Take a look back to the eighties; Michael Jackson (rest in peace, old friend), decided that simply playing music on the radio limited the potential that the art form had to provoke emotion, and thus, proceeded to pioneer the world of music videos by incorporating dance, and even story into his tracks. His approach was naturally a sensation, and thus, the concept of including visual creativity and dance as part of a whole “musical experience” caught on and has since continued to evolve (although the direction in which it is evolving is debatable) over the years. Throughout the nineties, for example, pop artists among the likes of Britney Spears, and her countless boy band counterparts used (or perhaps abused) the concept of dance and showmanship to a point where their stage strut was debatably more responsible for their success than the actual music itself. In fact, after discovering for the first time that many of these artists chose to dance at the expense of actually singing their own songs in a live setting, I began to doubt whether the exploitation of miscellaneous art surrounding the music industry could be any further exploited; Soulja Boy’s rise to fame in early 2007, however, served as proof that it could. Seeing as there is almost no feasible way that such a poor quality track could have made it to the top of the charts unassisted, it must be assumed that it was (virtually exclusively) the dance that went along with it that allowed it such success.

I suppose all I’m really trying to convey is that today’s industry relies on many more factors than simply the quality of an artist’s music, and though it’s generally true that an artist without musical talent is unlikely to encounter much success, one cannot deny the fact that the creativity involved with the image that the artist surrounds himself with can certainly influence the ease with which he rises to fame.

The reason I’ve brought all this to attention is that the aforementioned “image” aspect of music seems to have grown to envelope the world of dance music much more completely than it has the rest, and said world has thusly been transformed into one that refuses to believe that a DJ could do his job without having decked himself out in designer headphones and fluorescent American Apparel gear. Though this might seem a display of ignorance to those dedicated to purely the auditory world of music, I personally am intrigued by the competition this battle for style provides for. After all, who’s to say that artists like The Bloody Beetroots, with their symbolic masks and notoriously aggressive music videos, or Soulwax, with their night long Radio Soulwax parties, would even exist without their desire to stand out in such powerfully different and creative ways?

Make the Girl Dance

Much in the same way as the aforementioned artists, French production team Make the Girl Dance have thrust their careers and reputations to an almost unreachable level with their recent single, “Baby Baby Baby,” the video for which is an astounding tribute to the culture of our beloved world of disco. Make the Girl Dance have managed to capture, in its entirety, a visual representation of the image of bold confidence, lack of boundaries, and general disapproval for rules, and regulations within music that drive the sweet emotion of the moment that disco was invented to stand for, and oh, does it look good…

Did I mention that this entire video was shot candid, live, and without permits on the streets of Paris?

Make the Girl Dance – Baby Baby Baby

Well, Canadian remix kings MSTRKRFT have decided that Lil Wayne deserves to be heard at 130 beats per minute. Okay, okay: this is technically a remix of a Keri Hilson song featuring Lil Wayne.  Still, the song gives us a full verse from the rapper and only a loop from the female singer. These guys seem like they’re on a mission to prove that every genre (hell, every song) can be made danceable.  Just turn up the tempo, add some drums/guitars and bam!– another banger. They’ve already conquered the rock remix; now they’ve moved on to rap.

I must say I’m dissapointed with their latest effort. It’s conservative and ordinary; there’s really nothing new or exciting here. Save for the Lil Wayne vocals, it could be any other MSTRKRFT song. Is their formula getting stale? It’s hard to say. I loved their latest album, Fist of God, but I think I’m in the minority; I read some pretty terrible reviews. I think their sound is just very hit or miss. Unfortunately, this new track just doesn’t do it.

I’m interested to hear what our readers have to say about the song below.  Love it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments section.

Keri Hilson feat. Lil Wayne – Turnin’ Me On (MSTRKRFT Remix)

a) The album itself is a work of art.  The album should be listened to start to finish and evaluated holistically.

b) The album is just a way of grouping songs together.  The songs are works of art, but the album is just a way of bundling them together (the way a museum “bundles” paintings into a larger collection.)

I think a) is the proper way to think about an album. After all, artists do put some thought into the order of the songs. And the album has its own name and cover art, so on some level it stands alone. Besides, a great album is more than just a bunch of great songs in a row. The argument that an album can be broken down doesn’t hold. We can just as easily break down a song into a bundling: the melody, the drums, the vocals, etc. An album can be evaluated on its own.

There’s been a trend towards b) lately, probably because most albums are no longers listened to straight through.  For a long time, a listener would choose an album, press play, and wait until it came time to flip over the vinyl or rewind the audiocassette. But out of the album comes the “hit single,” one of the best songs that could be listened to again and again. Eventually, the song became detached from the album.  Look at the rise of one-hit wonders, or the fact that iTunes sells the vast majority of its music as individual songs, not albums. What happened to the album?

I think it’s been replaced by the “mix.”  I’ve been listening to a lot of DJ mixes lately, and I’m struggling to come up with a precise definition.  It’s basically the thing that every DJ pumps out of his or her speakers at a performance.  More specifically, it has the following features:
 

• Like the album, its a collection of songs in a specific order.
• There’s a steady BMP; the tempo changes throughout, but never in a way to disorient the listener.

 
The second bullet is the kicker here. A mix can (and probably should) be listened to start to finish. Of course, the line between album and mix is becoming blurred. For example, MSTRKRFT’s Fist of God can be played straight through without missing a beat. Listen to how the end of “1,000 Cigarettes” leads into “Bounce,” or how “Click Click” leads into “Word Up.”  Or take a listen to Cut Copy’s 2008 album In Ghost Colours. There’s a steady flow to the songs, each leading into the next.

So what? For those of you still with me on this long-winded post, here comes the conclusion. The same way that a great album is more than just a collection of great songs, a great DJ mix is more than just great songs.  If itwasn’t, dance clubs would just make a playlist of what’s popular and hit the shuffle button. Lucky for all of us, they don’t. A great DJ mix has the right songs in the right order and makes them overlap in such a way that it’s a steady stream of music that’s enjoyable to listen to.

I’m curious what the readers have to say about their own listening habits, mainly because the last few weeks I’ve been listening to mostly DJ mixes rather than individual songs. How do you usually listen to music? Are you a “shuffled playlist of my favorite songs” person?  An “every album start to finish” person? Leave your responses in the comments.

I can’t end this post without giving you something to listen to. If you’ve ever wanted an excuse to yell curse words during a party, here it is. Turn the bass up and tell the kids to cover their ears. Partyshank turned a Yo Majesty sample into a thumping dance song. Is it a mash-up? A remix?  Who cares; just listen below and get ready to move.

Partyshank vs. Yo Majesty (Shanks Bootleg Mix)

In the unlikely event that you’ve spent as many sleepless nights pondering this phenomenon as I have (and in the even more unlikely event that you care at all), you’ll be happy to know that I have finally encountered what I believe to be the answer we’ve been looking for. And who do we thank? We thank the lovely Isis, of Thunderheist.

Thunderheist

It finally clicked in the midst of my getting caught up in a massive Thunderheist marathon. I thought to myself, “Damn, this girl’s vocals pack some serious punch. It almost feels like she bossing me around without ever having given me an order.” And then it hit me. She is giving orders. Nearly every lyric in Thunderheist’s tracks, or rather, nearly every lyric in all of dance music is derived from some kind of a command. And it makes sense too; Producers started off simply telling listeners to do things like work it, shake it, and move it, but naturally, time brought forth an inevitable redundancy, thus leading producers to more innovative requests, including, but certainly not limited to: “dust it off and jerk it,” “bounce hi, bounce low,” “be alright,” “cold act ill or get retarded,” and of course, “buy it, use it, break it, fix, trash it, change it, melt upgrade it.” And that’s what sets it apart. Where most other music’s vocals have a lot to do with expression of pent up emotion, dance music (though I do acknowledge more than a few exceptions) is home to a massive crowd of megalomaniacs.

Free Tickets!

Now here’s the part where it gets good. (And for those readers who’ve decided to skip ahead, this is the part where you stop scrolling). In honor of this (largely useless and uninteresting) discovery of mine, I’ve decided to issue one final command of my own: “Live It.”

The first person to send an email to Stephen@uhohdisco.com with their name and address shall instantly win a pair of FREE TICKETS to see Thunderheist at Studio B in New York City, as presented by Finger on the Pulse!

Perhaps a little sample will get your juices flowing?

Thunderhesit – Jerk It (Jokers of the Scene Remix)

Thunderheist – Nothing 2 Step 2 (Trevor Loveys Remix)

I’m particularly impressed with the Jokers of the Scene track. Their ability to layer massive chord progressions over tracks that were once as simple as Jerk It never ceases to amaze me.

Icould just go ahead and dump another stale track out of my giant trash bag labeled

onto the playing field here. I could very well reach into that bag, pull out a track, and without ever having looked at it, I could tell you what it sounds like:

• There’s a sample. It’s taken either from a hip hop vocal, a nineties house vocal, or the latest indie rock release, and it’s looped ever so poorly; That is, fifteen seconds is all one needs to become confident that the track would likely have been greatly improved by the removal of the sample in its entirety.
• Then there are some crumbly, Justice knock off drums (can you believe we’re still living amongst a world of producers attempting to reproduce the sounds of 2006?), that seem to make the notion of simply listening to Cross all over again a pleasing alternative.
• Finally, there’s a peculiar, pitch-bent, synth melody, likely far from in key with the rest of the “track”, that either sounds as though its producer has yet to discover the concept of “stereo”, or perhaps like he’s simply let the split and pan technique invade (and thusly ruin) the body of his sound.

That track I just grabbed out of my trash bag has become common place. It can be found creeping all over the net, in it’s many shapeshifting forms, but when it really comes down to it, it’s easy to see it for what it is: Beneath its cloak of origins, languages, and personalities, it is a product of all seven of those deadly sins as they’ve chosen to manifest themselves in the music industry. It represents nothing more than the truest feelings of apathy toward music culture itself, it is the thing that no one in their right mind would openly choose to associate themselves with. The sad truth, however, is that had I taken that lifeless piece of noise and allowed it to be the focus of todays note, the world would have been content.

Have our minds simply given up? Have we become so used to the constant influx of fame-driven audio that we’ve forgotten to check to make sure a piece of music is even good before we add it to our ever growing supernova of a music collection? What happens when the supernova collapses? What happens when the last remaining producers that continue to take pride in the work they release become lost amongst the tidal wave of kids armed with Reason and a myspace account, leaving nothing but remixers with nothing to remix? If only this generation valued patience and knowledge as much as it did fame and money…

I sense a future full of pink noise and quiet. What are you going to do about it?

My Sanity Check

A world of congratulations to Ekleroshock’s Data for having the ability to be inspired by a particular sound without flat out ripping it off. Almost exactly one year ago, the French producer teamed up with Sebastian Grainger to produce “Rapture,” a track that, at the time, was a huge leap forward in the developing disco scene. Seeing as most producers don’t have the mind to even think up a melody before calling it quits and proceeding to spam their address book with promotions, Data’s heartfelt tune turned more than a couple heads in his direction. One year later, (that time being now) he’s decided to drive it home with his first ever album release, Skywriter (2009), which (at least in the opinion of a lowly blogger) vies strongly as a candidate for the best album of 2009 (though Royksopp’s release provides for some steep competition. The simple fact that the guy has made an album (in the truest sense of the word) comprised of pieces that function as songs every bit as much as they do as tracks should be more than enough to keep us all from returning to The Hype Machine for days.

Data makes music. His music will make you feel things. His music will make you think. His concepts are both familiar and unfamiliar, but even when they’re familiar, you feel as though you’ve never heard them before. Why?

Data is a musician.

Data – Skywriter

Data – One In a Million

Data – Nightmare

Britain has always held an important place in the global music scene; it’s not just a modern phenomenon. The Beatles get credit from music historians for the so-called “British Invasion” in the 1960’s. But it’s hard to use four shaggy-haired rockers to explain the current landscape of electronic music. Surely, the recent wave of DJs and producers is more than just “Beatles fallout.”

First, the Beatles’ music is more than forty years old at this point. It has a much smaller impact today compared to what it once did (even if we consider Justice’s “A Cross The Universe”). Second, if we’re going to make the argument that “today’s music scene was shaped by yesterday’s musicians,” then most of the credit should go to the UK’s recent electronic acts– The Prodigy, Portishead and The Chemical Brothers to name a few. Still, this argument is not entirely convincing. It’s simply the nature of music to evolve; any musician in any genre can cite an influence. These influences explain how music evolved the way it did, but not why.

I can think of two reasons why the United Kingdom puts out more electronic music than the United States. First, the UK itself is much smaller and more densely populated. The United States doesn’t necessarily have any less talent, but it’s music scene is more fragmented. It’s easier to tour the entire UK than it is to tour the entire US. Likewise, it’s easier to generate buzz among sixty million people than three hundred million people. Britain is thus helped by its tight-knit electronic music community.

But a small population does not imply a thriving electronic music scene. In fact, the reverse seems more feasible: a large population helps. The more people in a country, the more potential producers and consumers of music there are. Here’s the second point: even though the UK puts out a large amount of electronic music domestically, much of it is “consumed” internationally. Hence, Britain also thrives because of it’s proximity to Europe.

As any wide-eyed twentysomething can tell you after returning home from his first trip abroad, Europe has a booming dance culture. European clubs stand head and shoulders above their American counterparts. They’re bigger and there’s more of them. Americans love to dance, too. But the culture is different than it is in Europe. Even though some big cities like L.A., New York City and Chicago have thriving dance scenes, most smaller American cities don’t have packed clubs every weekend.

The advantage for the UK is really the fact that it’s part of Europe, where dance clubs are the norm for teenage partygoers. Maybe asking why the UK puts out more electronic music than the US is akin to asking why it also produces more great soccer players. It’s largely a cultural response. Music, like most things, is a product of environment and circumstance. The vast UK scene first grew out of European demand and then flourished because of Britain’s tight-knit electronic music community.

Audio Bullys

Everyone’s got those “this group is going to be huge in three years” predictions that fall completely flat. Audio Bullys is one of mine. I always thought these guys were going to compete with Bassment Jaxx to be the next big thing in house music. It still hasn’t happened. They never took off the way I thought the would (and deserved to). These guys have been pretty quiet since their peak of popularity in the early 2000’s. They were supposed to release an album last September, but they pushed back the release without giving any details. Their last album came out in 2005; four years and only a handful of tracks to their name. It’s hard to stay excited with so much time between releases. Let’s hope the extra year+ of work pays off and the new LP realizes its full potential. Some things are worth the wait, but everyone has a breaking point.

Audio Bullys – We Don’t Care

Audio Bullys – Gimme That Punk (Jak-Z Remix)

Audio Bullys – Dope Fiend (Malentes One Hour Remix)

such is life…

It’s almost scary to see the things that pass as good artistic work nowadays. And that’s not to say that talented disco producers do not exist (because they most certainly do), but rather that the combined efforts of The Hype Machine’s popular chart (which ranks tracks based simply on the number of little red hearts our tone deaf generation has chosen to donate to tracks chosen by an unfiltered and largely ulteriorly motivated crowd of bloggers), and the onslaught of half assed, Justice/Boys Noize/MSTRKRFT inspired, production duo’s (or perhaps quintets? Have we seen that yet?) have led to the watering down of the quality of output of music over the last several years, the image of which is summarized perfectly in the words of Remix Mag’s Kylee Swenson:

“[...]I started to get into what [Tolle] said about the human ego and how it sabotages our happiness. How true. Celebrity is everything. Fame and money are the big prizes in life. So much so that we find ourselves wasting time obsessing over promoting ourselves rather than actually making music and improving our songwriting, playing and production skills. Fifteen years ago, none of this viral-promotions stuff mattered. No one spent an hour Googling themselves and getting depressed when they realized that they weren’t more famous today than yesterday. Seriously, what are we doing?”

-Remix, October 2008 (Click here for full article)

Essentially what I’m getting at is that the world of electronic, do-it-yourself music has all but taken the mystery and magic out of a good lot of the indy scene. Producers are much more heavily set on forcing their individual releases upon the world in hopes that they might see airplay by an artist who has several well done albums under their belt, rather than creating an album of their own, and because of this, the notion of a unique and cohesive album coming from a small, indy artist has become something uncommon enough to weep for.

I and I

Alchemist Records producer(s), I and I, is exactly that artist. That is, their work has the depth of thought that allows it to expand beyond the confines of the “ten minute sensation.” Not only does the Oklahoma based group refuse to conform to “The Book of Electronic Music Standards and Practices” within each of its individual tracks (which frequently consist of sounds and melodies that are simultaneously beautiful and unheard of), but they also boast their massive artistic prowess through their having completed a nine track album (White Noise/Black Music) that knots all their ideas together to form a collective world of their own. Said concisely, White Noise/Black Music makes it easy to fall into I and I’s realm of harmony that drips Doppler Effect all over its complimentarily poppy rhythms and distant vocals, however, I’ll advise you venture into this one which a good amount of free time available; Finding your way back to real life is not so easy.

I and I – Venus

I and I – The Top

I and I – Thought Counts

Unfortunately for us (and mind you, when I say us, I’m referring to us tasteful folk to whom disco expands beyond the confines of a mere genre), the bedroom producers of the world took an extraordinarily long time to catch on to the lack of a market for this kind of work, and so for nearly the entirety of last year, all but a select few have been flooding the net with their obnoxious 4 bar pitch bends and nearly drowning our ears in an onslaught of overplayed sound.

With all this in mind, one must admit it seems a task of epic proportions to be able to create something derived from this same style, and at the same time keep it interesting and new within its small corner of a sub-genre. In fact, being the skeptic that I am, if you’d asked me a few weeks ago, there’s a good chance I would have dismissed it as impossible, however, this new wave digital underground of ours never fails to prove me wrong.

Motor

Despite the fact that their entire single (appropriately titled “Death Rave”) consists of nothing more than a series of escalations and drops, Dim Mak’s newly signed artist, Motor (and no, as far as I know, there is no connection between the artist and the aforementioned Sebastian track), has ripped a whole new meaning into the word “banger.” I can’t possibly explain where on earth the sounds they’re getting come from; perhaps their strange location (half Paris, half New York City), brought forth a sort of convoluted set of influences. Or perhaps they’ve just got a thing for making hipsters feel compelled to rip their hair out in a confused state of ecstasy. Either way, they’ve challenged the devil and accomplished the impossible, and their music is the evidence. Brace yourself: Death Rave brings a whole new meaning to the word “disgusting.”

Motor – Death Rave

Watch for the release of their record “Metal Machine” this Tuesday on Dim Mak Records.

Sometimes pseudonyms conceal the fact that there are several contributors working together on a project. This is where literature and music differ. First, a larger proportion of music is made by groups of people. Of course, no artist in any medium creates in a vacuum. I’m sure every book in Borders was read over by dozens of people before being sent to press.  Still, most books give one author credit. And when books do have multiple contributors, each is listed as a co-author rather than referring to them all as one “author collective.” When musicians work together, they have band names.

In Hervé’s case, my best guess is that he switches around his name for his own personal amusement.  But his best work may very well be the collaboration LP he released under the name Machines Don’t Care. It has Hervé collaborating with some big names in the scene including Sinden, Fake Blood and Detboi.  A second collaboration album is supposedly in the works, too.  It was scheduled for release this past March, but with so many other things going on in Hervé’s life I’m starting to think it might never be released. Luckily we have this gem to make the wait a little easier. Listen below for a taste of what great minds working together can produce.

Machines Don’t Care – Afro Jacker

Machines Don’t Care – Jugs

Machines Don’t Care – Spycatcher

At the risk of forever being labeled as a complete fool, I’m going to be 100% honest and say that prior to the release of Felix Cartal’s Skeleton EP, my expectations for the Canadian boy could barely be lifted off the ground. I’m not quite sure why, however, I feel it’s safe to say that my insensitive assumption could not have been entirely my fault; Up until quite recently, his tour fliers have depicted him as “opener material” by consistently placing him second to artists like MSTRKFT, Steve Aoki, and LA Riots, a spot that would likely have otherwise been filled by Them Jeans or Dan Oh and the like. Not that I have anything against the guys; It’s just that they’ve all been supporting each other as remix artists for such an extensive amount of time, that it has become unusual to regard any of them as an actual recording artist, capable of releasing a fully fledged and independent album.

Needless to say, every one of my assumptions was shattered and surpassed on levels that I didn’t even have a clue existed. Not only has the young wrecka created an EP that embraces and fully displays the sounds of modern dance music, but he’s also made the art of innovation stylish once again. That is, where I expected to hear a collection of four songs that all resembled his (and everyone else’s) past work, I was startled to experience the charitable use of complex rhythms, character of sound ranging from his trademarked banger synth to lighter, poppier noises not dissimilar to that of Simian Mobile Disco, and elegant eight bar chord progressions that work hard to draw every last piece of energy possible out of those 24 bits. Long story short, it took Felix less than a minute to establish himself in my mind as far more than just a Reason remixer. Skeleton EP is wonderful. Felix is wonderful. Dancing is wonderful. Group hug.

Felix Cartal – Redheads

Considering the poor boy put so much time and energy into this EP, I can’t bring myself to post more than a single song. If you’ve fallen as deeply in love as I have, spend the four dollars to grab a copy, and of course, don’t forget to make your way out to Cinespace tonight for the Dim Mak Tuesdays “Skeleton” Release Party!