The Telegraph does dance

The Telegraph does dance

11 March, 2009 | 2.53AM

• Written by: Ryan Keeling
• Filed under: Music News: the daily telegraph

Conservative British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph have printed a slightly cringe-worthy but well meaning article discussing the rise of pretentiousness within modern electronic music.

Far from taking a dim view on such an assertion however, columnist Edmund Conway concludes that after years of disparaging frowns from the mainstream towards its oft-dismissed musical cousin, dance music is now a complex and “sophisticated” beast that has as much to do with Steve Reich and Phillip Glass as it does with sweaty nightclubs.

The mainstream British press’ take on electronic music has often been derided within the electronic music community as being behind the times or hideously out of touch, casting off the genre as ‘dead’ and then gleefully singing its praises once it was perceived to be back in fashion.

In his blog, Conway uses examples of Radiohead’s penchant for “folk-tronica”, Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon’s release of the minimalist complilation ‘The Grandfather Paradox’ and Carl Craig’s marriage of techno and classical via his remix of Ravel’s Bolero and Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures from an Exhibition’ as examples of the high-brow position electronic music had adopted.

Interestingly - or absurdly depending on which way you view it - he compares Joris Voorn’s 102 track ‘Balance 014’ mix CD (which was realeased last week) to T.S. Elliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’ - both being what he describes as a “cocktail of intertextuality”.

Quite what Voorn would make of that comparison is another matter entirely.

Read the full article here.

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