originally posted over at LFTF, you know tha drill:

Before I even set foot in the office of the first music publication I ever interned for, the editors told me that they don’t post pan reviews. The internship guidelines document explained that they only post one or two reviews a day, and didn’t want to waste them on albums they didn’t like. It seemed odd at first, but I soon learned that this was the fundamental modus operandi of web-based music writing and blogging.

It’s become clear to me that MP3 blogging is *about* love. The very practice is founded upon an ethos of affirmation, admiration, and proliferation, which is why MP3 bloggers usually only post tracks they like. It’s the philosophy that inspired the Hype Machine’s slogan, “Every day, thousands of people from around the world write about music they love—and it all ends up here.” The MP3 blogosphere is a place to seek recommendations for good tunes you’ve never heard from passionate and devoted music buffs.

Author Larissa Wodtke observed that this “positive ethos” reflects “the purpose of providing download links to MP3s” because “if an MP3 blogger were to express a negative opinion about a particular artist, it would seem counterintuitive to offer readers a chance to hear the artist.” Promoting and expressing appreciation for an artist’s work mirrors the nature of MP3s as a medium, which is designed for proliferation and ravenous collection. It also cuts down to the very purpose as to why MP3 bloggers take the time to do what they do, and often for free. They wade through the endless haystacks of music on the Internet and guide their readers to the needles.

That’s one of the reasons why XLR8R’s lists of the most overrated and underwhelming albums of 2012 sparked an outcry. The features were part of a series of year-end lists, only in addition to the rote “Top Tracks of 2012” or “Best Albums of 2012,” XLR8R published two negative lists: one declaring which were the most overrated releases of the year, and another that identified the most underwhelming ones.

The lists racked up more comments than perhaps any other posts on the site this year, and the conversation spilled over onto Twitter, where irate douchebags and butthurt artists aired their grievances. There were three criticisms that came up a lot, and all of them allowed readers to dismiss the features instead of investigating why they  pissed people off so much. One called the blog’s negative commentary “unnecessary,” another lambasted the publication for link-baiting, or posting sensational pieces for the sole purpose of getting more traffic so that ***the writers*** could make more money, and a third accused XLR8R of hypocritically slandering artists they had supported in the past or in other year-end lists.

The latter two accusations emerge as a result of the tension between XLR8R’s simultaneous roles as a news outlet, MP3 blog, source of criticism, and a branch of a business with a  bottom line. Since blogs like XLR8R are functioning as several entities at once, people get confused about what their motives are. They conclude that the publication’s profit motive corrupts any ethical considerations, that XLR8R writers are two-faced and hypocritical because they only write pieces to increase their traffic and get more money.

XLR8R is a for-profit company, which means it’s ultimately beholden to advertisers and the need to make money. But so is every publication and media outlet, even hobby blogs, which rely on foundational economic industries that power electricity and the Internet and feed into the wallets of those who run the blogging platforms that host the site (Tumblr, Blogspot, Wordpress, etc). Frankly, it’s naive and obtuse to point out that a media outlet is a business and to insinuate that its profit considerations completely stamp out all others.

The entire culture industry relies on underlying economic structures, but I don’t see you guys losing your damn minds every time Scion A/V sponsors a music video, or every time Red Bull Music Academy prints an issue of its magazine. Scolding XLR8R for acting like a for-profit company and not PURELY an idealistic passion project devoted solely to the ethics of journalism and thoughtful critique is like getting upset about peering into a port-a-potty and finding a huge pile of shit. All media outlets have to balance being a business and being a creative institution.    

That’s not to say that I think XLR8R was link-baiting. They weren’t. To accuse the publication of link-baiting implies that the staff was rubbing their hands together, plotting ways to dupe and manipulate their audience into clicking links so that the increased traffic would lead to more money for them to, I don’t know, pay the rent on their shithole apartments in Bushwick. It insinuates that XLR8R’s need and desire for profit corrupted its journalistic ethics, or as readers complained on Twitter, “bullshit attention seeking at the expense of artists who’s [sic] hard work makes them semi relevant” and “click bait disguised as high-minded consumerism.” But from what I’ve seen, it would be more accurate to say that editors are conscious of hits, but they mostly care about traffic because they work really hard and would like others to see the fruits of their labor. That goes for most publications, and every publication I’ve had personal contact with—except for one of them, but I won’t call them out.

While the XLR8R editors certainly knew the features would provoke a reaction, that’s not why they posted them. After all, that’s kind of a circular logic: “XLR8R posted an article to get a big reaction, and it got a big reaction because XLR8R was trying to get a big reaction.” Accusing them of link-baiting is a way of dismissing the pieces for being provocative instead of questioning what made them controversial, and speculating as to WHY the blog posted the lists is less productive than asking WHY they got such a huge negative reaction. It seems to me that they were controversial and provocative because people aren’t used to receiving negative criticism on the blogosphere, so when it happens they fucking CRY like babies. Artists aren’t used to getting bad reviews on the blogosphere because blogs usually follow the “positive ethos” of big-upping artists you like, and because XLR8R’s lists transgressed the taboo against saying anything unfavorable, they sparked an uproar.

This positive ethos has corrupted the blogosphere more than XLR8R’s profit motive has corrupted its journalistic ethics. It really concerns me that people think negative criticism is “unnecessary,” an argument that piggybacks on the trope “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. ” That’s an idiom we teach to 5 year olds because their brains literally haven’t developed enough to allow them the capacity to handle criticism with any degree of maturity, but on the blogosphere, this expression is turned into an ideology. This way of thinking is so pervasive and strong that it stifles all potential for an open and honest dialogue, which includes some unfavorable criticism. And that’s why it’s all the more valuable and necessary for outlets like XLR8R to post a negative feature—because it expands the limits of the blogosphere’s discourse.

XLR8R’s contemptuous lists violated this foundational premise of the blogosphere—as do negative reviews by Pitchfork and Spin, although since they’re not quite blogs in the same way as XLR8R, it’s more expected. XLR8R knew they were crossing a line, too, which is why the list of underwhelming releases started by asserting that “we’re honestly just trying to spread the word about the music we’re excited about.” It’s the very premise upon which their authority as discerning needle-finders is based on, and their posts transgressed a taboo in blogging that encourages contributors not to post music they don’t like. Not only that, but by lampooning popular releases by darlings of the electronic music scene, XLR8R was effectively telling their readers that their taste sucks, which undoubtedly made them sore.

I admire them for it. Their lists pushed against and rejected the traditional purposes of year-end lists and MP3 blogs at large, which aim to propel readers toward quality artists and establish the publication’s tastes and identities. However, the very impulse to promote music and give it big ups has a downside. It can choke out parts of the discourse that don’t profess big ups and love. It can lead to, as one commenter wrote, “endless false enthusiasm and shameless rehash of [the] PR boiler plate that often masquerades as music journalism.” And it can lead to groupthink and overinflation of an artist’s work, which makes the task of reflexively curbing that tendency all the more important.

The goal of Rave Snob is to stand up against the current of endless and often disingenuous praise that is the blogosphere. “We need more CRITIQUE from our critics and journalists, otherwise what are they? PR monkeys cranking out copy to drive traffic and ad revenue, thatʼs all,” wrote one commenter on an XLR8R-based thread. “Do you know why the music nerds are grumpy and bitching? Because everyone keeps saying that all the music is AWESOME all the time.”

This insistence on positivity has led to a defensive mentality where negative criticism is immediately dismissed because it’s perceived to be a bitter attack. For instance, the nickname “XLRH8R” uses the overused term “hater” to imply that the criticism was no more than a vitriolic attack. The fact that the term “hater” exists, and that it’s used so often, reflects a defensive mindset that immediately dismisses most or all criticism, substantiated or otherwise. It was exactly this thinking that fueled the backlash against XLR8Rʼs lists, as they challenged the taboos and restrictive ideologies that are so pervasive on the blogosphere. In some ways, it doesn’t matter why they posted the lists, because negative criticism is necessary to discourse, and because it’s more telling that the lists sparked outrage. At the end of the day, they were one of the only blogs to post negative year-end lists alongside their positive ones, which balances out their own internal discourse and points out how one-sided the blogosphere often is.

It seems to me that music writers are pawns in the grand, manipulative, profit-hungry schemes of the culture industry just like the rest of us. I mean, I’ve been interning at all these different publications because I want to be a professional music writer, but I don’t want to be a music writer because I want money—obviously, it’s not the most lucrative career path. If I weren’t obsessed by the stuff that I write about and places I intern for, I would give up the battle with my parents now and go to law school. And judging from the music writers and bloggers I’ve gotten to know, it seems we’re mostly just passionate nerds.

And yet, I’ve been disappointed by a lot of what I’ve seen at the publications I’ve interned for. It’s definitely a lot more regimented than I thought, and some of my idealistic hopes about “intelligent critique” and “eye-opening social commentary” and even “objective reporting” or “enthused blogging” have been dashed or curbed by the realities that writers are ultimately beholden to the business and the advertisers and the labels. But I understand that money considerations are just part of the deal. Writers and editors work around those concerns and pressures, which is maybe the only way they can fight against those constraints.

The second take of an earlier piece, posted on LFTF:

A lot of things in life are very techno 2 me. When I run, I have to push myself to focus on exactly what’s happening in the moment and make an effort to sustain it and remain engaged with it for as long as possible—that’s techno 2 me. The fact that the seasons occur in repetitive, predictable cycles is techno 2 me. The patience involved in sitting through a boring class or staying entertained throughout the entire duration of a long party is techno 2 me. Getting through 40-page readings about post-Marxist media theory without letting my eyes glaze over is techno 2 me.

But it took me quite a while to ~*connect*~ with techno the way that I do now, the same way that it took me a long time to figure out how to enjoy the stretches of downtime at parties and years to train myself to tap into the endurance and focus required for a long run. Techno and its close musical relatives can take some getting used to, and they’re easy to misunderstand. Take Tom Hummer and Jake Jackson, for example, two guys who do a series of video music reviews under the name Velocities in Music TV. A few months ago they tackled Personality, the third album by British DJ, producer, and label boss Scuba.

To watch VIMTV’s critique unfold is to witness two dweebs explain how rock fans typically misunderstand dance music based on a few basic preconceptions that every born-again house or techno lover has to overcome. They’re the same misgivings I wrestled with throughout my ~*transformation*~ into a lover of stuff like airless Berghain techno, the laid-back jazz-tinged grooves of Detroit house, and the sputtering, visceral, arrhythmic beats of Hessle Audio’s future bass-techno-post-dubstep, and most of them can be located in a phrase Jackson uses at the beginning of his review: “Just dance music.”

“We’re not the biggest fans of just dance music,” Jackson says at the beginning of the review. That much is LOUD AND CLEAR from Jackson and Hummer’s complaints—not to mention their wardrobes. These lil nerd-os couldn’t get IN to the clubs Scuba plays in order to experience his music in what they consider to be its “context.” I know that’s bitchy to say, but the phrase “just dance music” pisses me right off. Here are some GIFs that express my initial reaction to the phrase “just dance music.” The general theme is “Hold up—what’s that supposed to mean?”

(Note Flavor Flav in the background of this one, he really makes it.)

The phrase “just dance music” implies that the kind of songs Scuba makes are inherently less valuable than others because they’re made for a specific purpose, and a petty, cheap purpose at that. “For what [Scuba] was going for, he did it well,” Hummer explains. “If you’re just setting out to make some fun dance music with some good builds, some good comedowns and all of that, then yeah, he achieved that. But is that really saying much? I just don’t think so.” VIMTV gave Scuba’s album a D, which means that even well-executed dance music is an artistic fail.

Personality deals in adroit, glossy ‘90s throwbacks, a style Scuba’s been exploring since he released “Adrenalin” last year. It was a marked departure from his past albums, which pioneered the crosshairs of techno and dubstep (even if he hates to admit it or talk about it now). The record strings together cramped heaters driven by serrated synths (“The Hope”) with immaculate, bright big-room ebulliance on “NE1BUTU” and fluttering, surly low end (“Cognitive Dissonance”). As Hummer and Jackson put it, it’s “big, gaudy, 80s-sounding dance music” with “thick, thick beats, lush synths, and just immaculate production.” But since they think the album is solely appropriate on the dance floor, none of that really matters.

There are a few problematic ideas at work here. The ultimate reason Hummer discredits Scuba’s music is because he thinks the sole and/or primary intent behind the tracks on Personality is to make people dance rather than relate to them on an emotional level. According to Hummer’s ideology, dance music can’t be used as an expressive art form because its creators use machines instead of traditional instruments and because the format of house and techno songs—what Hummer calls “some good builds, some good comedowns and all of that”—confine producers to a hackneyed style. He’s one step away from tossing aside the whole catalog of dance music because it “all sounds the same,” which is another attitude that pisses me off.

Hummer goes on to say that the songs on Personality “serve a certain purpose in context” and that if he were “out clubbing,” he would love the album. That’s one of the biggest problems with the term “dance music”: It’s misleading because it allows condescending nerds to discount several decades of creative and innovative music based on the assumption that so-called “dance music” is made to inspire highly-evolved monkeys to grind their crotches into other monkeys’ butts until their pants get all chaffed around the groin and look like rawhide. It’s a mentality that confines certain strains of music to the dance floor, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy that limits how you perceive the music’s functional and expressive limitations. That is, when you expect “dance music” to only be appropriate on a dance floor, it’ll probably sound more like shallow tunes aimed less at introspection and more at getting people in the mood to get fingered in public.

Before I argue that inspiring people to get their freak on in public is a legitimate use and goal for music, I have to point out that dance music can do a lot more than get people to boogie down. Instrumental club tracks might not tell a specific story, but they do convey a host of specific and powerful moods, and they’re not always—or ever—as sterile as they can seem to an unfamiliar ear. In a DJ set, they’re used to guide the dancers’ from stretches of dark, churning paranoia to moments of steamy sensuality or uplifting catharsis or, yes, balls-out, rage-face, mind-blowing jubilance. Anyone can experience these vibes, on or off the dance floor. And some of the songs that inspire those emotions wouldn’t readily be considered “dance music,” like beatless minimal techno with layers of spaced-out, brooding ambience.

Okay, now I can argue that producing music with the intent to make people wild out is a legitimate artistic goal. Getting rowdy and letting the world fall away and focusing on feeling the undulating groove of a sick Moodymann cut with a fat throbbing bassline and jacking hi-hats isn’t a less valuable experience than listening to an Elliot Smith song and ruminating about drug addiction and suicide.*

Dance music isn’t limited by the machines used to produce it or the clubs where it’s often played—it’s limited by the mindset of individual listeners who don’t expect sampled kick drums and 909s to be able to express the same emotions as another song made with a guitar and a drum set. I mean, rock-based music isn’t the only style that can be appropriate in daily life. And techno can blend into a lot of daily moods that occur off the dance floor, which is what I mean when I say that things are techno 2 me.

I feel awkward dancing and I think clubs are full of lame, self-absorbed blowhards and I don’t like people sweating on me and I don’t like making out in public but I love dance music. Not all of it—I’m really picky, but increasingly open-minded—but the dance music I do like is my number one steez. I listen to it whenever: When I’m on the train, when I’m in my house, when I run, right now while I write this, and when I’m on dance floors.

When I stopped thinking of dance music as dance music—just dance music—was when I started to notice all the subtleties that differentiate one producer’s work from another and all the minute, endless ways a producer can express emotion, mood, and life within the grammar of repetitive beats. I don’t find club music automatically sterile and robotic—I mean, think about how sterile dance floors are. They’re not, at all. Dance floors are packed full of groty people writhing all over each other. Some of them have a cold, some of them have icky, sweaty beards and a lot of them are on drugs that make them even grosser and weirder. Dance floor environments are more primal and disgusting than they are sterile and robotic. But whatever—it’s not like dance music is only appropriate for dance floors, anyway.

*This thought is complicated by the fact that I would consider both of those experiences more valuable than listening to something like scream-o festival bang0r dubstep or reformed-brostepper trap fad beats.

I wrote an angry rant last week in a post about Tanka’s new Boogie With Me EP. I’m a little to lazy to like post the soundcloud embed here, too, so just click here to read the original post and check out Tanka’s siqqqq traqqqs.

Noise and drone techno don’t normally work for me, but I’m in the right agitated mood for it right now. You know, if it weren’t for Rave Snob I probably would already be over music writing and I’d just go to fucking law school already. I’m glad I have somewhere to do whatever I want and not have to try to authentically replicate the tone of a publication or sound like I know what I’m talking about when really, it’s like, I’m a fucking KID, you know. I mean I don’t have to pretend like I know more than I do, but I have to ignore the fact that I feel like I don’t know that much about what I’m talking about when I’m writing a review, you know? I can’t acknowledge the fact that I’m LEARNING to be some kind of an authority, but that’s a hard thing to hide. I guess I have to hide/ignore any thoughts/feelings about an album that are based on any kind of personal narrative at all, but my whole review of an album is rooted in my PERCEPTION and it’s just like WHATEVER AHHHHH HERE’S SOME TECHNO.

Check out the original post over at Live For The Funk:

Last week, I got into a discussion with one of my editors about a female producer/DJ I don’t like. I was flippant, derisive and condescending, so when I got back from lunch my editor asked me why I hadn’t been easier on her. He said something about how it was odd that I, as a young woman in the electronic music field, had chosen to step on another girl instead of hold her hand so that we could crash through the glass ceiling together. I get what he was saying: there are enough impediments for women in a male-dominated industry, and so I shouldn’t make it harder on any girl who’s trying to make the playing field more even.

The thing is, I’m not going to be any easier on women who want to break into electronic music. A bitch has to earn her hype, and I am in favor of any impediments that keep the stupid ones out of my earshot and my Twitter feed.

This is where I point my finger at Cooly G. She released her first Hyperdub record, a 12” with the tracks “Love Dub” and “Narst,” in 2009. Those two tunes, along with her other pre-album cuts (“Him Da Biz,” “Digitally Deeper”) deal in airtight beats and snippets of her own silky voice to balance sensuality with manic, kneck-jerking rhythms. Only a few of Cooly G’s earlier releases, like “Landscapes” and “It’s Serious,” made it onto her debut full-length, Playin’ Me. Instead, the LP is dominated by songs that veer toward a post-dubstep producer/singer-songwriter territory, if only because Cooly sings over nearly every one.

Throughout the course of this year so far, I’ve noticed that a lot of the women who have turned heads often sing over their productions: Grimes, Julia Holter, Laurel Halo, Ryat, and Nina Kraviz (to a certain extent—Nina mostly annoys me for other reasons, which will be dissected another time). It’s a bit disappointing to me, because it almost always draws the line between straight-ahead dance music and poppier crossovers, and female artists usually choose to stay on the latter side of that line. I have no idea why—it’s probably different for every female artist—but chicks don’t seem very interested in trying their hands at house, techno, trip-hop, juke, etc., which means that Maya Jane Coles is going to be one of the only ladies to play at Electric Zoo this year. It totally sucks that electronic music is really male-dominated, but women often choose to exclude themselves.

I admire Cooly G because she seems smart, easy to get along with, strong, independent, and like the type of woman who doesn’t take no BULLSHIT. I expected Playin’ Me to be a shoo-in for my list of top albums of the year, although I was looking forward to hearing a woman do something different in the context of what other women are doing in electronic music. Cooly’s past releases prove that she has what it takes to hold her own in terms of production, so it was a let down to find that she didn’t leave them to stand alone. But you will probably love it.

Click here to read the piece where it was originally posted, over at Live For The Funk

The first time I saw the LOL Boys play live was also the first time I had given them much thought at all. Jerome and Markus were spinning juke-y rap tunes and my nerdish audio engineer technofriend was like, “This is the epitome of idiot music.” I had heard a few of the Boys’ productions and trusted the curation over at Friends of Friends enough to know that the duo’s recorded work wasn’t idiot music, but I could still see where my friend was coming from. I mean, there was this projector on one of the walls shooting the words “LOL BOYS” in three foot lettering, which from an objective standpoint looks pretty retarded.

One of the things about the LOL Boys that I have come to understand is that its name and persona can be…pungent. Jerome and Markus’ sense of humor makes a strong first impression that usually starts with the name of their project, which is enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth of any any remotely pretentious listener/critic/RBMA/promoter/booking agent/radio host/etc. The name “LOL Boys” suggests to outsiders that Jerome and Markus don’t take their project very seriously, which is exactly the assumption the Changes EP seeks to undermine.

The Boys’ latest record displays a seriousness and sophistication they haven’t yet played up. Starting with the opening drum break in the title track, Changes draws heavily from jazz; the one-take cover of the song by LA artist Anenon reinforces the sense that Jerome and Markus were looking outside the dance floor for inspiration. In fact, the record barely sounds like dance music at all; the woozy synth pads and drum patting on “Mind’s Clouded” sonically recreate the feeling of having your eyes unfocused, which doesn’t make for a very animated DJ set.

Reviews I have read so far suggest that the record’s jazzy elegance legitimizes the LOL Boys in the eyes of DJ fans and connoisseurs, who tend to be less receptive to artists with big, colorful personas. From what I have surmised, DJ culture as a whole tends to covet privacy, which would explain the preoccupation with masks and why I often don’t know what my favorite DJs look like until I see them IRL. Think about the live setup for a DJ performance versus a rock or hip-hop show: the DJ is distanced from the audience and separated by a wall of equipment. The tunes DJs play in a set don’t directly speak to their life experiences (especially because, in a DJ set, they might not play any of their own songs at all). Meanwhile, the lead singer of Ceremony gets on stage to scream in his fan’s faces about his ex-girlfriends (or whatever) and then jump on top of them.

For me, liking the LOL Boys is similar to liking their labelmate and IRL friend Shlohmo: their dumb #tarp tweets and tongue-in-cheek playfulness can be irksome, but I am also really attracted to it. And by that I mean, really attracted to it—like I kind of have a DJ crush on Jerome. Those Friends of Friends guys are like…okay well first of all they’re fucking adorable, and second, they’re the kind of silly buttholes that just barely pull it off, and although you hate to admit, it’s a little endearing. (Oh, and they’re good producers, which is the reason why you bothered to Google what they looked like in the first place.) Also, they remind me of the guys that used to slow dance with me at Bar Mitzvahs when we were 13 but then were too cool to fuck me in high school because they got hotter and didn’t have a mushroom haircut anymore and joined the basketball team and started dating Josie. But whatever. I’m not even talking about the music at all anymore.

Originally at Live For The Funk: http://bit.ly/L4dFki

Remember a couple months ago when Jai Paul released “Jasmine,” and artists, listeners and publications (ahem) tripped over themselves to blather on about how amazing it was? “Remember,” part of the latest offering from Georgia-based musician Gacha, strikes a similar sweet spot in the post-James Blake music consciousness. He has a good sense of the sounds and vibes that make the blogosphere tick right now and seems to have internalized some of the hypest producer names, which manifest in Shlohmo-like loping beats and clicking rimshots, King Krule’s dopey codeine voice, the humid darkness of Jai Paul and Airhead’s soaring guitar riffs. The record’s b-side, “Bowl,” descends into the fathoms of sub-bass, where Burial is an obvious reference point and paranoia churn in the mix as much as sadness.

“Remember” and “Bowl” dropped July 3 via the label virtually every blog and publication refer to as “the recently revived” R&S imprint Apollo; No Fear Of Pop did just that back in January when they posted “Remember,” and so did Pitchfork writer Larry Fitzmaurice a few weeks ago. (XLR8R called it “newly revived” last month.) The track has been streaming on Gacha’s Soundcloud page for a year now—at what point will we all stop calling the imprint “recently revived”?

See the original here: http://bit.ly/LRMzfQ

By my estimation, the chunky “two up, two down” vocal sample UK producer Leon Vynehall uses in “Gold Language” is a screwed-down sample from Chris Brown’s verse in Berner’s “Yoko (Ono).” Chris Brown is such a pinner little cretin that it almost besmirches an otherwise well-executed bit of ~*soulful bass music,*~ which is probably my ~*favorite type of bass music.*~

Thankfully, we’re talking about Leon Vynehall, a name most of you probably recognize from Disclosure’s FACT Mix (which, yes, was divine, but when that thing dropped everyone was acting like Steve Aoki just threw cake in their faces -___-). His latest release, “Don’t Know Why”/”Gold Language,” drops next week via George Fitzgerald’s Man Make Music imprint* and upholds the producer’s tasteful use of bass and house influences. Speaking of hot mixes, Fitzgerald launched into his XLR8R podcast a few weeks ago with Vynehall’s bouncing, low-end-heavy a-side “Don’t Know Why,” which showcases the beatmaker’s penchant for pointed vocal samples.

*Great name for an electronic music label, amirite?

I started writing for Live For The Funk as of today. I’ll be posting good tunes and writing in a way that is relevant, informative & entertaining, not just PR or some boring dry shit you should skip over. You can read the first post here or below.

Every summer, a bunch of my friends crawl all over Europe for a few weeks, then return to boring old New York City and rave at me about how next-level, mind-blowingly cool the Berghain is: how you have to dress as hot and out-there as you can, how every once in a while they open up the blinds around 10 a.m. to dazzle zonked-out dancers with the sunlight, how the strict door policies ensures the most elite, music-savvy and hip club-going crowd possible. My lucky friends make it sound like the Berghain is Florence during the Renaissance and its residents (Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock, etc) are the Michelangelos, Botticellis, da Vincis and Donatelos of our day.*

The club’s recorded output via its label Ostgut Ton certainly supports the latter claim. Nick Höppner, a resident at Berghain’s house headquarters Panorama Bar and O Tun label manager, has compiled a 75-minute mix of gourmet house helmed by blackbelt-level producers and DJs titled Panorama Bar 04. Highlights of the collection, which dropped this week, include longtime expert Scott Groove’s deliriously understated, retro-leaning “Detroit 808,” The Mole’s tightly-wound stomper “Hippy Speedball” and the swooning intensity that is Dexter’s heretofore unreleased track “X7D,” a cut you can stream below. The Dutch tunesmith balances pounding heat with fluid grooves in his contribution to Höppner’s compilation of dance music caviar, matching periods of claustrophobic kicks and midrange bass to stretches of clean, lilting melodies.

*Notwithstanding the fact that my friend from Berlin has confirmed my fears that club crowds across the globe are equally up their own asses and total fuckwads.

Dexter - X7D - Ostgut Ton 056 by Dexter (Klakson, Clone)

@niluthedamaja just pointed out to me that post-dubstep boys love girls who wear their hair in top-knots. SO TRUE. Behold:

PY


JESSIE WARE


GRIMES


COOLY G
(Not a top-knot, but a cool bun nevertheless)

KIKI HITOMI


LIANNE LA HAVAS

She is relevant because she gets remixed by bass music-y people like Shlohmo and Maya Jane Coles. She rocks an assortment of different and complicated top-knots.

ASMA MAROOF

Asma Maroof is the half of NGUZUNGUZU who drops all the heaters (the guy just stands around looking semi-gay/timidly cute jk he does stuff too). It took me a while to come around to NGUZUNGUZU but I am currently experiencing a girl crush on Asma, like damn, look at those nails. Also she always wears a top-knot and pretty much embodies what you would think of when someone is like “She is M.I.A.’s touring DJ” (ie. hot, ethnic, tr3ndy, dgaf, etc) (photo via)

Alright, so now it’s time to figure out what to do about the Gaslamp Killer.

If you follow me on Twitter, maybe you saw that I fired off a few beef-baiting complaints to VIMTV about their review of Scuba’s latest album, Personality, a few weeks ago. I tried to write a column about all the ways VIMTV’s Jake Jackson and Tom Hummer misunderstand dance music, but it became way too long and eventually I turned it into an essay for one of my classes and wrote a post about the Tupac hologram instead.



In short, I related to all of VIMTV’s complaints—so much so that I got defensive about it. Watching their review was like watching two rock dweebs demonstrate the foundational ideas upon which I built an abiding love and appreciation for dance music. Even a year ago, I would have agreed with all of Hummer and Jackson’s criticisms of Personality, but somewhere along the line some stuff happened and, long story (that does not involve Ecstasy or Justice) short, I came around to electronic/dance music over the course of a year or so. Now when I hear people talk about how they don’t like dance music, I think about this one time in middle school when I made a mental note to remind my future self that 12 year olds aren’t actually that young, and how when I turned about 15 I was like “Hahah, shut up,” to my 12 year old self. I had no idea what I was talking about, and it’s all about perspective.

I don’t feel equipped to talk anyone out of their entire paradigm, which I was trying to do in my earlier drafts. Instead of explaining exactly how I came to appreciate, understand and wholeheartedly enjoy dance music, I want to gripe about the one phrase VIMTV used in their review that has stuck with me and still nags me: “just dance music.”

“We’re not really the biggest fans of just dance music,” Jackson says at the beginning of the review. That much is LOUD AND CLEAR from Jackson and Hummer’s critiques—not to mention their wardrobes. These lil nerds couldn’t get IN to the clubs Scuba plays in order to experience his music in what they consider to be its “context.” I know that was bitchy, but the phrase “just dance music” pisses me right off. Here are some gifs that express my initial reaction to the phrase “just dance music.” The general theme is “Hold up—what is THAT supposed to mean??”





(Please note Flava Flav in the background of this one—he really makes it)

When I started reading a lot of dance music criticism, I began to notice a narrative that attempts to locate artists and records on a scale that ranges from the home/headphones/bedroom to the dance floor. The more I noticed it, the more it bothered me, mostly because I was listening to more and more music that was “meant for the dance floor” in my daily life, most of which does not take place on any dance floors.

The idea that certain music is only appropriate in one context really limits how you perceive its functional and expressive limitations. That is, when you expect “dance music” to be music exclusively for the dance floor, it’ll probably sound like shallow tunes aimed less at introspection and more at getting people in the mood to be fingered in public. (Please stop telling me those stories, you guys. China Ho, I’m looking at you. And for the love of God, stop getting fingered at raves—that goes for everyone).

When Tom Hummer says he could imagine digging Personality if he heard it at a club, but not anywhere else, I get where he’s coming from—but I don’t blame Scuba for that. Instead, I blame Hummer for confining “dance music” to the context its misleading name suggests, when in fact “dance music” can do a lot of other things besides inspire highly-evolved monkeys to grind their butts into other monkeys’ crotches until their pants get all chaffed around the groin and look like felt from rubbing so much. I have seen this happen in high school (and I was not responsible).

I really have to stand up for dance music on this one, because I feel awkward dancing and I think clubs are for buttmunches (at least the clubs in New York) and I don’t like people sweating on me and I don’t like making out in public but I LOVE DANCE MUSIC. Not all of it—I’m really picky, but increasingly open-minded—but the dance music I do like is my number one steez. I listen to it whenever— when I’m on the train, when I’m in my house, when I run, right now while I write this, and when I’m on dance floors.

When I stopped thinking of dance music as dance music—just dance music—was when I started to notice all the subtleties that differentiate one producer’s work from another and all the minute, endless ways a producer can express emotion, mood and life within the grammar of dance beats. I don’t find club music automatically sterile and robotic—I mean, think about how sterile dance floors are, you know? They’re not, at all. Dance floors are packed full of groty people writhing all over each other—some of them have a cold, some of them have icky, sweaty beards and a lot of them are on drugs that make them even grosser and weirder. Dance floor environments are more primal and disgusting than they are sterile and robotic. But whatever—it’s not like dance music is only appropriate for dance floors anyway.

Ed Note: Who could blame them. This was one of the first bangers I ever loved.