Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture

Editorial Introduction: Dance Culture in the Time of Corona

Dave Payling — 2020-11-13

No Screenshots on the Dance Floor

Ben Assiter — 2020-11-13

India's Electronic Music Scene Under Lockdown

Chris McGuinness — 2020-11-13

A Post-Post-Soviet Scene Post-Quarantine

Camille LeBlanc Liederman — 2020-11-13

Virtual Dance Floors

Emilia Simao — 2020-11-13

Good Vibes Friday

Sam Warren — 2020-11-13

Sound Systems at the George Floyd Protests in Minneapolis During the Summer of 2020

Tommy Colton Symmes — 2020-11-13

Transformation Through Connection?

Terje Toomistu — 2020-11-13

Bring the Break-Beat Back!

Chris Christodoulou — 2020-11-13

This article focuses on the critical divergences between rhythm and repetition in contemporary drum ‘n’ bass music in three key ways. First, it shows how the characteristic “chopping” and acceleration of sampled break-beats emphasises continuity with the past, thereby placing the genre in a continuum of Black Atlantic cultural practice that articulates historical recuperation as a political priority, while signifying the discontinuity of time in an accelerated culture. Secondly, it addresses the persistent use of live break-beats as an impulse within the genre to emphasise competing discourses of authenticity in the context of Black Atlantic cultural memory. Thirdly, having examined the embodied performativity valorised in the sampling of live break-beats, the article shows how the critical valuation of rhythmic characteristics can function as a catalyst of genre mutation and sub-genre development in drum ‘n’ bass and other electronic dance music genres.

Genre in Practice

Christopher David Charles — 2020-11-13

Digital technology has changed the way in which genre terms are used in today’s musical cultures. Web 2.0 services have given musicians greater control over how their music is categorised than in previous eras, and the tagging systems they contain have created a non-hierarchical environment in which musical genres, descriptive terms, and a wide range of other metadata can be deployed in combination, allowing musicians to describe their musical output with greater subtlety than before. This article looks at these changes in the context of psyculture, an international EDM culture characterised by a wide vocabulary of stylistic terms, highlighting the significance of these changes for modern-day music careers. Profiles are given of two artists, and their use of genre on social media platforms is outlined. The article focuses on two genres which have thus far been peripheral to the literature on psyculture, forest psytrance and psydub. It also touches on related genres and some novel concepts employed by participants (”morning forest” and ”tundra”).

The Studio as Contemporary Autonomous Zone

Paul Chambers — 2020-11-13

This article explores electronic music making in a context of precarity and climate crisis. I use ethnographic research conducted in the Australian city of Adelaide and the provocative ideas of nineteenth century German philosopher, Max Stirner, to situate the electronic music studio as a contemporary autonomous zone, an interface between creative expression and capitalist existence. I argue that the studio functions as a physical and psychological space to develop what Stirner termed “ownness”, taking possession and realizing one’s own capacity and power. I propose ownness as a theoretical tool for understanding the studio as a site of self-realisation and micro-political action, investigating how electronic music practice shapes subjectivity, autonomy and resistance. The contemporary studio emerges as a refuge from the anxieties and uncertainties of late-capitalism, a therapeutic outlet and means of becoming, an opportunity to find voice and vocation in the violence of the present.

The Vibe as Peace

Marc-Olivier Castagner — 2020-11-13

While discourses of peace abound in cultural, youth and EDMC studies, notably in relation to concepts like communitas, the dominant moral and modern conceptions of peace and conflict appear limited to tackling the inevitable conflict dynamics inside parties and around the vibe as a peak experience. Inspired by contemporary peace studies, Peter Sloterdijk’s psychopolitical-morphological argument known as spherology and participation in Montreal’s psytrance scenes, this paper offers an alternative understanding of productive conflicts at work in the vibe and outside of it. At the end, this paper seeks to offer observers and practitioners means to discuss the various peace-conflict dynamics nascent on dance floors with effects on global cultural formations.

Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture (Joe Muggs & Brian David Stevens)

Edward Spencer — 2020-11-13

Night Fever: Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today (Mateo Kries, Jochen Eisenbrand & Catherine Rossi, eds.) & This Must Be the Place: An Architectural History of Popular Music Performance Venues (Robert Kronenburg)

Hillegonda C Rietveld — 2020-11-13

Moon Juice Stomper: A Novel (Goa 1987-96) (Ray Castle)

Graham St John — 2020-11-13

Avicii: True Stories (Levan Tsikurishvili, dir.)

George Musgrave — 2020-11-13