When you’ve liked electronic music for a number of years, there comes a certain shame in listening to a mainstream dance music track. Admitting you think a certain Avicii song isn’t bad (or has a catchy melody) comes with that voice in the back of your head going, “But that’s [...]
Often times, too much attention is focused on the wrong things. Perhaps, it is due to lack of knowledge or perhaps it is due to complete ignorance splashed with a greater than the averaged sized ego. But whatever the reason may be, it’s about time to re-focus on the right [...]
Is there a fine line between cheating your musical audience out of an experience and educating them on something new? Has our culture bred entertainment consumers that want to hear what they want, when they want, to the point that everyone is their own DJ and are unappeasable when they [...]
Within the scope of dance music in cinema, the fan almost seems secondary. But for the pieces that do focus on the fan perspective, from Depeche Mode documentary 101 to Human Traffic and even Second Summer of Love footage, the audience senses the subjects’ passion for the sounds. Unfortunately, for [...]
By this point, you’ve likely heard about the three electronic music festivals coming to Detroit in mid 2014. Movement – the successor in name to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, or simply DEMF – returns from May 24 to 26, while DEMF has been resurrected as a free event. A [...]
After a long weekend behind the decks I came home with mixture of pride and defeat. In the span of two separate 6 hour gigs I had discovered music in my library I had forgotten, laughed with friends, pulled off some clever mixes, marinated my liver, lost sleep, tore up [...]
Antithetical conflicts have mired the rise of electronic dance music. Too much pop sounds and collaborations, attention to the wrong releases, and just press a space bar assumptions play off the popularity a genre long underground is now experiencing. The latest issue? What, exactly, to call the genre. A snipe [...]
It’s rare that I fall in love with a band as quickly as I did with Ultraísta, but when you consider the lineup, it sort of makes sense. At the keys is UK producer Nigel Godrich, best known for producing the music of Radiohead, on drums is Joey Waronker, who has [...]
Europe is arguably the home of dance music and also home to much of the art and fashion that has been innovative for centuries. America may be catching up on the EDM scene, but it is here that it all started and in many ways dance music is so a [...]
I’ve got one word for ya – DIY. Call it freedom of expression, self-engagement, or just plain old democracy, but the do-it-yourself movement highly characterizes the electronic music scene right now. Accessibility, education and technology make musical composition as simple as – yes – the touch of a button. While [...]