1995: Possibly one of the best years for electronic music ever.
2005: Possibly one of the worst years for electronic music ever.
2015: How does this one stack up, I ask all of you?
SYSTEM-J
Better than the latter, probably not as good as the former. Around 2005-2008 everyone thought that dance music was essentially done and that it would never get back what Simon Reynolds called the "epochal centrality" it had in the 1990s. It looked like it was going to recede away to another niche scene. The resurgence it's achieved since then is pretty amazing in light of that gloomy outlook.
The scene feels in genuine health again and in the UK (and, it seems, the US) electronic music is once again the sound that's exciting to 18 year old kids. However, it's pretty obvious that we're never going to get back to the heights of the 1990s when the music was a genuine cultural phenomenon that changed how millions of people lived. The template is now over 25 years old and the shock of the new will never come back.
Trance-M
Being 21 in 1995 was amazing.
With that in mind I enjoyed 2015, I think it was a good year for trance in general. Like Jack says, it won't be like the 90's ever again.
2techs
quote:
Originally posted by Trance-M
Being 21 in 1995 was amazing.
With that in mind I enjoyed 2015, I think it was a good year for trance in general. Like Jack says, it won't be like the 90's ever again.
Were you into Tupac and Biggie?
Trance-M
quote:
Originally posted by 2techs
Were you into Tupac and Biggie?
Who?
Zharen
1995
2005
2015
:nervous:
Paradox Lost
I've read your blog long and regularly enough to know your boundaries of 'electronic music' are apparently wide enough to include Neil Young, so it's kind of hard to meet your question on its own terms. :p
That said, am I wrong in thinking that most of your gripes with 2005 are actually describing your gripes with McProg at the time? Because I otherwise am not entirely sure as to what your issue was with that year. If anything, I have fond, non trance related memories of it. Yes, progressive was twinkling things up on the trance side, but was doing wonders with house, and all the big room UK jocks were pushing the best of it, with Hernan Cattaneo riding it to the prominence he currently enjoys. Aside from prog, tech had become much more of an established sound, but before it became an incredibly boring one. And we still had one more year left of progressive breaks. So not spectacular, but one of the worst?
Woony
2005 had techno (tribal & mnml), house (bad funky / latin & mnml), drum&bass (tearout) and trance (anjuna & MCprog). I guess dubstep was good but at that point it hadn't really taken off yet.
My discogs wantlist is almost 250 pages long. 2005 takes up about three or four and almost all of it was stuff that went under the radar at the time.
I think 2015 was the ultimate year of "everything is great, nothing blows you away" if that makes any sense. I think 2016 will be similiar though. It's a great time for DJs with legions of great quality records coming out every week, headphones listeners will be missing the more groundbreaking records from the post-everything era around the turn of the last decade though. Around 2009-2012 almost every genre was in the process of finding a new identity (techno & house going back to the roots, drum&bass discovering autonomic, dubstep endlessly mutating) but by now things are more or less settled in.
Paradox Lost
quote:
Originally posted by Woony
2005 had techno (tribal & mnml), house (bad funky / latin & mnml), drum&bass (tearout) and trance (anjuna & MCprog). I guess dubstep was good but at that point it hadn't really taken off yet.
Minimal (as in MNML) may have gotten its formative bearings around 2005 (which I don't at all remember but I'll take a more knowledgeable word for it), but I don't think it's fair to use the Cocoon/M_nus/DC10 nonsense to which you're referring as something that ought to factor into a retrospective take on 2005- it just wasn't enough of a thing to be a thing. I also recall tribal being a far hotter sound in the very early 2000's (see the stuff Steve Lawler and Quivver were hammering out around 2001 as an example), and would disappear out of trend by the end of 2003. And come on, funk and cheesy Latin house has been so everpresent for so long in the annals of dance music that I highly doubt there was somehow lots more of it in 2005 alone.
As for 2016, I tend to be more interested in chillout/ambient/drone than most other things these days, and the avenues independent release channels like Soundcloud and Bandcamp offer to artists who otherwise wouldn't have been able to find a home for their music in 2005 makes me especially optimistic over 2016 (and each following year)
SYSTEM-J
You say the same thing every time we have one of these thread, Paradox. You might have some personal nostalgia for twinkly '05 prog but the biggest progressive DJs were already jumping ship and embarking on ill-fated experiments with electro and minimal. And minimal was definitely a big thing in 2005, it just hadn't took off in North America at that point. I remember venturing that we should cover the minimal explosion on TranceCritic in 2005 and Sykonee didn't at that point know what was coming (I remember his response was: "Uh, I've got some Adam Beyer CDs I could review?"). The scene was in very ill health across the board and still in the early and messy stages of transferring its nucleus of influence away from the UK scene to Berlin and Germany. Objectively speaking, club attendances and record sales were down across the board. Labels, clubs and magazines all folded, DJs went out of work and new laws in the US were giving you your own version of the Criminal Justice Bill ten years after the UK got it, ruining the scene in places like NYC. Even the drugs were - people started taking horse tranquilizer on the dancefloor, for 's sake.
Paradox Lost
Yes, we've been through this before, and every time we do we wind up describing what was happening in the same year with the same music in such completely different ways so as to make me wonder where exactly we're getting our signals crossed. But first, I'll of course concede (as I always do) that UK dance music trends had long-since exploded by the time they were imported to America (especially on the West Coast), but I can tell you that Oxia- Domino was the closest we got to mnml in 2005.
That said, you tell me that all the major UK progressive jocks had or were in the process of jumping ship for electro and minimal pastures in 2005, so as to make sure we're on the same page, who exactly are you referring to? I'm fairly certain we're referring to the same people and their respective labels: Dave Seaman/Audiotherapy, Nick Warren/Hope, Digweed/Bedrock, Oakenfold/Perfecto, Hernan Cattaneo/Renaissance (where he was just releasing his compilations). If so, I don't see how you pick up any of those compilations or anything that was signed to those labels in 2005 and walk away convinced that they had abandoned prog for the approaching minimal/electro/tech trend.
Go listen to Dave Seaman's Therapy Sessions 2, Nick Warren's GU: Shanghai, or Cattaneo's Renaissance: Masters 2, compare them to their next compilations (Therapy Sessions 3 and Cattaneo's Sequential, in 2006), and I think it becomes clear that the transition to electro and tech was still about a year and a half away. The only prog headliner who moved decidedly into tech in 2005 was Digweed with Fabric 20, following a three year compilation hiatus, and his sound has remained largely the same ever since.
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Even the drugs were - people started taking horse tranquilizer on the dancefloor, for 's sake.
:stongue:
ok wait no that's not funny I shouldn't laugh let me try that again
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Even the drugs were - people started taking horse tranquilizer on the dancefloor, for 's sake.
:wtf:
:stongue:
Trance-M
quote:
Originally posted by Zharen
1995
Great example of a track nobody listened back then.
