MetaFilter posts tagged with House and techno

"On a moonless night, we watched the stars..."

empath — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:34:34 -0800

This week's Essential Mix features the 23 year old musical prodigy Mat Zo who takes you on a 70-track tour through almost every genre of uptempo dance music over the course of two hours, beautifully tied together with poetic quotes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

"I keep the tank in Wales, I don't bring it down my road..."

obscurator — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:35:12 -0800

Between 1987 and 2000, MTV Europe broadcast Party Zone, charting the frontier of European electronic music. For a primer, check the frenetic "mega mixes" of featured artists on Party Zone's exclusive R&S Records (alive and well). On a more coherent note, Party Zone occasionally featured live performances by Orbital, Mouse on Mars (1,2) and others. Video (and occasional) Interview jockey Simone Angel even sat down for a chat with Richard D. James [1h10m, interpsersed with heretofore unseen videos and live performances]. Richard D. James/Aphex Twin, previously

"Back in June, the Guardian gave it a go and in our opinion missed much of the point..."

beaucoupkevin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:30:59 -0800

DJHistory.com's list of 100 Greatest Dance Records may not be definitive or feature your favorite record, but it's hard to say that each and every record on there hasn't earned its place, from the Northern Soul swing of "The Clapping Song" to the post-ironic dancehall of "Pon De Floor." DJHistory.com sprung from the work of Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, whose books Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries are in the (woefully) shallow canon of intelligent, unpretentious writing about dance music.

Music is the answer.

empath — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:23:14 -0800

Do you like listening to DJ mixes? The Mixes DB has tens of thousands of them, going back 30 years, broken down by genre, radio show, club, artist. Most pages have the mix embedded. Here are the most popular. This was posted several years ago, but the streaming mixes from soundcloud and mixcloud are a recent addition.

"I find it quite inspiring to be made to dance"

empath — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:23:37 -0800

Need something to distract you from the howling winds outside? Here's two hours of gorgeous house, techno, disco and garage from Mercury-winner Jamie XX from the XX. (The actual mix starts at around 3:30) Download link here.

It's All Gone Pete Tong

empath — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:57:19 -0800

The top 50 dance records of the past 20 years. -- as selected by BBC radio DJs and 'industry leaders' and mixed by Jaguar Skills.

"There is not enough Africa in computers." - Brian Eno

empath — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:00:15 -0800

Often ignored when critics talk about the history of electronic dance music - "booty music" has long played an important role. Raw, bass-heavy, hyper-sexualized, its the exact opposite of the androgynous, slick techno and house that gets most of the attention. (all links NSFW, probably) Detroit Ghetto Techno, Chicago Booty House, Baltimore Club and Miami Bass are the best known regional variations in the US, but recently the sound has gone international, with Baile Funk exploding out of Rio De Janeiro and Kuduro (literally "big ass") music from Angola and Portugal taking over clubs all over the world. Even American acts are having success with the sound. The BBC recently put its stamp of approval on Kuduro by turning over the Essential Mix to Buraka Son Sistema, Lisbon's Kuduro superstars who threw down a raw 2 hour mix of up-to-the-second ghetto music from around the globe.

"I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape.”

empath — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:22:43 -0800

"Trance music" is not a new phenomenon. The ability for music to drive dancers into ecstatic frenzies has been known at least since Euripides. The Shakers got their name from the ecstatic behavior they exhibited when dancing to their simple, repetitive hymns. Voodoo rituals are built around complex, trance-inducing rhythms. It was well known that trance-dancing can produce ecstastic states, but until the later part of the 20th century, and the invention of the 'extended dance remix', it was rare for commercial music to reach for it. Perhaps the earliest example of modern trance music is the Donna Summer hit "I Feel Love". The vocals an almost wordless expression of desire, the song was driven by an unrelenting, mesmerizing Giorgio Moroder bassline that Brian Eno called "the sound of the future." Still a disco song, it had all the elements that would later be amplified by techno and house producers into the genre we call trance today -- repetitive, effects-laden synths, vocals that function more as sound than as meaning, a 4 to the floor beat and that constant, non-stop 16th-note rhythm. Once electronic synthesizers, particularly the Roland 303, made it from the studio onto the streets, the techno and house producers of Detroit and Chicago pushed the hypnotic sound further with the invention of Acid House Phuture - Acid Tracks, Fast Eddie - Acid Thunder
From here, the story jumps back across the pond to Europe, where acid house became the standard sound of the exploding rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s. Acid house mutated into a wide variety of styles and genres, but one particular strain was a bombastic and melodic mixture of acid house with more industrial sounds, which was already being called "Trance" by around 1990. KLF - What Time is Love, Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea, Age of Love - Age of Love Once it became a recognized genre, trance splintered into a few different paths -- the more minimal, techno oriented sound centered in Germany Humate - Love Simulation (Paul Van Dyk remix), Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar (Cosmic Baby remix), the wildly psychedelic sound popular in Israel and the resort island of Goa in India - Man With No Name - Teleport, Hallucinogen - LSD (and introduced to the UK in Oakenfold's legendary Goa Mix of 1994), the less complex, more commercial sound briefly popularized as Dream Trance in the US -- Bt - Flaming June, Robert Miles - Children, and the more subtle 'progressive' sound popularized by djs like Sasha and Digweed in the UK. Jam and Spoon - Stella, Space Manoeuvres - Stage One. By 1998 or 1999, a new style of trance called 'epic' erupted out of Holland, Belgium and Germany. Faster speeds, bigger melodies, longer breakdowns, it more or less eliminated any sense of restraint in search of pure euphoria. Rank 1 - Airwave, System F - Out of the Blue, Delirium - Silence (Tiesto mix), Belearic Bill - Destination Sunshine, Orkidea - Unity. It began to dominate the dance music landscape, more and more divorced from the underground clubs where it started -- to the point where Tiesto played the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. And some producers continued to push the sound harder and faster, merging with the harder variants of house and techno to form the new subgenre of 'hard dance'. Yoji Biomehanika - Theme From Bangin Globe, BK - Revolution. All of this triggered an underground backlash against any form of trance music, which has persisted. Trance music is far from dead, but there seems to be very little innovation right now pushing the sound forward.

A History of Techno

hadjiboy — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:36:07 -0800

The 25 Greatest Electronic Albums of the 20th Century. From the instrument that was created by Leon Theremin, to the Moog Guitar that's been named after the legendary Bob Moog (the inventor of the Moog Synthesizer), Electronic music has come a long way since its early days. YouTube [a, b, (extreme caution advised: graphic images of death, destruction and 9/11 c), d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y] (Previously mentioned here, here, here, here, here and here)

Essential.... essential.... essential...

empath — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:48:28 -0800

Since 1993, Pete Tong has been hosting the Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1. A group on imeem seems to have uploaded them all. Tracklistings here. Some of the best of all time: Carl Cox - 1996 (tracklisting), Paul Oakenfold - 1994 - (The Goa Mix) (TL), Leftfield - 1994 (TL). A few good ones from the last couple of years: Justice, (TL), Soulwax (TL), Eric Prydz (TL). And one of my personal favorites -- Scott Bond - 2000 (TL)

Travis Castillo's electronic music DJ and live PA archive.

loquacious — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:07:02 -0800

A massive collection of live DJ and PA sets of electronic music sorted by year and genre. Enjoy.
(Coral Cache link. Please use this to help archive and propagate the files.)

And my beat goes boom... tschak!

loquacious — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:45:02 -0800

WaxDJ.com - an excellent source for free downloads and streams of original electronic music mixes of all sorts, from seasoned pros to beginning bedroom amatuers, all told numbering in the hundreds or thousands. My current brand new favorite is the very diverse and well-versed Detriot/Chicago techno stylings of DJ Rubsilent. Recomended mix: Future Funk 23: (Direct MP3 link) (Streaming mp3 link) But don't let me divert you - search for your favorite local DJ or browse for new ones.