You just put a quarter in one of those Zoltar fortune-telling machines, and I’m about to pull the last five years of your life out of thin air. The year is 2005, and if the 2010 version of you were to travel back in time and inform old you that in five years you’d be listening to music that’s made almost entirely on a computer, the ghost of Christmas past would likely be heading home with broken nose. You are a firm believer that all good music is centered around a guitar in some way shape or form. That’s not to say that you’re morally opposed to synthesizers in a band’s lineup, but electronics can only compliment guitars and drums, not replace them altogether. Your collection of music includes a couple of electronic musicians here and there, though to be fair, most of them are the ones that are talented enough to prevent you from ever considering how their music is made.

You may permit the occasional M83, The Album Leaf, or perhaps you’re younger than that and are more keen on the untamable shrieking of the Blood Brothers. But mostly you’re attracted to bands like Bloc Party, Midnight Juggernauts, and VHS or Beta. Bands that are rather talented and trick you into forgetting they’re electronic at all. Long story short: while you may be able to pull it off on rare occasions, the majority of the time you wouldn’t be caught dead listening to anything more than The Faint for fear of being associated with (shudder) techno.

Then 2006 comes around and suddenly Daft Punk is okay. What’s the deal with that? They’re completely electronic, and there’s no getting around it, but for some reason, everyone you know has their discography, and it is not cool to make fun of them for it, nor is it cool for you to point out the fact that Homework was released in 1999. Nope, you’re supposed to eat your words and act like all three albums were released that very year. So what do you do? You accept it for what it is: Daft Punk = cool. Infected Mushroom = still not cool. Titanic theme song techno remix = definitely not cool. You’ve officially added all of Daft Punk’s albums to your collection. Other than that, not much has changed. You’re still wearing your hair like the dude from AFI (a haircut that would later make it’s way into the electronic music scene in the form of DJ Paparazzi), and you still can’t tell me what a four on the floor beat is. But here’s where the line really starts to blur.

Late 2006- Early 2007: The year your one friend who happened to know about the Hype Machine at the time discovered __________ (insert either MSTRKRFT or Justice in the blank). Now, this kid was always a little strange with his music taste, so when he hands you one of his two earbuds and plays you (Easy Love / Waters of Nazareth), you’re reluctant at first. That is, you know it sounds good, and you know it’s fresh, but at the same time, you’ve spent years defining yourself as one of those guys that respects music too much to sink down to the level of electronica, and you’re not about to just up and say you like it. You decide that “sounds interesting” is the appropriate response, and you put it on the back burner, intending to forget about it. But it haunts you. Every time you finish an album and consider the ever present “what should I listen to next?” enigma, your mind jumps to that “The Looks/Cross” torrent you downloaded a week ago. Is it the right time? Are you feeling confident enough in your musical masculinity? Eventually you cave, and you give them album a once over to get it out of your system–except your plans change, and somehow, it makes it into your daily rotation, and before you know it you’re listening to an entirely electronic album just as much as you listen to everything else. What’s going on? You’re not allowed to like this. You try even harder to convince yourself that you don’t like it, but it’s impossibly clear that you do, and there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to change it. This feels even worse than that time you got caught telling your shampoo bottle to “Move bitch, get out da way.” The stone cold realization hits you: You’re going to have to change scenes, because (and trust me, there’s definitely no pun intended here) the “scenesters” just aren’t going to accept the person you’ve become.

Before you know it, your Misfits shirts have gone out the window, and you’ve replaced them with graphic tees depicting mostly naked women. (And it’s okay because the look is “artsy” and “in good taste.”) You’ve discovered house music, and with each new album you acquire your pants become a little bit more colorful. (I’d say they got tighter too, but that wouldn’t be fair to those who had already maxed out the slim cap by stringing dental floss through their leggings.) Suddenly, you find your music collection is growing as though it had invested in Google. By the time another year has gone by, not only has your music collection doubled in size, but you also find that listening to Avenged Sevenfold just doesn’t seem appropriate anymore. Even further, you now find yourself slightly repulsed by those who haven’t managed to follow the same path you did, and you’re constantly asking yourself how they can be satisfied listening to the monotonous drone of same-sounding guitars, when there’s a world of unlimited potential for sound into which they haven’t even considered wandering. However, the one thing you don’t consider, and likely still haven’t considered even now as were moving through 2010, is the impact that your transition into the hipster scene has had on your perception of music in general.

So Now What?

So here we are now. We’ve arrived in the present, and are now faced with a new set of rules. Give me an artist, and I’ll give you a number between 1 and 10, indicating how acceptable it is for a member of the hipster scene to listen to them/him/her (1 being completely unacceptable).

Daft Punk: 10
Slipknot: 1
Laidback Luke: 10
Sigur Ros: 9
Green Day: 3
Oasis: 7 (They’re not electronic, but they’re one of those bands that is, for some reason, accepted as remixable.)
Massive Attack: 7 (Electronic, but not so hipster-y. Minus three.)
Royksopp: 9
Paul Van Dyk/Oakenfold: 5 (Electronic but dated; better left for outsiders and the uninformed.)
Rusko: 9 (So-called purists would likely protest)
The Bloody Beetroots: 8 (Used to be a ten, but they’ve since been rejected by the mainstream opposition.)
The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s: 8 (For the same reason as Oasis. though to be fair, remixes are more acceptable than originals.)

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. The big picture themes are nothing more than:

A) Electronic dance music is always okay, unless it’s trance, drum ‘n’ bass, or was produced before 2006.
B) Rock is sometimes okay, depending on what the people in the band look like, and how remixable their material is.
C) Classics are allowed, assuming you either remix the tunes, or use them tastefully.
D) Metal, and all it’s derivatives, is never allowed, unless you make it with synthesizers and call it dubstep.
E) Dubstep is okay, unless it sounds too much like metal.
F) Punk is okay if it incorporates some kind of electronic component.
G) Hip-hop is treated like a controlled substance. It essentially boils down to circumstance, and depends on how far-removed from electronic dance music it is. Artist intelligence is also a contributing factor.
H) Classical is okay, as long as you listen with confidence.
I) Most everything else is neither acceptable nor unacceptable, but if you get too into any of it, it’s just weird.

So that’s how it works. By reading this blog, you’re defining yourself as a hipster, and as such, your music of choice is not, in fact, music of choice at all. It’s chosen for you. And just like so many of us were missing out on electronic music when we were busy convincing ourselves that it wasn’t okay, who’s to say we aren’t still missing out on a world of fantastic music by allowing our hard drive’s to be brain washed by the momentum of expectations? I won’t stand for it!

Today, for the sake of liking good music for good music, we’re bending all the rules and listening to all the tunes we technically shouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poking stick. And who knows, maybe tomorrow, we’ll still be doing it.

Spor – Aztec
[It's Drum N Bass, and I don't care]

Me Gusta – Megadrive
[It's Hip-Hop, and I don't care]

Flux Pavilion – Got 2 Know
[It's trancy, and I don't care]

Rusko – Da Cali Anthem
[It's both massively mainstream and poorly produced, and I don't care]

“Bangers”

I beg of you, the fun-loving people of the world, please discontinue your use of the word “banger,” for it has grown to encompass all that is wrong in the world of disco. I suppose a little history might be required in order to explain. Let us jump back a couple years… to 2006.

You might remember this special little time in dance music history, for it is the year that two very important events took place. First, Daft Punk brought their music to the Coachella music festival, which prompted nearly half of the United States to reconsider their position on electronic music, and second, Justice broke into the now buzzing scene, and convinced everyone else (essentially the kids that used to hang out on street corners wearing combat boots and Misfits patches) that “Woah! You can distort a synthesizer!? That’s kinda like punk, so we should definitely not hate on electronic music anymore.” And thus the new wave of dance musicians and Ed Banger minions came to be.

So where did the term “banger” come from? Well that’s easy: It came from the ex-metal-heads who wanted to like dance music but could not yet bring themselves to admit that that’s what it was. And I don’t blame them. They were all fresh out of high school at the time. Their newfound freedom had not yet kicked in, and their desire to feel wild and out of control was still burning strong. They didn’t want to make “disco.” They wanted to make metal on a computer, but since a name for that hadn’t quite been coined, the word “banger” came to be. And hey, I’m fine with that. If the music is being made, it needs a name, and far be it for me to say whether a name can or can’t be used. That’s not what bugs me. This is what bugs me:

The word banger, since 2006, has essentially become a meaningless slur, and yet an onslaught of newcomers continually insist on ramming it through our heads, again and again. In running this blog, I get about 50 emails each day from artists looking to promote their tracks, and almost 50% of those emails starts out with something along the lines of “I just finished this new banger for you.” For all those people, please, heed this warning:

1. Calling your track a banger, when really all it is is the result of a couple hours of you sitting in front of your computer trying and failing to imitate the Bloody Beetroots synth sound, is not going to get you anywhere. We know you like distortion and angry sounds, but please, be original.
2. Calling your track a banger clues all us bloggers in to the fact that you’ve only just made the transition from your metal band into dance music, and that you are completely oblivious to the workings of the scene.
3. Calling your track a banger gives us the impression that you’re making this music on a whim, and that there’s a good chance you only downloaded Reason yesterday. It also implies that you’re only making music with hopes that you’re going to somehow become massively famous without even trying.
4. If you must use the word, learn to use the word right. You may not, under any circumstances, call your track a banger if it sucks. The word banger (at least back when it was a healthy word) is supposed to refer to a tune that’s filled with so much energy and excitement that it can make a crowd…well, bang. If you make music that doesn’t have any of those qualities, don’t tell people it does! It’s one thing to be an amateur producer, but it is absolutely not okay to lie about it.

So that’s my qualm with the word. If I could, I would seek to have it eradicated from the English language, but since that isn’t too feasible, let me leave you with this:

The word “banger” is dead, and if you want to be taken seriously, do not use it. Ever.

A Couple Tunes

As you likely didn’t come here just to read my pointless slobber, here’s a couple tunes that have really taken the scene by storm. The A-Trak remix is this year’s equivalent of what Pilotpriest‘s Love Lockdown remix was last year. Needless to say, it’ll have you on your knees. And if you’re the DJ, make sure you’re comfortable with being touched by strangers before you consider spinning it.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix) (Club Edit)

The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – Soft Shock (Them Jeans Acoustic Remix)

Fischerspooner – Supply Demand (AutoErotique Remix)

Little Boots – Earthquake (Treasure Fingers’ Epicwave mix)