Best Ever Albums

Re: House Music

NowhereMan — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 06:06:04 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/03/2014 10:06

antaios wrote:

Man, I was again talking about WEATlauncher. :lol:

Oh wow. I'll shut the door behind me.

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:55:22 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:55

satiemaniac wrote:

i was on my phone and "out of the house." meant to say deadmau5

Well, deadmau5 makes house music, there's no doubt about that. Whether it's 'real', if you look at random album title or for lack of a better name, I'd say yes. 4x4=12 is already a bit mixed with other genres. album title goes here is just a shitty album. And now he's just doing whatever he likes. As for the song 'I said': I don't doubt about the fact that that's real house music (at least it's real dance music). And deadmau5 certainly doesn't make pop music with an electronic beat, like 'let's make a song with a country band' XD

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:51:40 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:51

satiemaniac wrote:

Yeah, I'll get the archive done tonight and try to have a list attached by tomorrow night/Monday morning, depending on how busy I end up being tomorrow. I'll make the album list a separate post and link to existing posts in the IDM thread from them for ease of whoever takes the helm on the House thread.

I would really appreciate feedback via PM (so as to not derail the IDM thread) on formatting/comprehensibility/length from you and anyone else taking serious interest in the Genre Extravaganza project so I can do as good of a job as possible.

Sounds good, satie! I'll shoot you a PM later but essentially you can just use the first two Genre Extravaganza threads - American Primitive and IDM - as guides regarding "formatting/comprehensibility/length." At this point, every contributor is actually encouraged to post however they see fit. I want to make room for maximal use of creativity. More importantly perhaps, especially at this stage in the project, I don't want any concerns regarding "formatting/length" to discourage people from posting. Thanks!!!

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:45:31 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:45

NowhereMan wrote:

I'm 20 darling, don't be bashful!

Man, I was again talking about WEATlauncher. 🤣

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:30:03 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:30

RepoMan wrote:

I know it's imperfect, but the IDM thread would be the best place to archive this currently (until we get to House).

Sounds good.

Quote:

Satie, do you mind doing this (i.e. adding what you feel are the crucial posts in this thread to the IDM thread)? Please include what you feel are the crucial/essential House albums as well. I saw that NoWaxJim and joyofdivision had some good posts/suggestions too.

Re: House Music

NowhereMan — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:24:22 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:24

WEATLauncher wrote:

Hello people of the BEA forums, my name is Weatton and I was curious if anyone knows any good house songs as I enjoy the genre very much!

Here are some examples of songs that I enjoy from the Genre

One Night - Vicetone Remix by Matthew Koma
Illuminate - Afrojack and Matthew Koma
Alone - Amin van Buuren
Apollo - Hardwell
Levels - Avicii
Alive - Krewella
Animals - Martin Garrix

French house stuff
Daft punk
Justice

Post songs I should listen too, and please no ambient or dubstep :mrgreen:

Reckon our recommendations will sort you out for a bit then?

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:15:44 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:15

EDIT: This was in response to someone's post. I won't name them, as they deleted it, but they essentially asked me why people should GAF about history when they (the hypothetical listener, not this user) view it as party music.

When that "party music" is derived from music that is inseparable from the history of solidarity of LGBTQ and black American communities against shifting forms of prejudice and oppression throughout the last decades of the 20th century, I think the history is essential to know. It's the same reason I feel that the blues are a vital genre to explore - their formal structure and musicological features are inseparable from sociological context and the entirety of the historical narrative of the peoples across the southern United States who utilized them. If we're getting really macro- on the topic, it's why I feel musicological bickering, historicizing, etc. is as important as documenting wars or philosophy: these tools fundamentally shift the tides of history in interaction with one another. And when you talk to baby boomers about rock music, they feel that way. When you talk to a lot of contemporary African-Americans, they see hip hop as the latest iteration of a musical form that resisted and continues to resist a status quo where there is not true equality (be it Public Enemy's or Kanye West's political statements as direct protest or more hedonistic forms of rap as touchstones for cultural identity and representation in the mainstream [or, more accurately in the Tipper Gore days, subversion of the sensibilities of the mainstream]). Electronic music is also viewed this way by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, all for as many different reasons as there are different forms of electronic music. Why, then, are Western music journalists so complacent in the erasure of the history from contemporary house (or, for that matter, the stupidity of pretending house disappeared and was resurrected recently by EDM or Disclosure's deep house or whatever... but deep house is an even more focused discussion that gets my blood boiling a lot more 'cause it's an openly dismissive environment centering on pop charts instead of what's actually going on in the scene within the music journalism sphere). In short, listeners can choose to be ignorant as much as they want, but the historicization we're erecting is not right, factually or morally, and listeners have a lot more investment in the "stories" of their music than I think you give them credit for - hell, we're on a website called Best Ever Albums, where we seek to parse different perspectives and paradigms to create a more holistic view of what the best albums in history are. The ambition of the project we've chosen to be a part of (getting dramatic here but you know what I mean) is enough to justify my quickness to point out these stories, in my opinion.

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 05:12:31 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 09:12

^^^^

Great exchange, satie and Graeme!!!

I would love to see this exchange (especially posts #34 - #38) get archived in the Genre Extravaganza project so that it doesn't get buried.

I know it's imperfect, but the IDM thread would be the best place to archive this currently (until we get to House).

Satie, do you mind doing this (i.e. adding what you feel are the crucial posts in this thread to the IDM thread)? Please include what you feel are the crucial/essential House albums as well. I saw that NoWaxJim and joyofdivision had some good posts/suggestions too.

Archiving informed, respectful & intelligent exchanges like this was one of the reasons behind the Genre Extravaganza project.

Re: House Music

Graeme2 — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 04:36:45 GMT

Author: Graeme2

Posted: 08/03/2014 08:36

satiemaniac wrote:

I'll just clean up a few points since we're in agreement and leave this for others to read. First of all, thanks for the tip on Greg Wilson. Second, fair re: Frankie Knuckles. I listen to him a ton and those influences are there; I just always regard him as house with those influences so you weren't making the disco mention explicit enough for a dumb person like me. 😜 Third, yeah, Daft Punk is more a placeholder for the music media's reaction to them/elevation of them. They seem like charming enough folks, and you're absolutely spot on in that they call a lot of attention to their influences. I think their music is pretty shit, but they're not the problem, as you said, personally. And yeah, I was hardly trying to make house a "black thing" vs. a "white thing," just meant to emphasize that the myriad "black things" about it are being flattened and obscured if not completely excised by music journalists today. Thanks for the fun talk and the blog-reading Homework (pun intended, but you knew that). ;)

Good stuff. It's a shame if people can't open their eyes like the journalists you mention. I've just ordered bill brewsters book 'last night a DJ saved my life' which is about all this. I've meant to get it for years but this has given me the inspiration to get it. To go with the other hundred I need to read ha.

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 04:20:25 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 08:20

I'll just clean up a few points since we're in agreement and leave this for others to read. First of all, thanks for the tip on Greg Wilson. Second, fair re: Frankie Knuckles. I listen to him a ton and those influences are there; I just always regard him as house with those influences so you weren't making the disco mention explicit enough for a dumb person like me. 😜 Third, yeah, Daft Punk is more a placeholder for the music media's reaction to them/elevation of them. They seem like charming enough folks, and you're absolutely spot on in that they call a lot of attention to their influences. I think their music is pretty shit, but they're not the problem, as you said, personally. And yeah, I was hardly trying to make house a "black thing" vs. a "white thing," just meant to emphasize that the myriad "black things" about it are being flattened and obscured if not completely excised by music journalists today. Thanks for the fun talk and the blog-reading Homework (pun intended, but you knew that). 😉

Re: House Music

Graeme2 — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 04:05:25 GMT

Author: Graeme2

Posted: 08/03/2014 08:05

satiemaniac wrote:

Well, seeing as the evolution we're seeing is distinctly European electronic influences coming back with a vengeance in the US, I don't think it's outlandish to cite the LGBTQ-dominated Hi-NRG scenes in Germany as well as the US black American house influences that, as you so rightly point out, made a bigger splash in Europe, as major contributors to the evolution of the sound that now is so popular. "The 70s influential electronic music" bit bugs me a lot. Yes, progressive electronic music was a major stepping stone for electronic music as a whole. Many a DJ, black, white, or other, cites Kraftwerk as a perennial influence. But to completely off-handedly ignore disco as a MAJOR MAJOR phenomenon, in the US and abroad, and again as a MAJOR rallying point for communities of color and of LGBTQ individuals is ludicrous. Bringing it back to the music, I challenge you to find a single house DJ with major influence through the '80s and '90s who was not influenced, directly or indirectly, by the likes of Walter Gibbons and Larry Levan. Were they the only disco artists making splashes? No. Were only black Americans making important disco music? The entire Dinosaur L project says no (and others probably do, too - here I default to ignorance in that the only disco I can think of off the top of my head made by a white producer was a project that in its time had much more regional than worldwide influence), but they were making the majority, and looking at the court of public opinion was my main point. In the '70s, disco was viewed as trash in the US, and sure that had a lot to do with hokey white folks making it into a mockery with silly movies and sillier dances, but it had a lot more to do, in my opinion and many others', with racial tension. Yeah, hair metal was a major cultural landmark, but do you really think that had nothing to do with race? I surely don't see that tension as the ONLY contributing factor, but I don't find it outrageous to point out the masses' hypocrisy in, even today, dismissing disco music yet LOVING Random Access Memories (or at least the critical establishment of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, etc.).

Ultimately, my problem is this: I don't even seek to right the wrongs of history and tell white Americans from the '70s to undo the disco burning. Fuck it. What I do seek, however, is for these punk-ass little DJs who make, let's face it, vapid music for drug-obsessed hedonists viewing themselves as modern hippies (God help us) to stop erasing the cultural scenes forged by LGBTQ and black American communities as the historical forebearers of the music that has made them so fucking rich and important. I want people's "vintage house" to stop being Daft God Damn Punk. Just as rock music was hardly started in the '50s by Elvis Presley, house music was NOT started by two French people with funny hats. I am passionate about it because it is an active historically revisionist campaign that mirrors very closely the erasure of blues musicians from the historical record of rock music. Rock music even today is just starting to actually acknowledge the influence of the blues (instead of shorthand lazy "There's blues influence but fuck me if I've listened to the shit. By the way, have you heard of these massively original Led Zeppelin guys?") and I wish that in a world with immediate access to this information that people were at least respectful enough to give credit where it is due. Shit, house music has always been about paying props to your influences and playing around with it. Increasingly, it is becoming a genre of massive cults of personalities erected around "singular geniuses" like Flume or Disclosure or whatever. To put this into yet another comparable situation, imagine if hip hop history were traced to Kraftwerk without acknowledgment of the influence of jazz musicians. People with brains and consciences would be fucking livid. Anyway, thank you for your contribution to the thread. You do bring up incredibly good points and I'm not looking to pick a fight with the vitriolic language I've used (as I intend it as more an outward energy of frustration than a focused attack). You clearly have good knowledge of the history of house music. Don't you want others to see what's behind the Daft Punk curtain, as well?

Think we probably agree. Great post. And race probably has a factor in it for the mainstream 80s media. Just look at hip hop, it really took beastie boys and run dmc with aerosmith to break it to the MTV mainstream. I did mention disco. The dj widely credited as the first real house dj was frankie knuckles who played loads of disco but also Italo, post punk and rock even. I've read loads about the formations of it, a fascinating subject like the formations of hip hop. But the formations of house (not even including the British who actually broke the sound out) was as much a white thing as black. I think that's one reason it was loved initially it was seen as bringing people together, white, black, gay whatever. There's a lot on myths about the start of house and the biggest according to seminal dj Greg wilson (check his blog), is the myth that djs oakenfold, Rampling, holloway brought house to the uk after a holiday in Ibiza. This is quoted again and again by people but Wilson states tht house music nights in Manchester were going way before that and they were actually all black affairs but this has been written out of history. not daft punks fault though as they are always more than happy to say who has influenced then, as mentioned by someone they did a song called teachers and name checked them. By the way, I don't really like house music after the 80s.

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 03:37:34 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 07:37

Graeme2 wrote:

What's colour got to do with it? Anyways the origins of house were as much white as black. The 70s influential electronic music was nearly all made by whites, the influential new york djs who pioneered the sound by mixing post punk, disco, Italo etc were mostly non white. Anyways although the actual makers of the first actual house music were black american, they were virtually ignored and unheard of in their own country, but became stars in the uk that really embraced the whole house thing. Since the massive uk house boom of the late 80s, house and dance music has been mainstream. Not in America though, seems they only heard about it when daft punk made their 2nd album. I don't think race has anything to do with the reason the US didn't take to house for many years, maybe just stupid. All the cool people in NY etc were down with it anyways, the masses just wanted hair metal.

Re: House Music

Graeme2 — Sun, 3 Aug 2014 03:17:31 GMT

Author: Graeme2

Posted: 08/03/2014 07:17

satiemaniac wrote:

That list is a shitshow that summarizes the wholesale erasure of the actual forefathers of house music because the majority of them were LGBTQ and/or people of color (in American scenes, mainly black). It disgusts me that when these people made disco, (white) Americans BURNED the music, but when a couple white French guys try their hand it gets a Grammy. It pisses me off that house music was relegated to underground clubs for weirdos until white people figured out how to make it into a cost-prohibitive industry of excess to market to frat boys.

/rant

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 22:24:22 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/03/2014 02:24

antaios wrote:

No, of course skrillex isn't house music. It's EDM/dubstep. But he makes nicer beats than Avicii or any dutch dj that WEATlauncher brought up (and he's more original in his style). But how do you come up with skrillex anyway?

i was on my phone and "out of the house." meant to say deadmau5

Re: House Music

NowhereMan — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:58:58 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:58

antaios wrote:

haha, the poor child (I'm gonna laugh so hard if he turns out to be older than me 🫢 ).
But I agree on the fact that we're getting off-topic.

I'm 20 darling, don't be bashful!

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:58:13 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:58

NowhereMan wrote:

I've said it quite a lot on here recently.

Genre interpretation is a massive problem - there's too many and is now leading us off on a tangent which is not helping the guy who asked for recommendations.

Surely just use the list he gave us at the start as the measure as to what to recommend the kid?

A brief burst, apologies.

haha, the poor child (I'm gonna laugh so hard if he turns out to be older than me 🫢 ).
But I agree on the fact that we're getting off-topic.

Re: House Music

Anonymous — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:53:38 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:53

noWaxJim wrote:

The problem here is how people are interpreting what constitutes 'house music'.

Satiemaniac is absolutely right in so far as the 'original' Chicago house music of Knuckles, Levan et al go. For an 80s child like me there was always something wildly sexy about tracks like French Kiss - most of the modern stuff that has been mentioned are pale, euro-pop comparisons which bar the beat strip everything away from what was so exciting about the genre in the first place.

You've also go to be careful how you catagorise Daft Punk - personally Homework is the album that fits most neatly into the house genre (check out the track Teachers, where Lil Louis and a number of other house innovators are mentioned, along with the likes of Joey Beltram (Techno), George Clinton (Funk) and so on). The closest to house DP get would be Bangalter's solo stuff on Roule Records - Trax On Da Rocks, Club Soda, etc. Also worth checking out Alan Braxe and early Cassius if you like that sort of thing. Oh, and this piece of genius:

Super Discount by Étienne De Crécy

Some of the acts mentioned this far are so far from house it's ridiculous, however a lot of this has to do with the OPs original list of tracks. Could Josh Wink's Higher States Of Consciousness be classed as house? Acid house, yes. Chicago house? No.

Jack to the sound of the underground, friends. This chart based bollocks is for Ibiza piss heads and darlings on Charlie.

BTW - JoD's pick of Ricardo Villalobos... Genius record.

Well said.
Though dp's discovery and H.A.A. are still house, but it's mixed with a lot of other stuff, but it's certainly still made with the house formula. But I understand that those albums don't fit in the regular house genre.

Etienne de Crecy is great stuff btw.

Re: House Music

NowhereMan — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:45:06 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:45

I've said it quite a lot on here recently.

Genre interpretation is a massive problem - there's too many and is now leading us off on a tangent which is not helping the guy who asked for recommendations.

Surely just use the list he gave us at the start as the measure as to what to recommend the kid?

A brief burst, apologies.

Re: House Music

NowhereMan — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:42:54 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:42

antaios wrote:

It was probably because of the avicii-part. So you can cancel your therapist meetings :mrgreen:

🤣

Re: House Music

Jimmy Dread — Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:40:26 GMT

Author: Jimmy Dread

Posted: 08/02/2014 22:40

The problem here is how people are interpreting what constitutes 'house music'.

Satiemaniac is absolutely right in so far as the 'original' Chicago house music of Knuckles, Levan et al go. For an 80s child like me there was always something wildly sexy about tracks like French Kiss - most of the modern stuff that has been mentioned are pale, euro-pop comparisons which bar the beat strip everything away from what was so exciting about the genre in the first place.

You've also go to be careful how you catagorise Daft Punk - personally Homework is the album that fits most neatly into the house genre (check out the track Teachers, where Lil Louis and a number of other house innovators are mentioned, along with the likes of Joey Beltram (Techno), George Clinton (Funk) and so on). The closest to house DP get would be Bangalter's solo stuff on Roule Records - Trax On Da Rocks, Club Soda, etc. Also worth checking out Alan Braxe and early Cassius if you like that sort of thing. Oh, and this piece of genius: