I've been reading with interest the back-and-forth diatribe's between the top dogs of EDM and it's detractors. The one thing that I seem to see a lot on the side of those who have a stake in the future success of EDM, is a perceived optimism about it's future. I thought that instead of running my mouth with uneducated opinions, maybe I should let others speak for me.
The post below is comparisons of quotes from articles and books about the 90's and early 00's dance scene and the current EDM scene. I thought it would be good for all of us to look at the current scene in context, and also reflect on it's similarity to previous scenes. I haven't even covered all the elements of the scenes, missing such crucial effects as the criminal element, but you'll get the picture.
If you don't understand your past mistakes, you're almost certainly doomed to repeat them.
Corporatization
As soon as the money-makers arrive, the dilution of quality begins.
You started to hear the murmerings of disquiet in 2001, when normally booster-ish dance mag Muzik claimed that the entire industry was in denial about the oncoming crisis. Attendance in clubs was declining, record sales were sliding, the only real growth area was chill-out compilations...
The next generation of cool kids were turning away from faceless techno-bollocks, toward more face-full music...
Dance musics mainstream was imploding,leaving an array of micro-scenes and little undergrounds orbiting a collapsed centre...
Music usually becomes muzak only after it has been chart pop for a good while... Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash
As with every genre before it, corporate influence in a previously untouched genre is cause for handwringing, not least because the dilution of the music seems inevitable the bigger it gets. Live Nation’s acquisition of Hard was especially upsetting, because of Hard’s reputation for supporting underground as well as marquee artists and respecting the purity of the experience. For instance, the upcoming line-up for Hard Summer 2012, in Los Angeles, places big names like Skrillex, Nero and Boyz Noise alongside more boutique artists like Araabmuzik, Buraka Som Sistema and Brenmar. With the influence of Live Nation, one wonders if this sort of juxtaposition will continue to flourish or if ticket prices will become even less affordable? Alternet.Org, 2013
According to Billboard, Sillerman's strategy is likely to be an "end-to-end program encompassing on-site presence at SFX-owned events; endorsement from SFX-managed artists within paid, owned and earned media channels; editorial support from SFX-owned entities; and newly developed mobile or other technologies to tie it all together." In other words, a vertically integrated marketing behemoth. In the same way that Google is an advertising company that runs a service allowing you to type questions and find answers on the Internet, SFX will be an advertising company that just happens to put on concerts. Phillip Sherburne, Spin 2013
Drugs
Drugs go hand-in-hand with dance music, and users have always suffered in the long-term.
In ecstacy subcultures, too, there tends to be a point where the MDMA honeymoon phase comes to an abrupt end; again and again, from Manchester in 1990 to Los ANgeles in 1993, the descent into darkness occurs. Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash
But what happens when an ethos built around a drug collapses, yet people keep getting high? Think about the Summer of Love of 1967, when the LSD utopia of San Francisco devolved into a haven for crime and drug abuse. Think about Altamont, where the chemicals that enabled a generation’s divine visions later inflamed the violence that left Meredith Hunter dead. We've felt the quakes of this same force in the mainstreaming of EDM in the last half-decade, where lyrics about the indestructibility of love, the clarity of the horizon, and the remedy of the bass have given way to Miley Cyrus’s braying electronic anthems about “dancing with Molly.” Themes of transcendent universal harmony have dissipated into bitter Tweets about how Olivia Rotondo and Jeffrey Russ ruined EZoo for everyone else. This force hasn't knocked the revolution off its axis, per se—it has simply made the axis illegible.
It’s too soon to tell how the Electric Zoo tragedies will influence the cachet of either the music or MDMA use in America, though many believe they go hand-in-hand, to such an extent that it’s hard to determine exactly which came first. The Atlantic, Sep 2013
The music
Dance music itself has always turned dark when it's back was against the wall.
Two things replaced Rave’s smiley-face fervor with skrewface attitude. The first was ‘darkness’, the trend for producers to deploy sinister atmospherics and sick-joke soundbites that reflected the paranoia and psychic malaise engendered by excessive, long-term Ecstasy use.
The second factor was ‘blackness’, as ragga, dub and Hip Hop influences (already percolating in Ardkore) broke Rave’s ties to House and disco. Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash
Right now the EDM scene is an uneasy coalition between the slamming rocktronica of Skrillex and Bassnectar and the fluffy feel-good trance-house of DJs like Avicii, Kaskade, Swedish House Mafia, and Steve Aoki. On one side, there's Hard's Gary Richards who wants to push electronic music even further away from rave's disreputable and daft past. On the other, there's Electric Daisy Carnival, which has preserved not just rave's hands-in-the-air euphoria but some of its subcultural ritual aspects too. Simon Reynolds The Guardian 2012
Soon as they like you, make em unlike you. Kanye West, Yeezus 2013
Compare Simon Reynolds accounts of the demise of Ardkore rave and rise of Jungle in 93, with the quotes of Hard Festivals Gary Richards. Is the more serious Hard festival just as reactionary as Jungle was in 93? Is this the death of rave-style EDM?
Since 1993 and Rave’s slide into the twilight zone, Hardcore has periodically been convulsed by debates about “where did our love go?” Some mourn the eclipse of bonhomie by moodiness and attitude; many of these disenchanted ravers sloped off to form the Happy Hardcore scene, currently massive in England and Scotland. Others defend the demise of the euphoric vibe, arguing that Jungle’s atmosphere isn’t moody, it’s ’serious’. This faction pours scorn on the happy ravers for their cheesy music, white gloves and other nostalgic trappings of the rave dream, which is felt to be not just lost, but utterly discredited. Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash
Hard's Gary Richards can't stand the glove-dance phenomenon: "I'm like, 'look at the stage, not your friend's fingers". But by suppressing this element from his events, he's effectively reducing the participatory aspects of rave that gave it so much of its charm and distinctiveness as a subculture. Simon Reynolds, Resident Advisor 2013
Hard Festival's Richards wanted to lose the "goofy fashion" side of rave that EDC revels in. "Why do we have to dress up like idiots to listen to this music? All those girls in the furry boots, they look like Clydesdale horses!" As "hard" suggests, Richards presents electronic music as modern rock: an old spirit encased in new digital flesh. Simon Reynolds, The Guardian 2012
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