Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture

Ten Years of Dancecult

Graham St John — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Introduction to Ageing with EDMC

David Madden — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Being and Performing "Older" Woman in Electronic Dance Movement Culture

Alice O'Grady, Anna Madill — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

This article foregrounds the accounts of a cohort of clubbers who are largely ignored both by journalists and scholars alike. Grounded in the accounts of aging female clubbers and their participation in electronic dance music culture, it investigates the lived experience of being and performing the category of “older woman” in this context. It examines the materiality of their participation and their tactical responses to being in an environment that has been associated traditionally with youth. In a landscape where scholarship on female participation in club cultures is, at best, scarce, research into the experiences of older women in dance music culture is virtually non-existent. As such this article represents a first step in addressing a significant gap in understanding women’s engagement with dance cultures as they mature.

The Irony and the Ecstasy

Larissa Wodtke — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

The English duo Pet Shop Boys and American group LCD Soundsystem are notable for their representation as artists who entered and succeeded in the predominately youthful market of popular music and the hedonistic aesthetic of electronic dance music (EDM) at ages considered old for the industry: 32 for vocalists/lyricists Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys) and James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem). Neither of these bands makes straightforward EDM—Pet Shop Boys fall under pop and LCD Soundsystem can be considered post-punk—but both are influenced by the New York City dance scene of the late 70s and early 80s, and are characterized as ironic. I argue that Pet Shop Boys and LCD Soundsystem are ironic because of their belated, knowing position in a genre that privileges the infinite present and unproductive reproduction through repetition. In light of Lee Edelman’s claim that irony is the queerest of rhetorical devices, the ambivalence of Pet Shop Boys’ and LCD Soundsystem’s ostensible lack of youth and the youthful temporality of their EDM aesthetic place them in a queer tension between notions of immediate authenticity and the distance of age.

Baby Raves

Zoe Armour — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

This article begins with a reconsideration of the parameters of age in translocal EDM sound system and (super)club culture through the conceptualisation of a fluid multigenerationality in which attendees at EDM-events encompass a spectrum of ages from 0–75 years. Since the 1980s, it remains the case that the culture is fuelled through a constant influx of newcomers who are predominantly emerging youth, yet there are post-youth members in middle adulthood and later life that are also a growing body that continues to attend EDM-events. In this context, the baby rave initiative (2004–present) has capitalised on a gap in the family entertainment market and created a new chapter in (super)club and festival culture. I argue that the event is a catalyst for live heritage in which the accompanying children (aged from 0–12 years) temporarily become the beneficiaries of their parent’s attendee heritage and performance of an unauthored heritage.

A Danceable Shower of Bullets

Carlos Palombini — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

The processes that lead from volt-mix to tamborzão, two bases (beats) of funk carioca (funk from the greater Rio de Janeiro city), are analysed with reference to Pierre Schaeffer’s typo-morphology of sonic objects (1966). Such transformations are viewed as instances of Gilbert Simondon’s concretization (1958). They are synchronous with changes in the geopolitics and human geography of bailes funk (funk dances). As the volt-mix morphs into the tamborzão, the epicentre of these events moves from clubs in the suburbs and periphery to favelas, and funkeiros (funksters) become subjected to tensions arising from control of their spaces by rival factions of illicit substance retailers. These shifts coincide with the rise of a human character, the neurótico (neurotic), and with the collective feeling of neurose (neurosis) associated with circulating in those territories, as Carla Mattos’s ethnography demonstrates (2006).

Boom Bap, Trap and Ageing in Belo Horizonte's Rap Music Scene

Michel Antônio Brasil Teixeira — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

An Interview with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Tristan Rodin Kneschke — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Travellers and Sound System Protest

Dave Payling — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Death of/in British Drum 'n' Bass Music

Alistair Fraser — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Have Things Really Changed, or Is It Just Me?

Donna Cynthia Bentley — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

My Practice of Live Performance of Spatial Electronic Dance Music

Sebastien Lavoie — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Raving Iran (Susanne Regina Meures, dir.)

Gay Jennifer Breyley — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Sweet Harmony: Rave|Today (Philly Adams & Kobi Prempeh, curs.)

Chris Christodoulou — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Popular Viennese Electronic Music, 1990–2015: A Cultural History (Ewa Mazierska)

Anita Jori — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0700

The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Robert Fink, Melinda Latour & Zachary Wallmark, eds.)

Maria Perevedentseva — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Fyre Fraud (Jenner Furst & Julia Willoughby Nason, dirs.) & Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (Chris Smith, dir.)

Tommy Colton Symmes — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0800