This may not be worth commenting on but on the other hand so many people read the Guardian that it probably is.

Although I think Tony Naylor’s heart is in the right place, the timeline for his revelations is about as barmy as you’d expect from a broadsheet techno piece. The above article could have been written at least 6 months ago. It could have probably been written 12 or 18 months ago.

Credit to Tony though, or the sub, for the title. A strange lingering death indeed. The only word I wouldn’t use is “death”.

Minimal has declined since a peak of popularity 2 years or so ago but it certainly hasn’t died. I don’t say that as a partisan supporter of the sound either. I say it as someone who noticed a fatigue in the music which the letters “mnml” came to represent grew from around January 2007 but has actually receded a lot since about June 2008.

I can’t be the only one either. The reason mnml’s “death” is “strange and lingering” is because it isn’t a death at all! Minimal continues to exist. Only in a genre as ephemeral and illogical as dance music in 2008 could I seriously be saying “hold on there Tony, minimal isn’t dead, it’s coming back!

In the space left by the Chernobyl-sized toxic discourse that tainted the genre so badly, the grey sparse tones and clicks have begun to sprout shoots again. Naylor’s right to mention Onur Ozer, but could equally have cited Tolga Fidan or Jens Zimmermann or Rhadoo. I’m sure I’m forgetting others here too.

And what about those who never have stopped making stripped down house music? What about the ones who ploughed through the hype? What about Guido Schneider? Check his amazing new remix on Systematic.

What about a little guy called Ricardo Villalobos? (Am I biting American election debate style with all these rhetorical questions?) Ricardo’s last (quintessentially minimal) double LP was just a month or two ago and yet he’s cited in this article as a sign that minimal is dead or over.

The evidence is everywhere. Have a listen to some of Paris producer Seuil’s latest tracks and remixes and tell me this isn’t a guy whose clicking popping MINIMAL sound is utterly revelling in the current climate, albeit with a slight shift towards the depths.

I just don’t agree that deep house is replacing minimal, even though there is certainly plenty more “proper” deep house around if you like that word. What is happening is that there is a really blurred line and a middleground between perennial styles like US deep house, dub techno and a new kid on the block like 00s minimal.

This is the area that Johnny D and Oslo and so many of the best acts right now are inhabiting. But it’s not a massive paradigm shift either as Naylor suggests. Think about. It’s just not actually such a big step for the populist dance music audience ir producers in Europe and elsewhere to move from minimal house to house. It was house to begin with anyway!

Last June I spoke to Ralf Kollmann of Mobilee for this article and I’m reminded of this little prophetic gypsy’s curse he laid down:

“I think that the minimal movement comes more from the deep house side of techno than from any other style. For example if you listen to old Doctor Rockit or Herbert, it really sounds similar. So maybe as a consequence of that minimal is going back to towards that style now. Now maybe there’ll be more clubs concentrating on the more housey side of minimal, and other clubs might concentrate more on the techno side of it.”

Seems a pretty good call 18 months down the line doesn’t it? I mean,  in practice it doesn’t matter what label you put on today’s house and techno, unless you write for a broadsheet I guess. What we’re left with now post-mnml and (sorry Tony) post-deephouserevivalandeverythingelse is just a loose template, a nameless scene where no one word dominates.

People are flinging all sorts of influences into 4/4 tracks and playing them in the places where minimal existed before, and backing them with the monolithic power of classic dub techno or house.

If there is even any defining characteristic that binds a lot of the newer music together than surely it’s that a lot of it is produced digitally. The sound divide between old records and new is distinct. But of course as many new producers are aping old sounds as sampling Greek folk music.

Maybe the article should have been called “The strange lingering death of dance music’s direction”. Not because the genre is finished or over, but because it doesn’t seem to be travelling forward in time with any coherency. People are looking to every moment and era of the past all at once.

Others are fighting desperately to etch out some kind of future. After a couple of years of hostility the sounds of the past and the present sit together quite comfortably, even as new sounds seep into 4/4 from around the world.

The only question is: where the hell do things go from here?

PS: I can’t help but feel strange everytime I try to discuss the “decline” of minimal, or indeed any other genre. The “decline” in actuality seems to be the time when people started using the word “minimal” to describe music that none of the producers you value or like were making. When that happens a bad imitation of the old sound almost replaces peoples’ memories of what came before.

As such it doesn’t feel like minimal “declined” at all. Many of the producers are still making worthwhile music. It just became a by-word for producers with no charisma copying M_nus records.  Was it always this? Certainly not. It’s almost ironic that the times I liked “minimal” most were when some records on “minimal” labels were anything from really banging techno or just dub house, eg Duoteque’s releases on Boxer or Sven Weissman on Liebe*Detail.

In fact a label like Liebe*Detail has probably been central to both “minimal” and “German deep house” without necessarily being a perfect fit for either.

If all of the above tells us anything it’s that dance music is at its best when it is ambiguous and between genres. Where once the best dance music was often hard to pin down as “techno” or “house”, now a lot of it, for me anyway, is hard to brand “minimal” or “house”.

(Now somebody put the fucking kettle on! Carrying those stone tablets up the mount has left me really thirsty!)

So the first guest mix in some time is by JC Freaks, aka Werner Niedermeier and Anthea Nzekwu. The duo have released just one single, “The Rock”, on Mojuba’s new sub-label, Wandering.

It’s been around quite a lot but if you haven’t heard it you could go and do so on their Myspace. They’ve kindly done a mix each for me to share with all of you. No tracklists this time around.

Also Anthea, whom some of you may know from Phonica Records, has answered a few questions about “The Rock”, clearing up that it’s not about cocaine and establishing that the JC in “JC Freaks” stands for Jesus Christ. Since this is a staunchly Catholic blog I’m delighted with this, as are my parents.

How did this JC Freaks project come about?

Well Werner and I were old friends we met back in (20??) through a mutual friend Anthony Cox who at the time was the manager of Flying Records in Soho, I worked there and Werner booked me to play in a club in Spain. Werner moved to London sometime after and we immediately hit it off. To be honest if it wasn’t for Werner pushing me and encouraging me to get in the studio it probably would never have happened.

What are both of your backgrounds? I know Anthea works in Phonica? Have either of you produced before?

No I hadn’t produced before just had a real love for music. My father was my inspiration; in his twenties he was the bass player in a reggae band, I remember him taking me to a couple of the bands rehearsals when I was around 5 and I’d love to jump on the drums and bang around. My father loved jazz, funk and disco as well as reggae and had a rather cool record collection which I confiscated when I left home. I studied music at school and DJ’d right the way through university. Werner is producing music since around 1995. He is involved in production outfits like Notenshun and Audio Nature.

What kind of music are you guys trying to make? Whose music do you both like?

Well Werner and I are always about the House groove but beyond that our name JC Freaks stands for Jesus Christ Freaks since we both put our faith in Jesus yeah!! ‘The Rock’ is, believe it or not, about God and not cocaine (some have asked) the lyrics are My Rock, My Fortress, My Deliverer which is actually an extract from The Bible – Psalm 18.. So the project is really based on our faith, we are trying to send a message but not necessarily by making full on Gospel music. All our tracks point the way to God in some way.

Where was the mix recorded?

The mix I did was recorded live from a night I do monthly in London. Werner did his mix in his studio.

Are you surprised by the success of your first single?

Yes very. But at the same time because of our faith we knew God would make it happen for us because it was about him. Funny huh?! I’m very pleased about its success. People I never thought would buy it have not only bought but tell us how much they love it. Praise God! Lol.

What have you guys got in store in the future?

We’ve got a couple of new EPs coming out later this year via Mojuba Records, and Phonica Records, and are currently working on more stuff.

Download Werner’s Mix

Download Anthea’s Mix

Copy and paste this link into your itunes or whatever programme you use to subscribe to all past and future mixes from this blog as a podcast.

Alternatively go read about the rest below and download direct as you see fit.

HIAF Guest Mix 9-Hauke Freer (Real Soon/Morris Audio)

HIAF Guest Mix 8-Giles Smith (Secret Sundaze/Two Armadillos)

HIAF Guest Mix 7-Chaton (Plak: Switzerland)

HIAF Guest Mix 6-Till Von Sein (Trenton/Morris Audio)

HIAF Guest Mix 5-Federico Molinari and Vera (Oslo)

HIAF Guest Mix 4-Eurokai (Liebe*Detail)

HIAF Guest Mix 3-Solomun (Diynamic/Déssous)

HIAF Guest Mix 2-Ed Davenport (Liebe*Detail/Leftroom)

HIAF Guest Mix 1-Ralf Kollmann (Mobilee)

PS: For the first time in a few months I have a queue of guest mixes because I’ve had the time to hassle people think about who I want to ask. There are some more really exciting mixes on the way, one from an artist I never thought would even respond. Any problems with the podcast or downloads just let me know.

This “donk” thing has already been mentioned over at Blissblog. The techno connection through the Donk Boys has also been flagged up. I wonder have they heard this yet?

I love that this record is so comfortably anti-establishment, so effortlessly vulgar. It must be gloriously offensive to the kind of self appointed connaisseurs who act as though the music they like is fine wine or well-aged meat. Presumably they’d agree with the numerous people in the Youtube comments calling this a musical Big Mac and attacking “chavs”.

My take is that if you can imagine someone citing a pop record as evidence of the disastrous state of modern culture, society, and young people, then whoever made it deserves a slap on the back. If you’re making a pop record and not utterly alienating the Broken Britain audience then you’re failing.

The only drawback is I can’t imagine actually wanting to listen to this that much, not after the initial 5 times!

I’m also having a vision of the future. It’s a Sunday night in 2018. You should be in bed but you’re flicking through the channels. Suddenly a programme called “I love 2008″ comes on. Oh look it’s “Put A Donk On It”! Someone says “what were we thinking???”. Some comedian you’ve never heard of says “what was a donk anyway??? what was that about??? LOL!”

You change the channel.  Someone says something is not as good as it used to be. You go to bed.

If you live away from where you grew up, you’ll probably have noticed how each time you go home it seems less like home. This is how Dublin feels for me. Everywhere is familiar, old places I worked, or bars or cafés, but you can’t escape the fact that you aren’t a part of the city anymore.

I was just home for a few days and for some reason using public transport stirs up a lot of memories. I guess you just have the time to think on a bus or a train. On Monday I got a long bus journey into the city centre, and was listening to Petar Dundov’s album on Music Man.

As the bus went along its usual route from my parents’ house into the city, and this strangely unfashionable trance record played, I couldn’t help but think about the hundreds of times I’d been on my way to gigs in the past. There were so many journeys, in summer and winter, looking out at the same shops and houses. I listened to so many different records on that bus route, on the way to see so many different DJs. There was and is something special about silently ingesting music before going to parties and clubs where you violently cover yourself in it. For that short time it’s yours, just you and the sound. (And some kids throwing stuff at you or fighting!)

Of course I still go clubbing over here, but as nice as it is walking to places or getting short taxis, I’ve realised I miss the “build-up” of the journey. When I travelled south into Dublin on a half empty bus on Monday night it reminded me that this was my portal to excitement and music when I was 18. It was my buffer zone between life and dance music.

Now that I’m a little older there’s not as much to discover. Back then the bus journey with my music became as much a part of the rite of going clubbing as actually going to a club. It’s strange how serious dance music can feel sometimes, like it’s the biggest part of your life, the thing that reminds you of your humanity, and then when you’re out and in clubs you laugh and have fun and it’s not so serious. Though there is that 5am intensity sometimes.

On Tuesday I had another public transport epiphany, as I stood at a train station near to where the above picture was taken. I was listening to Air France’s “No Way Down” EP for the first time, when a track called “Maundy Thursday” came on. On a Tuesday night I was the only one on the station platform, surrounded by that amazing view.

The majesty of this short track just took over. It has a cosmic bombast which combined with the view and the wintry darkness to force bombastic thoughts. This is the sort of moment that makes the world around you seem vast and old, like you can feel the weight of a city’s monolithic presence on your shoulders, a city with a longer life than any of its inhabitant. Music really makes me feel like a paper bag in the wind sometimes.

It’s been a while since a record fused with time and place for me like this, but it’s no surprise it happened at night. When people are asleep, it seems like there is less to force your thoughts in a particular direction.

I know since I was a teenager I’ve had these sort of overwrought epiphanies when listening to records. I assume some of you have too. In some ways it’s sad that these transcendental moments are also quite personal and private, and hard to put into words. Writing can make music seem very lifeless and dull compared to the brilliance of these fleeting shocks.

These instances make a mockery of the lazy laments about ubiquitous ipods and music “just being a soundtrack” for people’s daily lives. It baffles me that some people suggest music doesn’t have the power to transcend being used as a soundtrack and force the listener to listen.

And even if writing can’t succeed entirely, I think it’s still worth trying to record these rare moments. (Now if you turn to page 55 of your hymn books I’ve added streams of Dundov and Air France below.)

Petar Dundov-Rain (Music Man) [See post to listen to audio]

Air France-Maundy Thursday [See post to listen to audio]

 

Here we go.

Please can all reviewers and everybody else consider the way they are using the word “hype” in their reviews and reactions to music? If you do I will too.

When anyone writes a blog post praising a record, that’s hype. When anyone writes a comment on a message board praising a record, that’s hype. When you tell your friends you love a record that’s hype, and when everyone is talking about a record after they’ve seen a DJ play, that’s hype.

Hype is not created by some shadowed Illuminati behind the castle walls. Hype in the post-Internet age is you, me, and everybody else. We are the hype. People attacking hype are just more hype. Hype seems to have become a cheap way of referring to information overload.

When a reviewer attempts to reply to all of the great cacophony of Internet opinion that emerges about a record before its release these days, it’s too often worthless. Reviews that do this seem two-tone. They’re a simple yes/no story of “I distrust hype, PS I also own many leather bound books” or “OMG this record is hot!”

People are acting like “hype” is a concrete universal concept and not a highly individual one, a vague melange of every opinion or view a given person digests. My hype isn’t your hype, and it never will be.

This reactive reviewing seems to lend itself to world weariness too easily. People are pretending they’re so in the scene that they hear others talking about a big hit record everywhere they go, when actually all this tells you is they probably spend all day on the Internet! I should know! If people could say “I’m sick of HEARING this record” that’d be interesting, but it seems they’re more sick of hearing about it. Dance music writing on the net badly needs more club culture in it.

Of course it’s also a problem is that DJs/label-owners are now holding off the release of big records for a couple of months after they give out copies. This leads to a real deficiency in print or even online magazines using formal review structures. It’s yet another area in which blogs can trump them via YouTube links or just even mentioning that they heard whatever DJ play a huge release and describing it.

Many of the biggest hits are quite visceral and need to be released as soon as they are being played in my opinion. Democracy is better for the scene and the failure to do this is contributing to the weird feeling of a record coming out months after you’ve first heard it, and kind of ruining peoples collective enjoyment of these records and stunting their growth.

Reviewers meanwhile are too readily using this gigantic crutch of “hype” to lean on. They’re working based on other peoples’ gut reactions over a few months and carefully aligning themselves. But they should be going with their own gut. It’s too easy to frame reviews in the context of long Internet debates. Some of you are readers, some are reviewers, aren’t you sick of this? Why are reviews starting with disclaimers that tell you what the reviewer thinks of what everyone else thinks of a record? Why would you want to read on after this death rattle?

If somebody’s jaded about a record before they even begin reviewing it, and has read a zillion posts about it, then maybe they shouldn’t review it! I know I can seem like I pick stuff that’s on new labels or from new artists too much, but I guess it’s cos it avoids the feeling of a review being just a worthless comment on a track everyone is sick of, and gives it some “news” quality.

I mean, sure, a little context is okay, but discussions of hype upon hype coupled with predictions of how long it’ll be before backlash are a bit ridiculous.

I’ll probably sound quite backward thinking but I’d almost venture to say that some dance records shouldn’t be written about in the constraints of a formal review at all, let alone 2/3 months after their release. That said, if a writer can be more informal and break those constraints then he/she should go ahead. (Please.) He should be trying to do this every time, as hard as it is, as hard as I find it myself.

There’s just no doubt that lots of house/techno, in whatever the in vogue genre is, is disposable. Hell, lots of dance music in every genre is disposable. Lots of great music has a short shelf life. But what is constantly doubtful is whether disposability is a negative trait. Time passes and some records will only ever be a snapshot of a particular moment, perhaps only understandable to those who were there.

This is even more true for really marginalised obscure music. There is music from 30 or 40 years ago made to make plants grow. You think that “stood the test of time”? I bet some people would like to listen to it though just based on that description.

But people are too quick to ignore (dance) music’s potential to give you a quick fix, like great pop music does. There is a pop element to dance music and there always will be. The idea that somebody can put out a record that makes a club go completely crazy but is thrown away in a few months is valuable. It’s not morally wrong, it’s not hurting people, it’s a thrill.

It’s one in the eye for a broadsheet dominated cultural discourse that says only that which it decides will last the ages is worthy. I can’t think of any more concentrated illustration of the value of a pop thrill in house/techno than the fact that these big hit records (and yes I’m obviously talking about stuff like “Trompeta” here) make a room full of people expend huge amounts of physical energy, that they trigger emotions.

You can see the effect of a record like “Trompeta” on a dance floor. In my one experience of hearing it, it made people expend energy. That can’t be written down or recorded, but is it less of a physical action than people cheering at your wedding, or sobbing at a funeral? It is an event.

It happens and it exists. Humans don’t have to understand or record it or even know how to repeat how it made them feel for it to have value. The world remembers. The earth below our feet is struck again and again. That happens because of a record. If we were standing on sand you could see the reaction imprinted over and over again, if only for a short time.

If we don’t accept this, are we saying only the emotions and actions that we remember forever are authentic? Because if that’s the case, if we really are supposed to treat life as a series of grand all conquering parades of feeling, then who would want to live? The power of a record you love can be fleeting, like a flavour, like a smell, like so many million feelings that you will have before you die and that you’ll have forgotten by then.

But did each one of those feelings happen, if we forget them? The world remembers.

(In case you didn’t know WhatPeoplePlay is an MP3 store run by German distributor Word and Sound, well worth checking out)

What’s your standard approach?

Do you plan it out? Do you decide what type of mix it’s going to be beforehand? Do you do more than one take? Are your mixes like how you would play in a club?

I’ve been trying to record a mix this week for the first time in a couple of months, but it’s taking me a lot longer than it used to. I think it’s because I haven’t recorded one since June and there are too many choices to make about what records to put in it. When I did a weekly radio show it felt very easy to do a mix every single week.

I don’t really plan mixes out though I usually have an idea in my head of tracks that go together well. I try and do mixes in one take but it can be annoying when you pick a record that just doesn’t sound great with another, or takes the mix in a direction you didn’t want.

Maybe I should just wait till coming in some morning after being out and record a mix while drunk, with zero thought and planning! Still, this current one is almost there, just needs another few hours.

Confession time:

1. I shamefully never really download the Resident Advisor podcast unless it’s something that I’m sure I’ll like. I don’t know why, just overload of things to listen to as it is I guess.

2. I once pretended to be a 9/11 survivor “to get chicks”.

Okay so only one of the above is a true.

This week is an exception though, when I saw the tracklist for the Steffi mix I had a strong feeling it’d be good. I didn’t bank on it being my favourite since the Efdemin mix though. I’d say this is the best RA podcast in ages but I’ve given away my secret above so I can’t claim to have listened to any since the Sascha Dive edition!

But this is about as good as a mix gets, a really great trip through deep house and a little techno. I guess you don’t become a Panorama Bar resident without skills. I listened to it on Monday night with some friends and everyone was blown away really.

I also like that Steffi says the mix was recorded with a cup of tea on the side. I reckon this is something we can all relate to, you need a huge mug though, and be careful you don’t let it go cold as you descend several fathoms into music with the headphones clasped over both ears.

While you’re checking the Steffi mix out here, you could read my reviews of Morgan Geist, Kerri Chandler/Ben Klock, and of those inimitable Frenchmen dOP.

PS: Did I mention my fiancée died? I escaped as her last words were “start a childrens charity in my honour”.