A great long-read in the Mix Mag which explores the connection between the rising living costs and the downfall of clubbing. It also takes into account the societal, political, and behavioral factors, and sets forth some ideas as to how to deal with it. Finally, it tries to guess what this change will mean in the broader society.
Bandcamp's Brad Sanders wrote an essay about growing up in sports, replacing them with music, learning to love running, and, with a little help from the post-metal band Russian Circles, how the two tightly connect. "I log all my runs in the Strava app, and in the description field for each run, I always include what I listened to while I was out on the road. It’s a formal way to acknowledge what Russian Circles taught me years ago, that the music that feeds my soul and the movement that feeds my body can–and indeed must–peaceably coexist."
"[Nowadays] It feels like if you have a musical group it must be centered around the vocalist. If we measure the average percent of instrumental content per Billboard number hit between 1940 and 2021, we see demonstrable evidence for not just the decline of the instrumental superstar but the instrumentalist generally, with the sharpest declines beginning in the 1950s and the 1990s" - Chris Dalla Riva points out. He offers an explanation: "I believe it comes down to four factors: improved technology, the 1942 musicians’ strike, WWII, television, and hip-hop."
The Conversation offers a few pieces of advice "if you want to train your musical taste to extend beyond the old favourites of youth:
Dance music has got so hard and fast recently, Mixmag believes and tries to find clues as to whether it has really happened and - if so - why. “My whole take on the faster, harder side of things is that people turned 18 over the pandemic. They’d heard about techno, but they’d never experienced a club [and] they were listening to stuff in the house, coming from maybe hard dance, or hardcore or ravey happy hardcore stuff. Then they burst into a club and want to hear things at 100 miles per hour because they haven’t heard anything different" - Glasgow DJs and producer Quail shares his thoughts. Techno artist Sunil Sharpe thinks part of the reason is also down to a loss of clubs: “In ways the traditional nightclub environment used to regulate tempo but as the amount of clubs has thinned out over the last decade, it feels like the scene has moved more towards locations that capture the original spirit of rave culture when tempos were faster."
A great read in Vice about the "shady, high-paying private gig industry", which has almost all the biggest pop and rock stars on one side, and just about anybody who has enough money to pay them, on the other side. As Vice puts it, it comes down to this: "With unimaginable amounts of money at the disposal of central governments and lucrative corporations, stars with relatively clean PR images are being tempted to get a slice of the action"
"Many of us got to witness a second breakthrough moment for hip-hop during the recent 65th Grammy Awards. Questlove of the Roots along with LL Cool J put their heads together and curated an incredible tribute to acknowledge hip-hop’s upcoming 50th birthday... It was an incredible tribute that was preceded by Kendrick Lamar winning Hip-Hop Album of the Year and the grand finale being an 8-minute song that featured DJ Khalid, Jay-Z and Rick Ross" - journalist and professor Dave “Davey D” Cook is looking back at 50 years of hip-hop in the Pollstar. "The hip-hop takeover of the Grammys was a reminder that hip-hop is deeply woven in the fabric of modern-day music and it is perched to reach even greater heights".
"Reggaeton artists dominated the Spanish top 50 songs chart in 2021, edging out every English-language performer except for the Weeknd and Lil Nas X. The genre’s continuous rise in Spain has raised urgent questions about cultural ownership, colonialism, and race as a result of centuries-old social hierarchies between Europe and Latin America" - Pitchfork looks into the sensitive issue. "There is concern about Spanish artists profiting off the music of Afro-diasporic cultures once colonized by Spain, sometimes even eclipsing the visibility of those who founded the movement... Meanwhile, other industry executives and cultural commentators hail reggaeton’s takeover in Spain as a sign of globalization’s advantages."
“People want positive energy in their lives. Trance music offers just that” - Dutch curator, writer, and label owner Arjan Rietveld says to Pitchfork about the current revival of trance. Rietveld sees trance as a natural corrective to the omnipresent darkness of styles like techno and more experimental styles of club music, not to mention real-world woes like climate change and the pandemic, The P points out. Musicians at the crest of that new trance wave are TDJ, Young Marco, DJ Courtesy, among others.
"Tracks in dance music have not only gotten shorter, but significantly so - average track lengths appear to have dropped by at least a minute or two during the past decade, and that drop seems to have accelerated during the latter half of the 2010s" - First Floor points out. The reasons? "Streaming services provide not only seemingly infinite content, but also remove virtually all costs for engaging with that content. There’s literally zero consequence for quickly pressing the skip button and moving on to something else. For consumers, the benefits of this system are obvious, but it’s also given rise to a listening public with little patience and an urgent need to be entertained as quickly as possible, lest they move on to the next thing... At this point, the idea of laying back and 'getting lost in the music' seems almost quaint; most listeners, especially young ones, simply want their favorite songs to hurry up and deliver a dopamine hit as quickly as possible".
