Thursday, June 14, 2007

Passion not fashion



Although I like this type of music, when I see that at the moment Justice and all those French distorted house artists (mainly put out by Ed Bangers and Institubes) are featured in stylish fashion magazines and it's called a new hype, I just feel there is something wrong. Apart from the fact that this sound is not so new any more, I'm afraid that it may turn into another short-living trend. You know that may happen when mass media and fashion biz creates a buzz around a certain music style - new opportunists start copying "standards" and in the result music gets less original, less creative. That happened to electroclash and electrohouse, as we know. On the contrary, for example so called minimal techno despite being kind of trendy as well is not so much dependent on music press coverage and other marketing tools, because it's more a scene thing with a common culture codes and roots.

Going back to the subject, the moniker "new rave" makes me grin - under this term quite loose stuff has been marketed lately - from The Klaxons to numerous electrorock bands to Riton to Justice etc. Who's invented this bullshit? Well, ok, some of them may be ravey, but rock bands doesn't have anything to do with raves, but stadiums, ok?

On the other hand, the media attention can be partly understood because some of these "new rave" bands have released albums lately. It's kind of funny that "DJs community" cares more about singles and EPs, whereas "standard" listeners and mainstream mags need albums. So, no surprise that these albums - namely by Justice, Simian Mobile Disco and Digitalism - are based on some solid singles actually been known for a while. This particularly applies to Digitalism's LP Idealism, where the only hit is the same old Zdarlight, then there are some weak imitations of it and some crappy electro/rock/pop tunes. However, SMD and particularly Justice deliver interesting records, smoothly balancing the old school influences with new techniques. Nice dance music, but I can't get really what all this fuss is about?

Justice - Phantom

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