8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

He Provides the Soundtrack, We Make the Movie

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Be sure to check out this mini-documentary from Mixmag on the enigmatic Detroit producer Moodymann. I love his vision for his city, his ruminations on record shops, and how the staff at Archer Record Pressing warmly welcomes him. But mostly I love this, said to Gilles Peterson:

We went to the club to get down and dance. Everybody knew the DJ and we didn’t sit there and look at the DJ. He provided the music … we was more into the room. He provides the soundtrack, we make the movie. Well, nowadays everybody just stands there and looks at the DJ. It’s not like that’s Prince up there performing live. That’s the fucking DJ.

I got into DJ’ing via punk rock. That may seem like a non-obvious association, but hear me out. What I liked about underground punk rock was that the band wasn’t the star — the band was merely the facilitator, and everyone in the club was on an equal level. We were all part of the show, and together we made it memorable.

There was a similar feeling in underground dance music when I started DJ’ing. It was fine — even preferable — if the DJ was in the dark or behind a wall looking through a slit.1Many clubs in the early ’90s had ‘the slit.’ I admit that I hated this at first as it seemed like a (literal) wall between the DJ and the audience. But I’ve grown nostalgic for a time when the nature of the booth implied that the music was the true star of the show. We were there to come together, every person as necessary to this party as the next, rejoicing in the feeling of the music. That vibe, combined with the fiercely independent distribution and economy of underground dance music, was, to me, a new kind of punk rock.

I’m not shaking my fist at a cloud or feeling like things are worse or better than ‘back in my day.’ But it’s different. And I feel Moodymann’s frustration here. A couple of decades ago the role of DJs changed, elevated to stars as punk rock bands eventually were. And more and more it’s a DJ’s responsibility to be the movie. When that happens, who’s the soundtrack really for?

Related: On the Music Tectonics podcast The Verge’s Dani Deahl mentions, with trepidation, a new AI engine that selects, programs, and mixes music from a DJ’s predetermined selection. That way the DJ can focus on ‘performance’ rather than pesky details like queuing up and beat-matching songs. Canned performance is nothing new — the draw of many DJs and music artists is a cult-of-personality anyway — but the thought of such an app has me looking testily toward the sky.

Groove On: How DJs Created the 12″ Single

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The other day I wrote about music delivery and formats (CD, LP, streaming) and how these often influence music creation. This latest installment of Vox’s always excellent Earworm series flips this around. The video documents how the 12” single filled the need of ‘70s club DJs requiring songs with more time to groove and at higher fidelity than a 7” or LP track could deliver.

Here are a few quick thoughts on the video:

  • People tend to forget how long disco — and club culture — was an active underground movement before its mainstream overload. Some of the early dates in the video may surprise some. And though not strictly ‘disco,’ David Mancuso’s first Loft party was in 1970, as an early benchmark.
  • Can we note how cool it is that some contemporary DJs like Questlove and Orlando’s DJ BMF often go back to playing 7” vinyl sets, just as Nicky Siano once did? Not only is this throwback an homage and a connector to the past, but I think one becomes a better DJ — learning techniques to apply to modern digital methods — by stripping the practice down to its roots.
  • Paul Morley, appearing in the video, has a place in 12” history not mentioned in the piece. He was a co-founder — alongside Trevor Horn — of ZTT Records and an original Art Of Noise member. Morley’s input was mainly in the label’s image, branding, and writing the grandiose label copy and manifestos that accompanied each release, but he certainly had a say in the label’s groundbreaking music direction. One element of that direction: ZTT 12” mixes weren’t merely extended versions. These were complete reworks of the original songs, with new instrumentation, drum tracks, and even extra vocals. This type of remixing is normal in dance music now — a simple extended version is a rarity — but, in ZTT’s time, it was a radical technique. I’m not sure if any label was doing these types of remixes before ZTT. My favorite ZTT rework/remix? This one for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Rage Hard” which takes the listener on a tour of the “strange world of the 12”.”
  • I would have loved to have heard “I Feel Love” for the first time with fresh, unprepared 1977 ears. Brian Eno’s initial reaction was probably shared by many.

The Olds Are Alright: Dance Music Becomes Generational

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Joe Muggs in Mixmag:

Which is more important, though – reinvention or continuity? After all, the purity of scenes that are created for and by youth, with all the energy and absolutism that goes with that, is something special. Whether it’s the teenagers excluded from UK garage who turned their youth clubs into moshpits as they invented grime, or kids in bedrooms across the world cooking up ever more mind-warping memes and post-vaporwave electronic sub-genres that only make sense with total immersion in cultural reference points from K-pop, Cartoon Network and dark web research chemicals, some things absolutely don’t need the input of old farts. There’s a stupendous thrill that comes from hearing kids from Shanghai or Sao Paulo, Jakarta or Johannesburg, smashing together extreme electronics with pop and local sounds with zero respect for the canons and hierarchies of the past.

But at the same time, The Black Madonna [who referenced “the young folks and more seasoned folks sharing space and ideas”] is right. In the space of house-techno-rave that she’s operating in, it’s incredible to have people like her and Honey Dijon, Optimo and Harvey and all the other battle-hardened vets right in the thick of things, bringing the weight of decades of experience to bear on the dancefloor and sharing that with the young guns they play next to. Each new generation that discovers the joys of Kerri Chandler or Photek or Chris & Cosey re-ignites the power of their music.

As one of the above mentioned ‘old farts,’ I love this sentiment, and I’ve also thought a lot about it. We are in a unique place where veteran (a kinder way of saying ‘older’) artists freely mingle and perform with younger, emerging talent. For example, in dance music, some of the biggest draws — and influences — are now 50+. In my DJ heyday — the late ‘90s — this wasn’t the case. Though, granted, the genre was fresher.

I used to think it was good for older artists to step aside and let the young take their seats at the table. But it turns out the different generations are just adding extra chairs. There’s a collaboration between the various ages of artists rather than competition or resentment — a transfer of ideas that encourages innovation while respecting history. And it’s not just the artists — the fans have embraced this generational variety, too. When the 79 years old Giorgio Moroder can release albums and tour with enthusiastic fanfare from the electronic music community, it’s evident that we’ve arrived in a special and respectful place.

🔗→ Never mind nostalgia – we’re living in a golden age of intergenerational partying