There's plenty out there.
Abercrombie
Funk is dead because James Brown is Dead.
geroin
i don't know if kerry chandler is considered funky jazzy house but he was killing it on sunday, i was there for like 45 min and it was awesome
ChemEnhanced
its all about what sells now....I don't think you see it with local DJs as much as international DJs. Its simply commercialization....producers are now producing tracks faster and with the same sound.....everyone is looking for that next big hit.....If you already know what is popular then if you quickly produce a bunch of tracks that are similar to what's popular you increase your chances of having the next hit. If you spend a lot of time and produce less tracks that are more fitted to what you like the chances of one of them being a hit is less.
The Bennasi Bros. produced a ton of tracks that were similar to Satisifaction during its hayday
