The power behind live dance music

The power behind live dance music

26 January, 2009 | 3.48PM

• Written by: Lee Smith
• Filed under: Music News:

The recent furor over the pics we posted of Justice faking their live show proved that the age-old debate about what really constitutes ‘live’ dance music is still going strong.

In this special extended feature, Lee Smith talks to leading live acts Alex Smoke, Mathew Jonson, Exercise One, Sideshow and The Bays to find out where live dance music is at in 2009.

Live dance music matters

As dance music clichés go, it’s probably the oldest one in the book. There can’t be a club music fan on earth who hasn’t been told, perhaps by their parents, perhaps by rock or indie-worshipping friends, that ‘rave’ isn’t real music because “all you have to do is push a button, right?”

Admittedly, in their infancy, live dance music PAs were often not too far away from that most hoary of luddite criticisms. But now, with a host of accessible technologies at their fingertips, producers have seemingly endless ways to perform their music – indeed, with the next frontier for DJs looking likely to be loop-based sets, the borderlines between DJ and live act are not so much blurred, as shattered beyond recognition.

“I can’t understand why someone who makes music wouldn’t want to play their music live, and only DJ,” says Alex Smoke, whose own live show is currently morphing from an almost purely Ableton Live based set-up to incorporate hardware synths and vocals.

“You have a lot more control. Of course, DJing has it moments – I love to DJ – but with a live set, you can be so much more expressive. Originally, I was using just Ableton Live, basically because it’s so amazing, you’ve got so much control and flexibility over what you’re doing. In a way, it doesn’t look like you’re playing live, because you’re just there behind a laptop. But what people maybe don’t realise is that with hardware shows, often the equipment has to be pre-organised to some extent, whereas with Ableton you can really fling things in as you go along.”

At the same time, Alex says he’s aware of the need to do more than simply sequence a bunch of your own sounds.

“People are under so much pressure to go out and play live, it’s almost expected now,” he offers. “Often they’re using Ableton just to DJ their own stuff, because it’s so easy to use – so it can be anti-climatic to see a live act that’s simply them and Ableton on stage.”

Dis-Ableton?

By far the most significant piece of software from the last few years to emerge in the live dance music arena, Robert Henke’s Ableton Live has both revolutionised and saturated the market. Simple Records’ leftfield house scamp Sideshow (who, as his Fink alter-ego, has also achieved widespread critical and commercial success as an acoustic performer) holds a fairly forthright view on Ableton’s place in live shows.

Maybe, being a DJ is what the actual ‘live’ version of dance music should be - Sideshow

“Does Ableton count as an instrument? No, I don’t think so, I don’t think it counts as a live show. You have to be doing something to be counted as a live show,” he says.

“You know, DJs aren’t the most interesting things to watch, but some guy looking at his laptop is even more boring. Maybe, being a DJ is what the actual ‘live’ version of dance music should be. Maybe Richie Hawtin or Jeff Mills with drum machines and FX is naturally what dance music should be, not keyboards and drum machines.”

However, Sideshow is quick to praise the acts who go that extra mile to create a genuine live experience.

“There are only a few acts I’ve seen lately that do a good live experience,” he ponders. “Of course, there are people like the Chemical Brothers, but also Metro Area; and Mathew Jonson and Cobblestone Jazz have blown me away recently.”

Balancing act

Mathew Jonson is perhaps modern techno’s most consistently acclaimed live exponent, with both his solo shows and his part in the Cobblestone Jazz outfit boosting him firmly into dance music’s top-league of performers. Renowned for his devotion to hardware, he’s not averse to the benefits of software either, providing what seems to be the perfect model for solo artists wanting to break out of the ubiquitous man-behind-a-screen mould.

“We face trying to balance the perfection of technology with giving a soul to the music we make,” Mathew explains. “Back when I started playing live in 1996, a lot of what was being done was improvisation, and if it was pre-programmed, then it was most likely coming off analogue gear that sounded different every time it was played. The music was really exciting to listen to - even if it sounded like shit a lot of the time, too. You could hear mistakes, just like if someone was playing vinyl.”

As a renowned hardware obsessive (“I’m addicted to analogue gear like a crack head looking for white spots in the carpet floor”, he states), is Mathew ever frustrated by the plethora of so-called live acts who only use a laptop?

“Sure. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that I enjoy listening to that are from this school of approach… actually, it surprised me because usually the multiple laptop jams on stage bore me quite a bit, but the Contakt show that Minus did at Sonar was really amazing. They took the previous idea of this form and took it to another level. There are so many people talking shit because of the Cube idea but really people should get over it and pay attention to what they’re doing on stage musically. It really works well.”

Fellow techno duo Exercise One, another act who use a predominantly hardware set-up, are similarly insistent about the importance of being original.

“I just think that lots of sets get too flat,” complains EO’s Marco Freivogel. “Nothing happens really anymore, everything is too safe and some artists just have a big playback show. I dunno, I like mistakes...”

Doing it the hard way

For some emerging artists, it can seem that the pressure to get out there and perform can result ill-conceived live shows. But the ultimate antithesis to the quickly knocked-off dance PA is undoubtedly British band The Bays, who’ve been honing their spectacular fusion of live instrumentation and thumping dance music for over ten years. The band never release any music, and never do any remixes, relying solely on live performance as their medium – a true rarity in today’s hyper-commodified music industry.

“One thing I’ve always found interesting about being a live dance act is that The Bays are all about performance,” explains drummer Andy. “Our main objective is to keep the dancefloor, the energy, the groove, whatever you wish to call it, going strong.

“Most DJs can gauge how things are going based on their selection at the time, and can turn a corner by having the freedom to drop a new direction to continue the dynamics of their set.

“By the same token, because there’s no fixed set list or familiar tunes to play, we can also have this freedom to manage how dynamically things are between us and our audience… I’d like to think of our sets being like a box of tunes no one has ever heard.”

Based largely on improvisation, The Bays’ shows are, to Andy, all about that spark of inspiration you get from playing with other living, breathing musicians.

“When we play together, we’re all hearing what we’ve been working on individually for the first time, and that gives the music a certain energy and natural lift. [We avoid] that classic scenario that happens time and time again, when a band goes to record its first demo.

“When the band come to record it for real, it never really captures the spirit of the demo - everyone involved in the process will have an initial ‘hit’ as it were, then every other performance of this will be trying to replicate that ‘hit’.”

The quest for imperfection

As the doors for live performance open up to more and more emerging artists, standing out from the crowd is becoming increasingly difficult. But that doesn’t mean that at its best, live dance music can’t be just as thrilling as any conventional band, or indeed, as your favourite club-slaying DJ. Like everyone we spoke to, Alex Smoke is ultimately optimistic about the prospects for live electronic music to come.

“I can see it not quite replacing DJs, but maybe having a couple of DJs and a live act at a club night,” he suggests. “That’s already normal in a lot of places. There are still lots of people doing really creative stuff live.”

And as for the genre’s continual search for perfection – the perfect mix , the perfect sequencer, the perfect beat – Mathew Jonson suggests letting down the barriers and reveling in live music’s inevitable flaws.

“Don’t forget to keep it real, everybody,” he offers as advice to any aspiring electronic live acts. “Take chances and make mistakes. You are human after all…”

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