Genre rockist beef (again)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Crikey, dance music beef is sprawling over the blogosphere following Todd Burns's dissection of Justice & Simian Mobile Disco fans over at Village Voice (thanks to Fluxblog for the link). Here's Idolator's view on the subject. All these articles I've linked to bring up reasonable points. HOWEVER there still seems to be this awful mindset that you are only allowed to like certain types of dance music (or rock music), and if so you can't like the 'opposite' type. And then there's the 'oh but it's all POP anyway so ya boo sucks' business. This irritates me in a way I can't really put my finger on, so I drew a Venn diagram to help me work it out:



The diagram above covers the genres I'm interested in ('everything else' I just don't know enough about to appreciate properly).

The yellow 'rock' part covers stuff like prog, indie and metal.
The green part would probably include Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and My Chemical Romance.
The pink 'dance' part covers stuff like techno, electronica, drum-n-bass, all stuff you'd buy off Juno.
The purple bit would be Booty Luv, Kylie and Roisin Murphy.
The blue (un-named as I couldn't fit the text in on my crappy version of Paint) parts would be mum-pop ballads on one side, and hip-hop/RnB on the other, I guess. These could obv have extra crossover circles of their own, but I'm sticking to 'rock' and 'dance' here to keep things simple.

And of course, 'X' stands for 'Xenomania'. Clearly this is the awesomest section.

The articles I link to above seem intent on putting Justice and Simian Mobile Disco in the green or pink sections for better or worse, when I think they're obviously part of X. It's a difficult category to do well in, and a lot of the time it doesn't produce great results. But it can be WONDERFUL as we poptimists know. The ideal song in X would be one where you don't even notice the guitars or the bleeps, but they're still there (the song I have in mind right now is 'Something Kinda Oooh').

I sympathise with Burns in his dislike of dancing to Justice/Simian, because I prefer *to dance* to pounding 4x4 beats that build up and drop out and that you don't need to know the words to enjoy - getting your head down and grinding away for hours rather than having to 'sit the next one out'. But I would also therefore dismiss a whole bunch of stuff in the pink section (I can't really dance to breaks, for example). That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there! Or that other people aren't allowed to find it good!

But the real advantage of having X present in your genre-list is that rockism should be meaningless here. There are influences from every direction, and people who complain about their precious rock/dance being 'infected' by other stuff will be waylaid in the purple and green sections. Although after reading Burns' essay I get the impression he's doing his best to remove X altogether and make everywhere a battlefield. Sadface.

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also:

your beef with justice is that YOU can't dance to it, not that it is undanceable to

isn't it?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Well, they're undanceable by the rules of dance music - ie they completely abandon the concept of the groove, the steady beat to lose yourself in; it's all chopped-up and awkward instead. Which is closer to the rules of rock, really. No coincidence that I've rarely seen people actually throwing moves to Justice, it's more...jumping up and down, "moshing", that sort of thing.

My other problem with Kat's conceptualisation is that it doesn't take into account r&b or hip-hop! I know the other blue bit is meant to be the black bit but none of the examples of X have had anything to do with it, when have Xenomania ever acknowledged hip-hop? (Please don't cite GA 'rapping', please don't.)

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

No, the middle circle is pop, which is why the pure-blue bits are pop without dance or rock.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Yes - hiphop etc deserve intersecting circles of their own, I just left them off as they weren't mentioned in the Burns beef.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

But GA rapping IS acknowldeging it! It's just that YOU don't like it. Hip-hop was a party music, you know, and some of GA's rap bits are in the spirit of "Rapture" if not anywhere near as well-done.

(Though you are correct about Justice and the rules of dance music, though in this case it seems to be wilfully avoiding rather than not understanding)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I do like GA's rapping though! I'm just saying that the rapping itself isn't really any indication of engaging with hip-hop to the same extent as they engage with rock and dance.

Yes, wilfully avoiding rather than not understanding, I think that is why it infuriates me even more actually.

I'm sure I've said this before somewhere

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think the main separation between Justice & co and club-based techno is the intent during production. Your techno bobbins is designed to slot neatly into a whole set of bobbery (whether that's in a particular place in the set, building up/calming down), but there's no assumption that people will listen to this in a non-club context. Obviously they will bung it on their ipod and listen to it on the bus too, but it's designed for a particular time and place.

Justice & co want to sell lots of albums AS WELL as make people dance. So they have to cater for the non-club environment as well (this is NO BAD THING, obv). And therefore a lot of the time the 'clubbers' may feel that the bits they like are being diluted in favour of something that doesn't interest them as much.

Does that make any sense at all? Oh dear.

Re: I'm sure I've said this before somewhere

[pot80.livejournal.com]

It makes perfect sense -- successful "dance music" acts are the ones who acknowledge that their albums are albums and their songs are songs, and a dance club is something else altogether. A lot of the most artistically and commercially successful dance records are ones that adapt the aesthetics of a club to the album format.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Okay, serious answer: "7 Ways" by Abs.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Another serious answer: Mania's "Close" which is probably as hip-hop as Xenomania will ever get.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

fair dos, but that's still dancing. i'm not really arguing with the central point that justice probably are rock, just that "dance" music doesn't have the monopoly on dancing.

kat does point out that it's not a grand unified venn diagram of all music, just a visual aide for this pretty particular discussion...

[mindtaker-cro.livejournal.com]

Well, they're undanceable by the rules of dance music - ie they completely abandon the concept of the groove, the steady beat to lose yourself in; it's all chopped-up and awkward instead.

geez, you're making it out as if it all sounds like SebastiAn or something. well, it doesn't! a lot of blog-house grooves along in a straightforward way, is specifically produced to be mixed by a DJ, has breakdowns and build-ups etc - it's no less dance music than, say, big beat. and the "steady beat to lose yourself in" thing depends also on the DJ - few months ago i went to see three Hungarian dudes spinning this type of stuff, and they had a straightforward groove going on, concentrating on the Vitalic-indebted side of blog-house instead of mixing it up with baltimore/baile/etc. and i had a great time, dancing to it in a definitely non-"jumping up and down" fashion! yes, it was non-stop bombast all the way, and yes, i wouldn't have minded a moment of etheral calm and beauty and release here and there - but then again, the same could be said about some sets of monochrome metallic chugging tech-house (ie Proper dance music) that i've endured lately.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I've heard some blog-house that I didn't mind! I think Justice are actually in a minority when it comes to the chopped-upness, but my criticisms here were specifically about Justice rather than the scene as a whole.

[koganbot]

it's all chopped-up and awkward instead. Which is closer to the rules of rock, really.

Closer to the rules of rock? I'm not understanding you. Some rock is awkward, but that's just its not being very competent. But since when is rock "chopped-up"? Most rock is monotonously monomoniacal in its rhythm; it's just that a lot of time it isn't a good rhythm (as opposed to rock and rock 'n' roll grooves of the past).

Seems to me that hip-hop and jungle and grime - not to mention the Houston screwed-and-chopped thing - are much more chopped-up than rock is (discounting a few avant-gardish rock subgroups) but that they're sometimes playing a game of chicken with the groove, which is to see how much you can chop up the groove without losing it. Hip-hop seems to do this best.

Back in the day, I recall white people having trouble dancing to James Brown because the rhythm was too "confused." Which is to say they had trouble dealing with syncopation, even though the syncopation made the groove better. Disco was an easier beat for white people.

Also, I'm basically too late for this conversation, but it seems to me that techno in Britain in the '90s and maybe into the '00s functions socially much as rock did in the '60s, as a kind of progressive busting-up from the "underground" dance scene, that techno definitely has its avant-art-prog tendencies, whether they're called "prog" or not. And it's the tendency to go "hard," meaning brutal and/or difficult, that's one of the things that distinguishes techno from Eurodisco and Italodisco and Europop and that connects it in my mind with rock. (And if you look historically at Bronx hip-hop and Detroit techno and Chicago acid house, in some respects these are movements away from disco and towards a more experimental or progressive approach. The name "acid house" might have been something of a coincidence, but the 303 really was functioning something like a psychedelic wah-wah guitar. I don't know this history all that well, but I don't get the impression that in Britain the underground garage was aiming at the average teenybopper Spice Girls fan. Underground garage had social ambitions, right?)

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

good point re syncopation. jungle had a similar reputation re dance difficulty among a certain section - that was more the deadly combination of syncopation and high tempo. and most people who enjoy the modern 'build and release' approach to dance music first and foremost do not strike me as interested in jungle at all (either now or then).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think what Lex means by 'chopped up and awkward' as that dance music is for the most part continuous - individual tracks are designed to be mixed together into others, and doing that seamlessly wins you many points. You *can't* mix the majority of rock music together like that - one track stops and the other one starts, and even the best indie DJs find it hard to overlap rock tracks in a coherent way. This could be down to more obvious differences in vocal style, instrumentation, more prominent riffs throughout (this is where the build-up/break-down of dance and disco is so useful). Of course you get rock tracks that *do* have similar beats, vocals, riffs, build-ups and break-downs - but I'd call that dance music :)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Music for people who can't dance and therefore ignore the rhythm anyway?

Personally the stuff I like to dance to has interesting rhythms/basslines in it, not just four to the floor, even if it's supposed to be music for dance music. I mean, something like Chic's "Good Times" or the Jacksons' "Want You Back".

PS I have never heard Justice so have no idea what their beats sound like.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This one here actually has a very Chic-esque bassline. I think you'd like it!