I had initially intended on writing a top 10 of sorts, with a small paragraph regarding each release, but I realized I had a lot to say about some of them, so I’m going to make a series of posts about what I saw as the important tracks, artists and trends of 2007 instead. Hope you enjoy them.
Dubfire - Ribcage
It’s hard to underestimate the impact this record had in 2007. One of the biggest sellers in the minimal genre, it also provoked a lot of controversy in the scene, to whom it represented the growing commercialization of the style. Indeed, much of the debate had more to do with the Dubfire himself than the track, while discussion of the track itself tended to use terms like “cold”, “soulless” and “calculated”; ironic, considering that those same terms are often aimed at electronic music in general. But what is especially ironic is that Ribcage is, in fact, much more minimal than a lot of what passes for “minimal” these days, which just goes to show how much the term has become about image rather than actual music… and image is what lies at the heart of the controversy.
Minimal techno and progressive house have long been viewed as being at opposite ends of the commercial, and therefore artistic, spectrum: one was the domain of geeks and weirdos in their basements, doing it for the love of music; the other the domain of superstar djs, 5 figure booking fees, coke and strippers. Yet musically speaking, the terms are not mutually exclusive, and the styles have been converging for some time, the end result being tracks like Ribcage; both minimal and progressive, marrying elements of both into dancefloor devastation (or formulaic crap, depending on your point of view). This sits rather poorly with the minimal scenesters, who feel the incursion of prog into their scene will somehow ruin it, yet unfortunately for them, Ribcage is just the tip of the iceberg; minimal techno is crossing over into the dance music mainstream in a big way, and the hybridization of minimal with other styles is a natural consequence of that.
Personally, as an artist, I can only see that as being a good thing. Sure, there will be a lot of crap released as people try to cash in on the genre’s popularity, but the increased market means more opportunity for everyone; It means that records that would have languished in obscurity several years ago might become bestsellers now, the minimal hipsters’ favorites included.
And we’ll be able to thank Dubfire for that.
Hello, and a slightly belated happy new year to you. As one of my numerous new year’s resolutions, I’ve decided to start using my site for more than just the occasional chart, and turn it into a real blog: I’ll be starting with a 2007 retrospective soon, and plan on posting on a weekly basis, circumstances permitting. Thank you for visiting, and I hope we see each other more in the future!
So my brand spanking new blogging engine has bugs in it, and things that were working fine the last time I checked aren’t working properly anymore. I’ve fixed what I’ve found, but let me know if you see anything else strange.
I hope yours was as enjoyable as mine!
After several years of hand writing HTML, I’ve finally put another blogging system online. Things may not look too different at the moment, but under the hood there’s quite a bit of new stuff; you can now post comments, and all content is now split into different sections. Although everything will be mixed together on the front page, charts and news will be in their own sections, and I’ll be adding more sections in the near future. I also have a whole new design being worked on, which should be ready sometime in January. All of which is part of my plan to start making better use of this website.
Things might be a little broken while I fine tune the software, but feel free to email me if you see anything amiss.
More news soon!
No chart just yet, as I’m currently working on an update to this site and I want to finish that first. Everything should be online friday!
UPDATE: Spoke too soon. But it shouldn’t be too much longer.
Wow. Now that I own a mac, I’ve just noticed how bad this site looks in safari. I’ll be fixing that soon!
UPDATE: fixed. Safari’s much less forgiving of CSS errors than other browsers, it would seem!
I’d been having problems with my webhosting lately, with frequent downtime as well as lack of access to my email, so I’ve switched to a new provider; if you see this message that means the move was succesful. If you’ve sent me email recently and haven’t received a response, please send it again.
First off, a couple of release to announce: out now is my remix of Greg Gow’s The Meltdown, on Restructured (mp3 samples on that page); It’s something I did quite a while ago, and isn’t really representative of the stuff I’m working on lately, but I’m quite happy with it regardless. Then, out soon is the first of two EPs on Poussez, based on material from my Inside Out album. This first EP will feature the tracks Inside Out, Thinking of You, and Ignition, and the second (due next year) will feature remixes of Solaris. After several false starts with some other labels, it’s nice to finally have some of this material coming out on vinyl.
I finished a couple of remixes this past month: the first was of Greg Gow’s “The Warning”, for his Restructured label, and the second was of Alexander Koning’s “Wormhole”, although I’m not sure of the label. I’ve decided that those will be my last remixes for the next little while, as it’s been a long time since I’ve finished any original material, and that’s what I’ll be concentrating on for the near future. I did do a collaboration with Trimsound’s Leif for the recent Archipel “Assignment” CD, available now from CD Baby.