pesh
Well-Known Member
bullshit.
the much needed rave/techno/house fascism thread
- Thread starter ManchesterBeth
- Start date
Ted Striker
Foot's on the other hand
You don't half talk some shite sometimes
Commenting on their skin colour and making assumptions about their politics indeed. Like they are all some homogeneous simplified group.
Gatecrasher was never black, nor white.
It was pure fluorescent
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
Well, yes, but I wasn't specifically talking about the gatecrasher night but the type of trance that is generally associated with that club, which is pretty much the antecedent to modern EDM. You can't deny that early trance was inextricably tied to techno/house, even if it was less jazzy/soulful/funky. But with eurotrance/epic trance/fuck me with your flaccid cock trance there's no techno or house influences to speak of. Progressive house is a tricky one. On one hand it was directly influenced by American house music but around 95-96 it decided to purge the quasi-garage vocals and turn into fully domesticated genteel house for your heterosexual line manager to dance to.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
Hmm...
Trance is inextricably tied to house and techno, but only really second hand through the prism of the euro dance scene. It's antecedents are just as much euro-disco, italo, new beat and directly the Dutch, Belgian and German techno scenes from 89 to 91-ish. It's not really right to talk about late 90s trance (as rubbish as it became) "purging black influence" when the same complaint could be (equally unfairly) made about the whole euro dance scene going back to Giorgio Moroder.
I'm not convinced by the "purging working class influence" claim either. Are Tiesto or Paul Van Dyk's audiences really less working class than Surgeon or Autechre?
Are you sure you're not just putting together 'things I don't like' (ie bad trance and subconscious racism/classism )?
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
How so? There are sven vath/Garnier/Mayday sets from 93-94 which are a mix of all kinds of things, I.E: detroit techno, trance etc. In the realm of techno/house the American and euro dance scenes were always in a mutual communicative dialogue. Cox was mixing techno and trance into 95-96 and this was a perennial Mills favourite from the days of his hectic 150+ sets. It's an acid trance classic!
If you're arguing that trance was a particularly European take on techno, we're in complete agreement. But in the same way that Magma was a European take on jazz, soul, gospel etc. Yet hardly anyone would call Magma black music. I'm not saying that trance was black music (however nebulous that term is.)
RE: the working-class influence, I meant that the music was deradicalised (I'd never say it was explicitly political) in form. There's no tension in late 90s trance, nothing reflective of post-industrial landscapes, little, if anything urban about it, nothing questioning the established status quo (even if only on an acosmatic level.) It's a tragedy precisely because it's dance music's complete corporatisation staring at itself in the face. Before EDM it's hard to detect any sort of similar epochal shift at the housier end of the spectrum (I'm excluding prog house because I still can't work out the difference between mid 90s prog house and trance) because no matter how commercial disco house got it still retained its gay black connotations through funk and groove. There's a conspicuous absence of groove in late 90s trance. It's an aesthetic privileging the prioritisation of melody following harmony, not melody as a rhythmic component.
Last edited:
I bet you're fun at parties
free spirit
more tea vicar?
apart from the trance scene being probably the most working class based crowds of any of the electronic music scenes at the time?
Maybe not as working class as the orbit in it's prime or something, but crasher, tall trees, promise etc. were all pretty well rooted in their working class culture, the kids who didn't give a fuck if it was seen as cheesy etc. At least that was my experience of it anyway.
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
We're not talking about crowds here. EDM crowds are more working-class than any faux-serious techno party ever will be. We're talking about the aesthetics. Whether you like it or not musics such as jungle or hardcore had an inextricable class dimension to them. as did chicago house. And techno was seen as a radically futurist music. All of that was lost with the over-sanitised trance aesthetic.
magneze
🎧
Musically, what reflects a post-industrial landscape?
Could this not be different for different people?
Also, if you lived in a post industrial landscape would you necessarily listen to music that reminded you of it? Might you not also try to escape that using music that doesn't reflect it in any way at all?
Could this not be different for different people?
Also, if you lived in a post industrial landscape would you necessarily listen to music that reminded you of it? Might you not also try to escape that using music that doesn't reflect it in any way at all?
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
Well yes, but that doesn't detract from the aesthetics of techno. You might want to escape from those aesthetics and all the accompanying politics, IE detroit, Brooklyn, fall of the berlin wall, east German techno scene, northern England, etc, but those reference points will still remain.
Last edited:
free spirit
more tea vicar?
sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you.
Trance was nothing without the crowd, it was really a celebration of and by working class kids who didn't give a toss what the sniffy music mags or proper techno scene thought of their fluffy flouro scene and music.
and the music was of it's time as well, a time when young working class kids finally had a bit of hope, new labour had swept to power, the economy was good, wages had gone up, there were jobs to be had, and people actually had enough money to be able to afford to live for the weekend a bit, and licensing laws had suddenly been relaxed to allow for proper all nighters to take place regularly - hence the optimism, euphoria etc. That and mitsis appearing on the scene after a couple of years of really shite pills.
Also a lot of it came from Germany, from the love parade etc.
And many of the kids were the younger brothers and sisters, or sons and daughters of the northern happy hardcore crews, or in the north east those into makina, so to them trance was pretty sophisticated really
Now, if you were talking Goa trance.... then ay, that was more the trustafarian lot with their shrooms, acid and tie dye stuff.
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you.
Trance was nothing without the crowd, it was really a celebration of and by working class kids who didn't give a toss what the sniffy music mags or proper techno scene thought of their fluffy flouro scene and music.
and the music was of it's time as well, a time when young working class kids finally had a bit of hope, new labour had swept to power, the economy was good, wages had gone up, there were jobs to be had, and people actually had enough money to be able to afford to live for the weekend a bit, and licensing laws had suddenly been relaxed to allow for proper all nighters to take place regularly - hence the optimism, euphoria etc. That and mitsis appearing on the scene after a couple of years of really shite pills.
Also a lot of it came from Germany, from the love parade etc.
And many of the kids were the younger brothers and sisters, or sons and daughters of the northern happy hardcore crews, or in the north east those into makina, so to them trance was pretty sophisticated really
Now, if you were talking Goa trance.... then ay, that was more the trustafarian lot with their shrooms, acid and tie dye stuff.
Fair enough, ultimately all of this is subjective. As someone who isn't white trance (not the techno kind but the commercial type we're talking about) seemed like a step backwards to me in comparison to things like speed/2-step garage, grime and dubstep. But that might just be my londoncentric view of dance music clouding things.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
it's just a bit of fun
ska invita
back on the other side
just pissing about on an online dating site, found a nice profile, then got to this: "Music-wise: a big eclectic mix but if I was pushed to say what my favourite genre is I would say trance."
^this is the ultimate test of how you feel about trance....(as in does that turn you on or off)
^this is the ultimate test of how you feel about trance....(as in does that turn you on or off)
Last edited:
free spirit
more tea vicar?
that's really what it was all about
me, I danced at The Orbit, Sundisential, Judgement Day, Vague, Cream, Shindig, Promise, Head Candy, Stay Up Forever nights, Turbulence, AbaShanti, gabba nights and a lot of free party raves...... everything, pretty much all genres.
If it got too cheesy just take a break, bosh another pill then get back in there
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
I'd rather be the techno purist standing in the corner drinking my scotch and absinthe (subjectively the only two revolutionary alcohols for me.) Alas, clubs are rarely that accommodating...
