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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0226/hunter.php =A0=A0
Posted June 24th, 2002 4:30 PM
Dance Music Accesses an Unseparatist Pop Sensibility
Lifestyles of the Rhythm
by James Hunter
ime was, people loved or ignored or scoffed at dance records the same way
they bought or didn't buy other kinds of pop records. The music would come
from a singer like Donna Summer, say, during disco's '70s commercial peak.
Or, during the '80s, when dance music flaunted an exotic-obscure vibe, an
outfit like the Montreal duo Lime. Or a soulful Italian production concern
like Change, which occasionally would show up on the U.S. r&b charts.
But during the '90s, with the rise of techno in England and its more
open-ended and mostly marketing-derived relative electronica in the U.S.,
Things Seriously Changed. Songy stars like Summer, the rare
techno-identified face like Rozalla notwithstanding, were out. The old
exotic-obscure vibe grew increasingly moot as techno and electronica
operated from the perspective that both existed as large-scale movements,
even if U.S. radio and TV didn't always program and party with them as
willingly as did their U.K. and continental counterparts. And as for sharin=
g
chart real estate, contemporary forms of soul music=8Bhip-hop and r&b, those
American worlds connected by raging industry ambition, cell phones, and
jewelry, not to mention a furiously fruitful musical back-and-forth=8Busually
seemed oblivious to techno and electronica's repetitive rhythms, not to
mention its Brit-Euro passions for really cool T-shirts and unfindable
Japanese sneakers.=20
International dance music, though, took neither the U.S. indifference nor
the attempted U.S. biz exploitation nor the U.S. pop annexation of its
devices lying down. Instead, it built an impressively sturdy, dramatically
potent medium-sized little world for itself and continued to repeat beats.
And repeat beats. And repeat beats: The establishment of the legend of the
DJ=8Bthe Oakenfold-Van Helden-Digweed mold of a mere guy with (almost always)
superhuman aural-rhythmic sense and concomitant taste and ability to spin
(and, on occasion, electronically doctor) records in clubs from New York to
Cairo to S=E3o Paulo=8Bbegan to define the ordinary record-buyer's experience o=
f
dance music proper: This was the real stuff, not the flavoring that
DJ-remixers often bestowed upon releases by rock and pop stars.
DJ compilations took over, becoming the usual way in which people consumed
dance music. Occasionally, these albums emerged, on their own terms, as
efficient or canny or even artistically superb; other times they were like
sonic space-fillers. Make no mistake, however: Whatever the genre highs,
future generations will remember these collections as recorded artifacts
that were, while perhaps not as odd as, say, gravely serious late-'60s
instruction records like How to Train Your Dog, still pretty strange
animals. They are shows by invisible DJ magicians at work during an era whe=
n
almost all dance stars had, like servants in a ghost movie, vanished.
Except a few. In the mid '90s, no dance music came on with greater rock
ambitions than the Chemical Brothers'. Unlike the trance-mad DJs who
succeeded them in profile by decade's end, the English duo never tried to
make the experience of doing long geometry proofs into the sonic equivalent
of tantric sex. Although the Chemicals were infrequently as blunt as, say,
Fatboy Slim or Propellerheads in turning electronica respectively into rock
or pop, they built big beats anyway (then backed away from them). And,
especially as they were rangy white guys with fried hair, the U.S. rock
press adopted them enthusiastically as Moby's eccentric English cousins. Th=
e
Chemicals' acclaimed recent Come With Us (Astralwerks), characteristically,
recruits non-dance collaborators like Richard Ashcroft and Beth Orton, and =
a
piece like the tellingly named "Star Guitar" marvelously impersonates
Coldplay as a quartet of loud horseflies. And, to be fair, interesting
technological energies animate songs like "Hoops" and the jizzy "Denmark."
But Come With Us is mostly just OK, a well-crafted soundtrack to being the
Chemical Brothers.=20
Which stasis, as techno purists always implied, is one of stardom's consume=
r
risks: When recordings don't have the option of relying on their artists'
personae=8Bwhen they can never bank on someone pulling out a wallet just to
find out what verbal crap Alanis is actually taking credit for, or what dru=
m
sound Lenny's surrounding himself with these days=8Bthere's likely more
attention paid to the music itself. Consider Herbert, an English
producer-writer immersed but not defined by Kruder & Dorfmeister's great
Austrian downbeat music, and a tiny star at best. His Around the House
(!K7), a reissue of an album he made before debuting in the U.S. in 2001
with the jazzy Bodily Functions, is skeletal and quiet techno warmly warped
into fragments and memories and shadows of actual pop songs; it's
Satie-scaled, at times, but never inaccessible=8Bjust weirdly, alluringly
toned. All of a sudden, a brushy female voice will arrive to flip her hair
and sing "The Last Beat" like Heather Nova at her most drained; the next
minute, the music=8Band the singer=8Bwill scat.
So the question remains: Where goes a genre that is queasy about stars and
beset with a gazillion shifting style denominations meaningful only to club
professionals? Lately, accessing a pop sensibility that's always been the
flip side of dance separatism, beatworld collections have gone lifestyle.
Tired of trekking across various time zones with trance DJs and the vibey
yet unhummable tracks they sequence? Settle back into one of the most chic
enclaves of Paris! That's what the four volumes of H=F4tel Costes offer: the
fantasy that, with the insertion of a single CD, you are a guest at one of
the city's hippest accommodations, awash in the sounds of gifted remixer
St=E9phane Pompougnac. Where the packaging of a trance DJ set promises, "Yes,
you too can jet to Istanbul this weekend," the Costes collections ease the
dance experience into Second Empire sofas, into the relatively far more
sedentary world of cocktail hours and glossy magazines.
The cover of the current H=F4tel Costes Quatre (MSI Music) depicts the backli=
t
gorgeous face of a young woman with Chanel lips, her eyes covered by her
hands, themselves covered by a pair of artfully designed and crafted
light-gray leather gloves. The Costes music, which in the past hasn't
hesitated to put frisky Yves Montand and Shirley Bassey remixes next to
plushly pop-minded new French dance stuff, extols the virtues of things lik=
e
"London in the Rain" (done by Variety Lab) and pet ownership (as in the
Method's "I've Got a Cat"). Pompougnac likes comfortable vistas of rhythm
wherever he can get them: guitars, strings, keyboards, as well as the usual
tech-percussion overlays. The tone approximates that of stereo recording
during the high hi-fi-'50s moment, but without any of the Esquivel-style
shrillness; Pompougnac is as much of a midrange freak as, say, the dudes in
Massive Attack. Which of course only echoes his stylistic bent: Where a sou=
l
hound like Dmitiri of Paris says, "Let's party!" and Belgian brainiacs like
Autechre respond with a dour "I don't think so," Pompougnac at H=F4tel Costes
isn't even in the conversation; he just steers his own hip-classic way,
saying much in the process about the sheer pleasure and materiality of
sound.=20
The Naked Music label offers several series of a similar yet more r&b
stripe, minus the Paris provenance. Their ambition, in fact, is much more
Pottery Barn: While steadying a dependable and professional air, these
enjoyable albums provide unfailingly soulful dance music for your
unfailingly soulful living room. Having softly unleashed, the past few
years, volumes of their Nude Dimensions and Bare Essentials, in which
remixer Miguel Migs sequenced track after track of music keyed to a
flowingly sung quiet-storm underlaid with easy-grooving lite-jazzy dance
pulses, Naked has now released Miguel Migs: Nude Tempo One.
The music has the stress level of '70s Burt Bacharach film scores, which is
to say intentionally low; the apparent complication of a Patrice Rushen
track, which is to say hardly none; and the sweet-harmonic appetite of
Philly Soul, which is to say high. Packaged, as are most Naked releases,
Emanuelle-like, with super softcore color cartoons of sensuous women hostin=
g
the dance music inside, these releases are the other side of the world from
the sonic dancefloor laboratories of prog-trance. Although the Nude Tempo
One set has its Latin flourishes that flower in a track like Batidos's
"Tengo Sed (Ron Trent Dub Mix)," more typical is something like Louis
Benedetti featuring David Ruffin Jr.'s "Show You My Love (Dub)." It's
old-school vocal-group soul and groove riding and hot-tub jazz all
seamlessly and subtly aligned to produce an all-mixed-up integration of
motion, motion, and more motion.
But sometimes a lifestyle is just what exists in people's heads. Indie
rockers rarely master dance music, but for Rin=F4=E7=E9r=F4se=8BJean-Philippe Freu an=
d
Patrice "Patou" Carrie, husband and wife from Montpellier, France=8Bthe move
from brainy crunch to brainy luxe seems no more prohibitive than the
couple's professional standing as psychology professors; it's as though, fo=
r
Freu and Carrie, all music was meant to evolve into witty and expansive,
inevitably loquacious, seriously guitar-accented disco. On Music Kills Me
(V2), the even more fluent successor to their impressive 1999 Installation
Sonore debut, Rin=F4=E7=E9r=F4se lead with a tune ("Le Rock Summer") so string-lade=
n
and melodic=8Bso disco-mad=8Bthat only the dance-crazed French, right now, migh=
t
have assembled it this a d a m EMAIL souljazzantly. Turns out, that's the overstated overture
to their chewy Moby-blues, reimagined TV themes, kinetic Africanisms, and
uncanny Womack & Womack soul. All of which are, for Rin=F4=E7=E9r=F4se and so much
current dance music, less problems to be solved than pleasure to be heard.
:: info ::
Lynne d Johnson
c :: 347.693.9669
e :: lynne@lynnedjohnson.com
w :: http://www.lynnedjohnson.com
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<BODY>
<BR>
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0226/hunter.php =A0=A0<BR>
Posted June 24th, 2002 4:30 PM<BR>
<B>Dance Music Accesses an Unseparatist Pop Sensibility<BR>
Lifestyles of the Rhythm<BR>
</B>by <B>James Hunter<BR>
<BR>
</B>ime was, people loved or ignored or scoffed at dance records the same w=
ay they bought or didn't buy other kinds of pop records. The music would com=
e from a singer like Donna Summer, say, during disco's '70s commercial peak.=
Or, during the '80s, when dance music flaunted an exotic-obscure vibe, an o=
utfit like the Montreal duo Lime. Or a soulful Italian production concern li=
ke Change, which occasionally would show up on the U.S. r&b charts. <BR>
<BR>
But during the '90s, with the rise of techno in England and its more open-e=
nded and mostly marketing-derived relative electronica in the U.S., Things S=
eriously Changed. Songy stars like Summer, the rare techno-identified face l=
ike Rozalla notwithstanding, were out. The old exotic-obscure vibe grew incr=
easingly moot as techno and electronica operated from the perspective that b=
oth existed as large-scale movements, even if U.S. radio and TV didn't alway=
s program and party with them as willingly as did their U.K. and continental=
counterparts. And as for sharing chart real estate, contemporary forms of s=
oul music=8Bhip-hop and r&b, those American worlds connected by raging ind=
ustry ambition, cell phones, and jewelry, not to mention a furiously fruitfu=
l musical back-and-forth=8Busually seemed oblivious to techno and electronica'=
s repetitive rhythms, not to mention its Brit-Euro passions for really cool =
T-shirts and unfindable Japanese sneakers. <BR>
<BR>
International dance music, though, took neither the U.S. indifference nor t=
he attempted U.S. biz exploitation nor the U.S. pop annexation of its device=
s lying down. Instead, it built an impressively sturdy, dramatically potent =
medium-sized little world for itself and continued to repeat beats. And repe=
at beats. And repeat beats: The establishment of the legend of the DJ=8Bthe Oa=
kenfold-Van Helden-Digweed mold of a mere guy with (almost always) superhuma=
n aural-rhythmic sense and concomitant taste and ability to spin (and, on oc=
casion, electronically doctor) records in clubs from New York to Cairo to S=E3=
o Paulo=8Bbegan to define the ordinary record-buyer's experience of dance musi=
c proper: This was the real stuff, not the flavoring that DJ-remixers often =
bestowed upon releases by rock and pop stars. <BR>
<BR>
DJ compilations took over, becoming the usual way in which people consumed =
dance music. Occasionally, these albums emerged, on their own terms, as effi=
cient or canny or even artistically superb; other times they were like sonic=
space-fillers. Make no mistake, however: Whatever the genre highs, future g=
enerations will remember these collections as recorded artifacts that were, =
while perhaps not as odd as, say, gravely serious late-'60s instruction reco=
rds like <I>How to Train Your Dog</I>, still pretty strange animals. They ar=
e shows by invisible DJ magicians at work during an era when almost all danc=
e stars had, like servants in a ghost movie, vanished. <BR>
<BR>
Except a few. In the mid '90s, no dance music came on with greater rock amb=
itions than the Chemical Brothers'. Unlike the trance-mad DJs who succeeded =
them in profile by decade's end, the English duo never tried to make the exp=
erience of doing long geometry proofs into the sonic equivalent of tantric s=
ex. Although the Chemicals were infrequently as blunt as, say, Fatboy Slim o=
r Propellerheads in turning electronica respectively into rock or pop, they =
built big beats anyway (then backed away from them). And, especially as they=
were rangy white guys with fried hair, the U.S. rock press adopted them ent=
husiastically as Moby's eccentric English cousins. The Chemicals' acclaimed =
recent <I>Come With Us</I> (Astralwerks), characteristically, recruits non-d=
ance collaborators like Richard Ashcroft and Beth Orton, and a piece like th=
e tellingly named "Star Guitar" marvelously impersonates Coldplay =
as a quartet of loud horseflies. And, to be fair, interesting technological =
energies animate songs like "Hoops" and the jizzy "Denmark.&q=
uot; But <I>Come With Us </I>is mostly just OK, a well-crafted soundtrack to=
being the Chemical Brothers. <BR>
<BR>
Which stasis, as techno purists always implied, is one of stardom's consume=
r risks: When recordings don't have the option of relying on their artists' =
personae=8Bwhen they can never bank on someone pulling out a wallet just to fi=
nd out what verbal crap Alanis is actually taking credit for, or what drum s=
ound Lenny's surrounding himself with these days=8Bthere's likely more attenti=
on paid to the music itself. Consider Herbert, an English producer-writer im=
mersed but not defined by Kruder & Dorfmeister's great Austrian downbeat=
music, and a tiny star at best. His <I>Around the House </I>(!K7), a reissu=
e of an album he made before debuting in the U.S. in 2001 with the jazzy <I>=
Bodily Functions</I>, is skeletal and quiet techno warmly warped into fragme=
nts and memories and shadows of actual pop songs; it's Satie-scaled, at time=
s, but never inaccessible=8Bjust weirdly, alluringly toned. All of a sudden, a=
brushy female voice will arrive to flip her hair and sing "The Last Be=
at" like Heather Nova at her most drained; the next minute, the music=8Ba=
nd the singer=8Bwill scat. <BR>
<BR>
So the question remains: Where goes a genre that is queasy about stars and =
beset with a gazillion shifting style denominations meaningful only to club =
professionals? Lately, accessing a pop sensibility that's always been the fl=
ip side of dance separatism, beatworld collections have gone lifestyle. Tire=
d of trekking across various time zones with trance DJs and the vibey yet un=
hummable tracks they sequence? Settle back into one of the most chic enclave=
s of Paris! That's what the four volumes of <I>H=F4tel Costes </I>offer: the f=
antasy that, with the insertion of a single CD, you are a guest at one of th=
e city's hippest accommodations, awash in the sounds of gifted remixer St=E9ph=
ane Pompougnac. Where the packaging of a trance DJ set promises, "Yes, =
you too can jet to Istanbul this weekend," the Costes collections ease =
the dance experience into Second Empire sofas, into the relatively far more =
sedentary world of cocktail hours and glossy magazines. <BR>
<BR>
The cover of the current <I>H=F4tel Costes Quatre</I> (MSI Music) depicts the=
backlit gorgeous face of a young woman with Chanel lips, her eyes covered b=
y her hands, themselves covered by a pair of artfully designed and crafted l=
ight-gray leather gloves. The Costes music, which in the past hasn't hesitat=
ed to put frisky Yves Montand and Shirley Bassey remixes next to plushly pop=
-minded new French dance stuff, extols the virtues of things like "Lond=
on in the Rain" (done by Variety Lab) and pet ownership (as in the Meth=
od's "I've Got a Cat"). Pompougnac likes comfortable vistas of rhy=
thm wherever he can get them: guitars, strings, keyboards, as well as the us=
ual tech-percussion overlays. The tone approximates that of stereo recording=
during the high hi-fi-'50s moment, but without any of the Esquivel-style sh=
rillness; Pompougnac is as much of a midrange freak as, say, the dudes in Ma=
ssive Attack. Which of course only echoes his stylistic bent: Where a soul h=
ound like Dmitiri of Paris says, "Let's party!" and Belgian braini=
acs like Autechre respond with a dour "I don't think so," Pompougn=
ac at H=F4tel Costes isn't even in the conversation; he just steers his own hi=
p-classic way, saying much in the process about the sheer pleasure and mater=
iality of sound. <BR>
<BR>
The Naked Music label offers several series of a similar yet more r&b s=
tripe, minus the Paris provenance. Their ambition, in fact, is much more Pot=
tery Barn: While steadying a dependable and professional air, these enjoyabl=
e albums provide unfailingly soulful dance music for your unfailingly soulfu=
l living room. Having softly unleashed, the past few years, volumes of their=
<I>Nude Dimensions </I>and <I>Bare Essentials</I>, in which remixer Miguel =
Migs sequenced track after track of music keyed to a flowingly sung quiet-st=
orm underlaid with easy-grooving lite-jazzy dance pulses, Naked has now rele=
ased <I>Miguel Migs: Nude Tempo One.</I> <BR>
<BR>
The music has the stress level of '70s Burt Bacharach film scores, which is=
to say intentionally low; the apparent complication of a Patrice Rushen tra=
ck, which is to say hardly none; and the sweet-harmonic appetite of Philly S=
oul, which is to say high. Packaged, as are most Naked releases, <I>Emanuell=
e</I>-like, with super softcore color cartoons of sensuous women hosting the=
dance music inside, these releases are the other side of the world from the=
sonic dancefloor laboratories of prog-trance. Although the <I>Nude Tempo On=
e </I>set has its Latin flourishes that flower in a track like Batidos's &qu=
ot;Tengo Sed (Ron Trent Dub Mix)," more typical is something like Louis=
Benedetti featuring David Ruffin Jr.'s "Show You My Love (Dub)." =
It's old-school vocal-group soul and groove riding and hot-tub jazz all seam=
lessly and subtly aligned to produce an all-mixed-up integration of motion, =
motion, and more motion. <BR>
<BR>
But sometimes a lifestyle is just what exists in people's heads. Indie rock=
ers rarely master dance music, but for Rin=F4=E7=E9r=F4se=8BJean-Philippe Freu and Pat=
rice "Patou" Carrie, husband and wife from Montpellier, France=8Bthe=
move from brainy crunch to brainy luxe seems no more prohibitive than the c=
ouple's professional standing as psychology professors; it's as though, for =
Freu and Carrie, all music was meant to evolve into witty and expansive, ine=
vitably loquacious, seriously guitar-accented disco. On <I>Music Kills Me</I=
> (V2), the even more fluent successor to their impressive 1999 <I>Installat=
ion Sonore </I>debut, Rin=F4=E7=E9r=F4se lead with a tune ("Le Rock Summer"=
;) so string-laden and melodic=8Bso disco-mad=8Bthat only the dance-crazed Frenc=
h, right now, might have assembled it this a d a m EMAIL souljazzantly. Turns out, that's the =
overstated overture to their chewy Moby-blues, reimagined TV themes, kinetic=
Africanisms, and uncanny Womack & Womack soul. All of which are, for Ri=
n=F4=E7=E9r=F4se and so much current dance music, less problems to be solved than pl=
easure to be heard. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
:: info ::<BR>
Lynne d Johnson<BR>
c :: 347.693.9669<BR>
e :: lynne@lynnedjohnson.com <BR>
w :: http://www.lynnedjohnson.com <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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