Finding the Rhythm

These days, I’m pretty well pelted by new dance music from all sides. It’s a good problem to have, as a lover of dance music, but it has a down side, in that listening to as many as a few hundred new songs each week (hundreds and hundreds of tracks, if you include multiple mixes of the same song) takes either a lot of time, or you tend to make hasty decisions about songs. Some weeks it’s former, some weeks it’s the latter.

It’s nice to know that there are PR and promotions people out there doing their jobs. Over the weekend, I was contacted by one of them representing Dare 2 B Dif’rnt, an act out of New York. Their most recent release, There’s Somethin’ in the Air (I’m sorta getting these guys like aopstrophes) came across my desk in November. For whatever reason, I did choose to program it on iDanceRadio.fm, but never pulled any extended mixes to include in DJ sets.

So after being prompted by the PR gal, I took a second look, and I’m not sure why I didn’t decide to spin this track when it first came around. I’ll start.

What I’m sorta finding out about myself is that a lot of things color my musical impressions… Mood, how tired I might be, whatever is going through my head when the song plays, and the fact that even on a good day, it often requires hearing a song 2 or 3 times before forming an opinion about it, which is time I just don’t have. All are reasons why, when someone happens to encourage me to pay attention to a specific song, and I’ve previously dismissed it, I always take another listen.

Invariably it’s a promotions person, or a label rep, or whatever. Harry Towers, who as Deet Promotions is one of a handful of promoters in the dance space (he’s also a mixshow jock on the radio station), has been working with CAPP Records for months now. But when he recently took some time out to ask me about the songs he’s currently repping, embarrassingly, I was only familiar off-hand with about 40% of them.

Of course, I don’t like all of them, but that’s not really the point. One track in particular, Tod Miner’s Luv ‘n’ Music, was one of those I’d dismissed. After Harry’s prompting, I took another listen. While some of the mixes still don’t appeal me, a couple of them did on a re-listen, and I’m adding it to the radio rotation, as well as playing it in DJ sets now. So much for hasty decisions; clearly they can’t be trusted.

In any case, it is what it is. I’ll review what I get, make decisions (invariably quick ones) as I have the time available, and thankfully committed artists, producers, labels and promoters who reach out will continue to get me to slow down on their priorities.

Maybe I’m a music ho, or it’s the dance industry ecosystem at work. Not sure which.