Essay: How wealth is distorting underground dance music

"Wealth and class play vital roles here" - the Quietus says in its analysis of new EP by dance music quartet Housekeeping. The Q is quite annoyed by their "adoption of musical forms rooted in black, queer, and working-class struggles", because "it feels remiss to ignore the absolutely deranged levels of privilege to which all four of its members have access". So, biographies: "Three of them tend to elide or remove references to their surnames, perhaps hoping to draw some distinction between their musical personas and their other public appearances. The mononymous Jacobi is a regular on the society pages under his full surname of Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, usually in relation to his aristocratic connections, while for Sebastian Macdonald-Hall (whose family’s combined wealth of £842m places them at 168th in this year's Rich List), it’s his commercial real estate empire. Carl Waxberg appears positively relatable by comparison, having merely been a director at Citibank for 13 years before launching his own investment fund". The EP they made is "an utterly unremarkable slab of tech-house... a blur of mediocrity, notable only for its steadfast refusal to challenge even the tamest clichés of mainstream club music: tautly-mixed kick drums sit politely alongside shuffling percussion, filter-swept basslines and elegantly narcotised vocals".