Who's into house?

[Jazzmoose]

And doesn't THAT make me sound old that I would think eighties valley speak is current!

[JSngry]

That constant beat, doom doom doom doom doom doom....

Well ok, that right there tells me that we're talking at least partially about different types of dance music. I know the type stuff that image conjures, and it's not for me, not at all.

The stuff I've been getting into either doesn't have that heavy four-on-the-floor (broken beat is called that precisely because it doesn't have that - it's "beat" is "broken") or else has it, but not as the dominant factor.

Actually the steady four doesn't bother me if it's programmed as a cushion instead of a weapon (i've heard tracks where the damn thing sounds like a big soft sexy pillow trying to seduce you into falling into it, & I gotta tell you, there's a lot of times when I don't try hard to resist...but then there's the sledgehammer of submission pounding thuddy 4, with no air in the sound, no cushion to fall into, it basically just beats you into submission...hate that, and there's plenty of that too) and/or if it's used to serve as a rhythmic axis around which lots of other rhythmic things can pivot. there's plenty of that out there.

Of course, this is dance music, so there will be a pulse, a beat, that makes/ecourages it to be danceable by large groups of people. Other than as "commentary" it doesn't really make sense to make unsocial social music, does it? But on top of that, there is literally no limit on waht can be put, and it's here that the personal expression/creativity has really been coming out. You can put layer on top of layer, contrast them/pull them together, push/pull any way you see/hear fit, and ther really is no limit as to what can be used, including serious improvisation. It's still evolving, this music is, and I hope that it stays "underground", since right now, there is an audience for it that appears both appreciative and understanding of what is being done in at least general terms. Not all musics, especially popular ones, have that.

Anyways, there's something vaguely humorous and ironic about paranoia about a steady 4 bass drum emanating from a bunch of jazzheads like us, when the drummers in our music, including the great ones, did just that for more years than we care to think.

[catesta]

That constant beat, doom doom doom doom doom doom....

Well ok, that right there tells me that we're talking at least partially about different types of dance music. I know the type stuff that image conjures, and it's not for me, not at all.

The stuff I've been getting into either doesn't have that heavy four-on-the-floor (broken beat is called that precisely because it doesn't have that - it's "beat" is "broken") or else has it, but not as the dominant factor.

Well, okay, that makes more sense.

I guess I am referring to the more common or older type of "house". The shit made famous at the raves.

Good, for a minute there, I thought you lost your friggin' mind.

[Alexander]

And doesn't THAT make me sound old that I would think eighties valley speak is current!

That's MAD wack! :bwallace2:

[JSngry]

I guess I am referring to the more common or older type of "house". The shit made famous at the raves.

Not a fan of that stuff at all, and last I had heard "house music", that's what it was (apparenetly there's a difference between that and "techno", and I can hear it, but it's not a big enough difference for me to really care, it's about six of one, 1/2 dozen of the otehr afaic...). But that was then, this is now, and a lot has happened in the interim.

I will confess though - a little bit of the better (i.e. - nuanced) of that older-style stuff can sit well with me for a very short time - if/when I'm in the mood. But I'd fersure not get enthusiastic about it, especially in a jazz forum...

[MoGrubb]

Partee!

[Shrdlu]

Thanks for all the comments guys. I think it is a timely topic too.

I think this kind of music is very interesting, and it's given me a lot of pleasure over the last few months. And, as Jim said (I think it was Jim), it's not the stuff that you hear on the regular radio or in many clubs.

Over the last few days, I've been playing a lot of Darin Epsilon's long mixes. Wonderful stuff! There are tons of them on the site I posted.

Here are some more links:

http://www.cardamar.com/mixes.html

"Lucid Dreams" is a very good one on there, with an astonishing acoustic guitar solo right at the very end.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendID=29367179

"Fading Echoes" is excellent on that one, particularly the section where there is a girl singing a kind of chant. Normally, I'm not very keen on "drum and bass", partly because it's a bit too fast for me and ahead of the beat, but this is a very creative set.

On the topic of dancing, I also love to dance to house etc. I just turned 60 but I will go to a club for teens and 20s and dance for hours to it, so you guys in your 30s sure can. The kids in the clubs love to have me there and often join in with me and take pics and stuff, and group together and hug me. That's cos I behave myself there, lol.

[randyhersom]

E music has a 3 disc set called Bar Susu listed under Louie Vega's name, any good?

[Man with the Golden Arm]

I, for one, can't stand that old redundant house beat. It's amost comic that it can actually prompt a dancefloor.

For me the latin side of the house with all the smells of good cookin' is the only place to congregate.

FWIW I was listening to a Gilles Peterson podcast and he made mention that a new Nuyorican Soul is supposedly in the works (that's not redundant).

The first is essential for any collection - Hilton Ruiz on the B-3 along w/ Eddie Palmieri and Tito not to mention India with a good cigar! - and now Jim's got me wondering about the 2CD experience.

[catesta]

I, for one, can't stand that old redundant house beat. It's amost comic that it can actually prompt a dancefloor.

You mean, you don't like hearing, doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...., over and over again?

Somebody pass me a clove cigarette.

[JSngry]

I, for one, can't stand that old redundant house beat. It's amost comic that it can actually prompt a dancefloor.

You mean, you don't like hearing, doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...., over and over again?

There's more than enough house/dance music for which that's pretty much all there is. My daughter is into so-called "Euro Beat" & "Tech Para", and god...give me strength. Or selective total deafness...

There's also more than enough where that is but one part of the overall fabric, and what else is in there is pretty darn interesting, creative, detailed, and in no way predictable.

The thing I've found is that to really, really hear this stuff, you either gotta dance to it or listen to it. Unlike so much jazz (espoecially the "comfortable" stuff), you can't (I can't, anyway), have it on and just sorta listen to it, or have it on in the background. The detail is much too subtle to come out through casual listening. If you don't/won't/can't engage it fairly fully, it'll quite often end up sounding all the same, because at that casual a level of listening, what is most likely heard will sound all the same.

I've heard cuts that at first just sound like the boom boom boom boom with some little something else going on, and then I put the headphones on, check out the details, and it's like WHOA!!! It's not at all uncommon to hear stuff with 3,4, even 5 different hi-hat patterns going on simultaneously, 2-3 different snare drum sounds. all sorts of percussion things, 2-3 different keyboard patterns, all this rhythmic & textural & sonic diversity pushing & pulling & throbbing against itself, and hey - suddenly the 4 on the floor bass drum is the last thing I hear! And it's the same thing when I dance to it (unlike Shrdlu, I have neither the inclination nor the opportunity to be a "public" dancer, so I do mine either in private, or in my subliminal body), all those details just come out, the physical/mental engatgement in the music creates an entirely different receptive perspective than does the objective "listening". this music demands involvement!

Besides, anybody who wonders where all the great female soul singers have gone, the REAL Soul singers, not the "divas" who get by and over on sheer 'tude masquerading as musiciality, needs to check out the house. Jocelyn Brown all by herself would be enough, but she's not by herself!!!

Thing is, there seems to be just so damn much of this stuff, and the quality really does range from sublime to godawfully horrendous. And I have no idea who's heard what, so whenever somebody says they've "heard it", well, who knows what, and who knows if they've really heard it or just think they have? Not that I really care that much any more, because I know what I've heard, and variously voiced suspicions over the last year or so to the contrary, I have in no way lost either my mind or my musical discernment.

In fact, it's precisely because of my musical discernment that it really bugs me to hear blanket, simplistic condemnations of an entire genre of music when I know that those condemnations are neither fair nor accurate in regard to quite a bit of the music under attack, even if for all I know, they may be a 1000% accurate assessment of the specific items which have been heard. And yeah, I've been to trendy clubs where the sound is painfully loud and the substance coming out of the sound even more painfully empty. But....that's not all there is to this music. It's just not.

[JSngry]

FWIW I was listening to a Gilles Peterson podcast and he made mention that a new Nuyorican Soul is supposedly in the works (that's not redundant).

The first is essential for any collection - Hilton Ruiz on the B-3 along w/ Eddie Palmieri and Tito not to mention India with a good cigar! - and now Jim's got me wondering about the 2CD experience.

Oh, it's worth it all right. Some other MAW tunes stemming from the same time/vibe, and some really lusicous expansions/mixes of some of the original material.

And if you wanna get hardcore (and I did...), there's a Japanese release of still further remixes/etc. and that one's maybe the best of the bunch, featuring as it does Roni size's epic drum 'n' bass remix of "It's Alright, I Feel It". That one's pricey and difficult to find, but...

[rockefeller center]

Not House, anyway:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Cq_QO_4Cx4

[rockefeller center]

[JSngry]

Bugz In The Attic soundcheck: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uzVUp-Uz3Uo

[Joe G]

Bugz In The Attic soundcheck: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uzVUp-Uz3Uo

Sounds great to me!

[JSngry]

The more casually you listen, the more monotonous it becomes...

[JSngry]

Bugz In The Attic soundcheck: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uzVUp-Uz3Uo

Sounds great to me!

Bugz is quite the crew, individually & collectively!

[JSngry]

Bugz is a live band (of varying size) as well as a DJ crew:

Tell em you don't hear at least a little bit of Get Up With It-era Miles in the vibe of this stuff...

[JSngry]

Cool song (check out the harmonies that keep threatening to escape reality at any second ), cool dance:

[Joe G]

Cool song (check out the harmonies that keep threatening to escape reality at any second ), cool dance:

Very cool. My man can shake a leg!

[Joe G]

Bugz is a live band (of varying size) as well as a DJ crew:

Tell em you don't hear at least a little bit of Get Up With It-era Miles in the vibe of this stuff...

That groove is very "on top of the beat", don't you agree? Not a bad thing, but that's a charateristic I've noticed before in this music.

Looks like a fun party, that's fo sho.

[Joe G]

Cool song (check out the harmonies that keep threatening to escape reality at any second ), cool dance:

Very cool. My man can shake a leg!

Gave it a couple more listens ... at first I didn't think so highly of some of the sonic choices being made - synth bass and all that. But man, there is some BAD shit happening in that tune, especially going into and including the section with the "da da dee da" vocal line (would still like to hear a tight band with say Gene Perez on bass doin' it). Do they have other stuff this good?

[JSngry]

That groove is very "on top of the beat", don't you agree? Not a bad thing, but that's a charateristic I've noticed before in this music.

That's an issue I've been contemplating from the git-go, and I'm not so sure but that rather than being on top of the beat, it's maybe a sign of the (new) times that the place where the beat "is" has now tightened up to better facilitate finding all the places in-between it.

Really, after some of JB's more radical grooves, if you're going to continue to play that game of perpetual/infinite bounce, the only way to do it is to "tighten up". Maybe. But I think that's what's going on, and it doesn't make me uncomfortable, at least not when I can still find and feel and get inside a pocket.

[JSngry]

Cool song (check out the harmonies that keep threatening to escape reality at any second ), cool dance:

Very cool. My man can shake a leg!

Gave it a couple more listens ... at first I didn't think so highly of some of the sonic choices being made - synth bass and all that. But man, there is some BAD shit happening in that tune, especially going into and including the section with the "da da dee da" vocal line (would still like to hear a tight band with say Gene Perez on bass doin' it). Do they have other stuff this good?

Oh, the synth bass thing I've made my peace with a long time ago, so long as it's "of a piece" with the overall groove as it is here.

But yeah, Gene Perez on this would be a gas. Gene Perez on damn near anything is a gas!

Jazzanova, hey, yeah, those guys got it goin' on. The have one full-length album that I know of, and it's good but not great (and it contains that song from the YouTube clip). Their real strength has been in doing remixes, some really killer stuff there. I'd recommend these (both available from D.G. Bastard & Suns):