What effect does EDM culture have on London clubland? Article

[fullenglishpint]

You can put on a great party with a set of belt drives, a 2 channel mixer with no eq, a couple of spots, a mirrorball and home-made backdrops, a lot of folks forget this.

Or just with a lot of hats

[Jack Bastard]

Or just with a lot of hats

Don't forget the glitter and moustaches

We had a nice feature in Exepose for Fresher's Week last week -



(admittedly we are slightly more advanced than a couple of beltdrives and a Made2Fade these days )

[photojojo]

As someone who got into dance music in the early 80's and then saw it come back around in the late 90's I can without a doubt say it will get better and we will continue to thrive regardless of how many dubstep editions of Spin magazine there are.

[photojojo]

The final paragraph sums it up very well for me.

So relax, ‘EDM’ may be a vile moneymaking machine which attempts to exploit four decades of musical and social progression and turn it into some kind of aural McDonalds, and it may be all over your tele and your radio for a while, but it’s going to go away, and it'll take a lot more than a bloke in a rubber dinghy to kill off house music.

[Woah]

So I'm guessing all of you guys are from the US or something? I don't get this stuff really. I'm from the EU and other then some mainstream EDM being played on the radio we have party's and raves full of underground techno and house every week, and those are PACKED with people...

[BFLY]

at the end of the day, the cream rises to the top. If people are seriously into dance music and have an element of taste, then they will seek out the more refined stuff in each genre. The others will go watch Guetta & deadmu5. If that keeps them away from where I go, then thats fine by me.

[backtothefront]

Don't forget the glitter and moustaches

We had a nice feature in Exepose for Fresher's Week last week -



(admittedly we are slightly more advanced than a couple of beltdrives and a Made2Fade these days )

Well bugger me with a fish fork! Exepose, as in University of Exeter?!! I graduated in 99, used to help put on uni nights (RAG, Safer Sex Ball, Guild, Lemmy etc) as well as my own nights at Timepiece. Reform Records was my 2nd home! Spent most of my student loan in there.

Sold my Soundlab DLP1's and Made2Fade in the 1st year to finance my 2nd 1210MK2 and Gemini mixer which I've still got!

[backtothefront]

So I'm guessing all of you guys are from the US or something? I don't get this stuff really. I'm from the EU and other then some mainstream EDM being played on the radio we have party's and raves full of underground techno and house every week, and those are PACKED with people...

I think most of the replies are from UK based DJs (I certainly am). I agree with you, I think many of us in Europe generally fail to see the excitement of the 'EDM' explosion going on in the US - underground dance music has been with us (in Europe) for a couple of decades and we've seen the odd mainstream foray such as the late 90's with UK Garage and Trance at the end/start of the new millenium.

The underground stuff still remains strong here in the UK/EU I believe and will continue to do so after Steve Aoki et al have finished throwing perfectly good Mr Kipling's jam jarts in to the crowd or whatever it is these EDM guys do.

(shameless self promotion: I'm starting a brand new radio show on Fri 5th Oct 6-8PM (UK) on nu-rave.com - Soulful/Deep/Classic House music)

[Miec]

So, I do not quite see why it took such a long article to answer the question in the title with: "Hardly any."

To be honest, there are not many cities in the world that are blessed with such a diverse music scene as is London. If you check Resident Advisor's events for one weekend it's regularly the case that you have to choose between parties with world-class underground DJs and that's for any genre. To give you an idea, take the first weekend in October:

Thursday: Carl Cox at Electric Brixton, LCD Soundsystem at fabric, James Zabiela at Xoyo.
Friday: Off Recordings Showcase at Fire, Bar25 Film presentation + party at Village Underground, Shlomi Aber + Agaric at Crucifix Lane Warehouse, Popof at Egg, Hernan Cattaneo at Ministry of Sound
Saturday: Crosstown Rebels Rebellion Rave at The Sidings Warehouse, Bedrock Anniversary with John Digweed, Marc Fanciulli, Amirali, Apparat at Fire, John Tejada at Corsica Studios, Layo & Bushwhacka! at Egg, Matthias Tanzmann at fabric, Toolroom Knights at Ministry of Sound

And that's just for House and Techno and only the top and upper-middle tier of clubs. Besides that there's tons of talent spinning at small parties in (particularly) East London (Dalston, Hackney Wick, still some places in Shoreditch) that is only waiting to be discovered.

So I really don't see why a Londoner would write such an article besides for the fact that every site dealing with electronic music, DJing and anything related has to publish an article predicting the near end of every respectable form of dance music caused by American commercialism.

[Tommi Bass]

London is great, so is Bristol, Manchester, Leeds................. and so on.

We have loved it since the days of Northern Soul.. ie getting shitfaced to good music played by djs in the context of all nighters.

EDM.......... should not be a concern for Europe. I now live in Berlin, moved here so i could play out in the underground clubs.. and baby this town rocks!