EDM club scene in Seattle receding?

[teneighty]

I was doing some casual browsing, and I checked in on Elements night club in Seattle. [CLOSED]. What!!! Yeah, and I read the thread at nwtekno.org and not only the elements, but also the showbox, club medusa and the premiere. All places that were alive and well what seems like a few short years back. Seems the Last Supper Club is the ONLY place left catering to the EDM crowd.

I am still stunned. I loved making trips to Seattle and driving home through the sunrise. I didn't do it nearly enough, and now I'm getting the sense that it's all going downhill there. I never even got to go to elements, but sounds like the place was great, and from pictures i've seen it looked incredible. A "999" capacity venue, so the size of the commodore or plush, hosting A-list electronica DJs regularly, history.

Has anyone been down there lately? What about the rave scene? I was went to Seahawk stadium for RITM and PvD last summer and it was ef'n nuts, one of the most amazing productions I've ever seen. That's pretty recent, so there must be hope. Why aren't the clubs making money?

[Grapes]

So apparently the drugs are finally wearing off in Seattle.

Took'em a while!

[benyamean]

Brutal news.... Never been to the mentioned spots before, but the Showbox used to get killer rap shows!! :(

Yeah that party last summer was fuckin' nuts!! Jackal and Hyde were out of hand!!!

Saw Egyptian Lover almost a month ago at Chop Suey, it was really hype!!

[Wood]

it's because you keep calling it 'EDM'

[oddmud]

lol wood

[teneighty]

It is entirely possible that I've made an error. If we're not talking about EDM, what should we be talking about?

[ebbomega]

I think he's just pining for the days when everybody called it all "Techno"

EDM is like the internet-nerd compromise for those who refuse to call anything that's not minimal or fast & dirty "techno".

[teneighty]

hmmm. alright then. I'd appreciate woods comments on it as well, just to be sure if that's what he was refering too. But I have never thought of house or trance or breaks as techno. When I hear someone use "techno" in such a general sense I immediately pin them as uninitiated. Someone who's only ever heard electronica in car commercials and movies. Because it never fails, at least in my experience, if I say I listen to electronic music and someone goes "oh, techno" it's always someone that knows nothing about it. Techno is a distinct sub genre, or so I tell them. Is that not correct, or was the proper usage different back in the day?

[ebbomega]

Hahahahahah.

I usually pin people who say "electronica" as uninitiated.

Back in the day there wasn't an agreed upon term. There was no genre consortium, no ishkur's guide. Just a billion people calling it techno and a hundred people saying those billion didn't know what real techno was.

Really, I think Wood was just making a joke more than anything.

[teneighty]

lol, I had a feeling it was a joke somehow, but obviously, I didn't get it. So basically there still is no consensus, just different groups saying the other groups terms are improper. So what do you call the root genre of electronic music if I might ask?

[-evil-duerr-]

it comes from progressive philadelphia booty tech house that was reinvented by brits into a more club friendly nu-trancey breaks sound with a brazilian flavour.

[ebbomega]

People call it EDM or electronic music, some still call it techno. Who the hell really cares? There's so many gray areas anyways... What about bands that use synths? Would you call it EDM? Electronic? So where does LCD Soundsystem fit? What about hip-hop groups that are about sampling and turntablism? Is Daft Punk EDM? What about Kanye?

Genres are just a chance to describe a sound or types of music that evolved together. Dance music and synths have grown so much that now there's really no lines to say "This is techno" or "This is house" or "This is EDM". It's all just descriptors is all. There's no all-encompassing genre I think outside of "Dance Music". That's what I like to call it.

Course, doesn't stop me from bedraggling genre arguments. Those can be fun sometimes.

[esoter1c]

Funniest misplaced name ever is idm.

[ebbomega]

I can dance to IDM. Can't you?

[teneighty]

Agreed. It's all about the crossover, the overlap, the gray... There are sounds that are definitively one genre or another, but so much blends in other sounds, and some tracks are difficult to categorize at all. It's acceptable to me argue that a track is not of one genre, but several. Having identified genres is still important, I just don't expect it to work nicely all the time. But I'm not one to argue about what sounds like what. Different people have different opinions and it's ever evolving anyway, so what's the point. As long as I have a fuzzy picture that gives me an idea of where to look for what I want to hear from one day to the next, that's as much as I can hope for.

Although I have heard the term used, I have avoided simply "dance music" locally because I don't want people associating my taste with crappy cheesy pop music. But the way this is going, I don't think it matters what I say, there'll be something wrong with it.

[ebbomega]

What's wrong with Pop music?

Granted, bad pop music is, well, bad... but sometimes I love cheesy pop music. Madonna's a prime example, as is Timberlake. Also Pet Shop Boys but they don't exactly enjoy the same pop status here as they do in the UK.

As well, I don't put most of the cheesy pop stuff under Dance Music so much as Top40. If I'm talking Dance Music I'm usually talking about the stuff where a DJ needs to know how to at least beatmatch.

Besides, what's so different between Dance Music and Electronic Dance Music? Most of the top40 cheeseball stuff is electronic anyways...

[Wood]

i was just being sarcastic, but you guys should totally keep discussing it

[teneighty]

I think you are absolutely right, there really isn't a difference between "dance" and "electronic dance." It's just a "thing" that I've had and I'm getting over more by talking about it. Agreed, much of top40 or pop or whatever it's called is electronic in one way or another. In fact I'm aware of a genuine house music producer producing the instrumental portion for at least one of Madona's tracks. Dance music producer involved in producing top40. But there is so much about the approach, the mentality, the philosophy of the top40 that is so very different from what I'm used to in dance, like the creds given to the vocalist vs. the composer of the music.

And the eurodance that made the charts here in the early nineties also perpetuated this mentality of mine. I wanted to distance myself from that as well for some reason when I began to discovered others forms of edm after having only local radio. Eurodance and similar was often categorized locally as simply "dance" music and that's what the term "dance" tended to make me think of. Now that I've looked into it, I no longer think it's fair to try to exclude it because of my own biases. I should just accept it as a child of the parent dance music genre along with the subgenres I'm passionate about, and maybe be a little more open minded.

Dance music it is, electronica if I want to include down tempo, ambient, chill, etc. Anything to add Wood?

[-evil-duerr-]

whats the song that sounds like video games and has a sample from that movie about drugs?

[Séguin]

I'm not surprised... Everyone these days in electronic music scenes have their heads up their own asses.

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by teneighty

I think you are absolutely right, there really isn't a difference between "dance" and "electronic dance." It's just a "thing" that I've had and I'm getting over more by talking about it. Agreed, much of top40 or pop or whatever it's called is electronic in one way or another. In fact I'm aware of a genuine house music producer producing the instrumental portion for at least one of Madona's tracks. Dance music producer involved in producing top40. But there is so much about the approach, the mentality, the philosophy of the top40 that is so very different from what I'm used to in dance, like the creds given to the vocalist vs. the composer of the music.

Madonna's a great example of good pop music because she always gets great producers behind her.

For Ray Of Light she used famed Trance producer William Orbit (who's been remixed by Tiesto, Corsten, and all the other supersaw superstars).

For Music she used Mirwais, who did that really crazy electronic track from Snatch:


Her most recent venture, and honestly one of my fav Madonna albums, she used Stuart Price, who about 2 years ago was king of electro. His first venture was producing Les Rhythmes Digitales:

And then he started DJing/producing as Jacques Lu Cont, where he's remixed from Gwen Stefani to Missy Elliot:

And then he started to do production as "Thin White Duke" in honour of Bowie:

And since producing Madonna he's been making waves as Man With Guitar:


Thing is, Madonna's always, and I mean _ALWAYS_ had her finger on the pulse of European pop. As a result she's usually one of the first major North American pop stars to venture into a particular genre or trend. Also, her coming out with an album usually opens the floodgates for a particular style, spawning billions of pop superstars and producers who start to bite the style, thus causing oversaturation of the genre and a lot of boring crap. While I really like her work, she usually marks the beginning of the end for a particular style of music.

Confessions On The Dancefloor marked the end of electroclash and the beginning of electrohouse, really.

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by -evil-duerr-

whats the song that sounds like video games and has a sample from that movie about drugs?

Is it that one that goes doo doo dedoo doo?

I love that song.

[-evil-duerr-]

ya i know it reminds me of that time i was so high

[ebbomega]

Yeah, when they played it at that party in that warehouse, right?

I was totally at that party too.

[-evil-duerr-]

ha ha ya but that was a long time ago, I'm done with that scene. it's all just a bunch of little kids now who aren't there for the same reasons I went for...