After weeks of venting on facebook statuses and other passive-aggressive mediums, i figure i should finally get around to writing a blog to complete the hipster circle of: Obscure music discovery > obsession with aforementioned obscure music > feeling slightly superior when other people dont know about incredible new music > disappointment as they do > fear as the music you love starts hitting the charts, signalling the eventual decline of something beautiful.
The song in question is Benediction - Hot Natured ft. Ali love, which may not be the most original track ever (please dont torch me hot natured fanatics but this isnt exactly groundbreaking stuff) but is incredibly catchy and, most importantly, shows a side of deep house which can be marketed to the masses. If anyone was going to be the first "deep" artist to hit the charts, it was going to be Jamie Jones. now the song in question is a good track - dont get me wrong on that front - but its the implications of it and the way the scene has changed in the past 6 months which worries me, as for one i dont think Jamie is going to be sacrificing his personal style for a shot at #1 chart topping hits. its the massive bunch of wankers which follow, not within the fans, but in the production side of things. I guess its because of a gig i did a month or so ago. small event in Shoreditch at a venue called Basing House (which is incredible), with a generally great crowd, but one guy in the smoking area did something i'd never seen before - he was trying to get laid by saying he was a "deep house producer". this is confusing on a few points - for one, he was bragging about being a producer. Since when was sitting inside staring at a computer screen for hours anything apart from uninteresting to a woman? he also looked far more like tanning booth than synth envelopes. the second thing was that he was using deep house as his "edgy" entry point of explaining what he made. judging by the outfit, dre beats, and general tone of assholery im willing to bet his was lacking in soul or groove. you can all go on about how i dont know who he was or what he made but im gonna put myself out there and saying hes not the next Maya or Julio.
There is still alot of good music out there. a lot. literal fucktons of it. but its just now the larger crowd have their scent on a particular sound, and soon it will be mined. and as they promote this new sound more and more, it will narrow, as they work out which sounds are the most popular, till eventually it is the only sound which anyone can play to attract people to the nights, and the only sound 90% of the fans want to hear. until everyone gets sick of that sound and looks for a new one. this has, as we can all see, just happened to Dubstep and will, inevitably, happen with deep house. when you have such an addictive and replicable sound, it attracts lots of people, and annoyingly, amateur producers looking to get big quickly. luckily i think we still have about 3 years before this properly hits the mainstream, much how Benga & Coki - Night paved the way for mainstream dubstep in peoples minds, bridging the gap between garage and dubstep, in the same way that Hungry for the power ripped up ibiza last year, bringing alot more people into the fold of Deep and Tech house.
I was quite lucky with my introduction to the scene. Lovebullets stage at Glasto 2010 hosted for the 3rd time with Jamie, where he brought together - in a pretty epic set - all of the tech house i was loving at the time with the new rawer deep grooving sound which has since become his trademark. i was lucky enough to be doing visuals next door, and we ended up with JJ playing at our afterparty, with about 30 of us in a tiny dome at half 8 in the morning... fast forward a year, and whilst my company provide lighting and lasers hes smashing it so hard (yet again with Lovebullets) that we had 8 steel barriers broken by a tiny 200 person arena in shangri la.
Its funny how times change...
enjoy a track which i still love
Caribou - Sun (Midland Re-Edit)
The song in question is Benediction - Hot Natured ft. Ali love, which may not be the most original track ever (please dont torch me hot natured fanatics but this isnt exactly groundbreaking stuff) but is incredibly catchy and, most importantly, shows a side of deep house which can be marketed to the masses. If anyone was going to be the first "deep" artist to hit the charts, it was going to be Jamie Jones. now the song in question is a good track - dont get me wrong on that front - but its the implications of it and the way the scene has changed in the past 6 months which worries me, as for one i dont think Jamie is going to be sacrificing his personal style for a shot at #1 chart topping hits. its the massive bunch of wankers which follow, not within the fans, but in the production side of things. I guess its because of a gig i did a month or so ago. small event in Shoreditch at a venue called Basing House (which is incredible), with a generally great crowd, but one guy in the smoking area did something i'd never seen before - he was trying to get laid by saying he was a "deep house producer". this is confusing on a few points - for one, he was bragging about being a producer. Since when was sitting inside staring at a computer screen for hours anything apart from uninteresting to a woman? he also looked far more like tanning booth than synth envelopes. the second thing was that he was using deep house as his "edgy" entry point of explaining what he made. judging by the outfit, dre beats, and general tone of assholery im willing to bet his was lacking in soul or groove. you can all go on about how i dont know who he was or what he made but im gonna put myself out there and saying hes not the next Maya or Julio.
There is still alot of good music out there. a lot. literal fucktons of it. but its just now the larger crowd have their scent on a particular sound, and soon it will be mined. and as they promote this new sound more and more, it will narrow, as they work out which sounds are the most popular, till eventually it is the only sound which anyone can play to attract people to the nights, and the only sound 90% of the fans want to hear. until everyone gets sick of that sound and looks for a new one. this has, as we can all see, just happened to Dubstep and will, inevitably, happen with deep house. when you have such an addictive and replicable sound, it attracts lots of people, and annoyingly, amateur producers looking to get big quickly. luckily i think we still have about 3 years before this properly hits the mainstream, much how Benga & Coki - Night paved the way for mainstream dubstep in peoples minds, bridging the gap between garage and dubstep, in the same way that Hungry for the power ripped up ibiza last year, bringing alot more people into the fold of Deep and Tech house.
I was quite lucky with my introduction to the scene. Lovebullets stage at Glasto 2010 hosted for the 3rd time with Jamie, where he brought together - in a pretty epic set - all of the tech house i was loving at the time with the new rawer deep grooving sound which has since become his trademark. i was lucky enough to be doing visuals next door, and we ended up with JJ playing at our afterparty, with about 30 of us in a tiny dome at half 8 in the morning... fast forward a year, and whilst my company provide lighting and lasers hes smashing it so hard (yet again with Lovebullets) that we had 8 steel barriers broken by a tiny 200 person arena in shangri la.
Its funny how times change...
enjoy a track which i still love
Caribou - Sun (Midland Re-Edit)
