As you might have noticed, this is a bittersweet week around here; because of budget cuts, we’ve had to say goodbye to pretty much all the Idolator contributing writers, from columnists to daily bloggers. The site is going to go on as a solo project of sorts, although the news cycle might run at a slightly slower pace. I just wanted to take a moment on this crappy day to thank everyone who’s contributed to the site during my tenure, from the people who helped me sift through the news cycle every day to the columnists, each of whom expanded the focus of the site. More »
This may be super-last-week of me to mention, but I admired Philip Sherburne’s recent Pitchfork column about what he sees as a current malaise in dance music. For one thing, it’s a piece whose main body (the stuff Sherburne wrote, not the quotes beneath it) you can read and substitute your own proper nouns into: it’s apt about a lot more than just dance music right now. What’s most interesting, though, is the light it sheds on dance music as a business.
Bloggers may have a housebound reputation, but we do like to occasionally go out and shake what passes for our stuff. That’s why we have Idolator club guru Tim Finney to drag us onto the dancefloor for the purposes of exploring the worlds of house, techno, and beyond. In this installment, he digs into the UK genre known as “funky house,” which is a genre that’s still trying to define itself–and thrilling dancefloors in the process.
I like to think my taste in dance music is fairly ecumenical, but in truth no specific scene or sub-genre can come close to dislodging the special place in my heart reserved for the UK Garage (or 2-step garage) sound. The jittery fusion of house, R&B, dancehall, and drum & bass that ruled UK dancefloors at the turn of the millennium at times struck me as the very ideal of dance music: simultaneously pop and underground, restlessly mutational yet instantly identifiable, veering from intense physical roughness to charming singalong sweetness as if these two poles were ultimately indistinguishable.
When 2-step garage morphed into the darker, less hedonistic sounds of grime and dubstep about five years ago, it was a bit perplexing to learn that erstwhile fans still pining for good times party music had returned to the welcome embrace of house music proper. I mean, I love my house, but stepping off the rollercoaster ride of 2-step’s golden age, it was difficult not to wonder, “Is that all there is…?”
Despite our housebound reputation, even bloggers like to occasionally go out and shake what passes for our stuff. That’s why every two weeks Idolator club guru Tim Finney will be dragging us onto the dancefloor to explore the latest sounds from the worlds of house, techno, and beyond. After the jump, he takes a look at the newest crop of releases from neo-disco imprint Italians Do It Better–including records from Glass Candy, Farah, and Invisible Conga People–all of which take the label’s synth-heavy sound into exciting new places.
Despite our housebound reputation, even bloggers like to occasionally go out and shake what passes for our stuff. That’s why every two weeks Idolator club guru Tim Finney will be dragging us onto the dancefloor to explore the latest sounds from the worlds of house, techno, and beyond. After the jump, he gets lost in the maximalist world of prog-disco remix kings Mungolian Jet Set, one of the many neo-“balearic” production teams digging up obscure soft-rock/folk/jazz gold.
Despite our housebound reputation, even bloggers like to occasionally go out and shake what passes for our stuff. That’s why every two weeks Idolator club guru Tim Finney will be dragging us onto the dancefloor to explore the latest sounds from the worlds of house, techno, and beyond. After the jump, he gives himself over to the martial beat of the Freemasons, finds out what happens when R&B divas become unwitting weapons in the “gay house” arsenal, and offers tantalizing clues to what Beyonce’s next move might sound like.
