Finding the Rhythm

Random thoughts about dance genres

January 2, 2009 at 6:59 pm 2 comments

As I was eating breakfast this morning (I think about these things at weird times), and listening to iDanceRadio.fm, I was somewhat struck by something.

When I first starting DJ’ing almost several years ago, the dance music I preferred was what I’d today call filter house. It goes by a lot of other names too, but the best way I can describe it is modern day disco. It sounds a lot like the disco music of the 70s, but with a more up-to-date “feel” in terms of composition, arrangement and certainly production. (Unfortunately, a bit like the classic court definition of obscenity, you know it when you hear it, but it’s difficult to describe it with mere words.)

Over the past 18 to 24 months, my tastes have slowly evolved toward a harder edged sound, first to what I’d probably call progressive house and electro house, as well as techno in its various forms (which is definitely a bit of an acquired taste, especially for someone in my age group), and more recently, toward trance.

Now, I’ve liked a lot of trance for a long time, but for whatever reason, I’m really getting off on the sound at the moment. I still tend to prefer trance tracks that incorporate vocals and elements of more traditional song form. But even traditional instrumental trance that’s well-produced is increasingly getting my attention, and I continue to be struck by its similarities with classical music (rich textures, rises and falls in energy levels, and so forth).

In programming iDanceRadio.fm (and in my own DJ sets too), I work very hard to select tracks which, for lack of a better word to describe it, are “commercial.” There’s a lot of dance music out there, from artists who clearly put a lot of effort and passion into their work. Judging music is always very subjective, but I hear an awful lot of dance music that just, for lack of a better way to put it, lacks polish. The songwriting is pedestrian; the production screams that it was done by someone without a lot of experience; perhaps the engineering itself was off (it wasn’t mastered properly); or maybe the vocals are just badly sung or badly recorded.

But when a song is simply well-done, it catches my ear, and it doesn’t generally matter anymore whether it’s soft and squishy filter house, or the edgiest hardstyle techno, or various points in between. Quality is quality, and quality gets played… In my sets, and on iDanceRadio.fm.

The great thing is that quality comes from a lot of different places. It can come from a major artist on a major label, and it can come from the unknown trance producer barely out of high school working in his basement. It can come from California here in the U.S., and it can come from a small town in Austria.

The fun part about my job is discovering those gems and getting them heard. And the great thing about programming iDanceRadio.fm is that I’m never told what to play. The whole point is to provide tremendous variety in dance music styles. I have that luxury in a lot of the DJ’ing I do as well, and the good news is that there’s a lot of great material out there—regardless of what genre label you want to apply to it.

Keep listening.

Wes

Entry filed under: Dance Music, DJ Wesley Personal. Tags: .