What has been happening in the clubs these last few years? Answer: the urban middle class white kids have discovered disco, using the internet.
The term blog house first appeared in 2006 as the increasing popularity of music blogs met the pop disco phenomenon Justice. As 2007 rolled by, sites like Missingtoof, Valerie, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Discobelle, Panda Tones, Disco Dust, Floukids, and Big Stereo began to dominate the way DJs, music journalists, and regular fans hear and obtain new music.
At the same time, the music blog universe (blogville) was blessed with a new white hot center. Effectively becoming as a sever-less Napster for a new era of promotion and/or thievery, the music blog aggregator site The Hype Machine, which files music from blogs into a searchable format. Hype Machine holds a large responsibility for the success of these websites.
Separating the music style of blog house, and the means of producing, marketing, and consuming the blog house is tenuous at best. The amalgamation of underground—and increasingly above ground dance culture that came to a head in 2007—obscures the origins of the term, while creating a complex web of culture rooted in a 1980s music revival, cheaper production techniques (increasingly software and computer based), ease of disturbing recordings online, stable cocaine prices, and of course, the young, energized music blog community.
The phenomenal scale of these new developments in youth culture may ultimately be attributed to an influx of Echo Boomers (children of Baby Boomers) into colleges, art schools, and urban centers across the world.
Most music blogs offer very little in terms of analysis. The essential act of creating a post involves choosing an artist or theme, selecting songs to make available for download, and deciding what image will look most appealing. For this reason, the music must provide the vast majority of entertaining content.
The music is generally linked to a number of bands and producers who came to prominence around the time Justice hit the mainstream: Crystal Castles, Simian Mobile Disco, Moulinex, the Knife, Annorak, CSS, Girl Talk, Cut Copy, Hot Chip, M.I.A., Boys Noise, Ladyhawk, and PNAU. Soulwax, Fred Falke, and Daft Punk are bands from the shorter list of hugely influential acts that existed before Justice, but are still consistently played in clubs.
I’ve interviewed five major players in the National blog-based electronic music scene, each with varying degrees of approval or disapproval of the blog house label.
Carles of Hipster Runoff has name a brand for himself blogging about alternative and hipster culture from Austin Texas.
Infamous for his dark, brooding originals and vintage-sounding remixes, CFCF is a Montreal-based producer whose real name is Mike Silver.
Pictureplane is a performance-art-based dance music project based in Denver Colorado and frequently appearing at the DIY venue Rinoceropolis.
Party Time 2000, an enigmatic and poppy dance music producer from Chicago makes some of the snappiest hipster dance remixes on Myspace.
Lastly, Keen House is a brand new L.A. project that exemplifies the ghostly, cynical edge of blog house in 2008.
PUBLIC ACCESS: What does blog house sound like?
P2K: 4/4 [beats], usually. I think a lot of it sounds the same, unfortunately. I think it's a great
way for talent to bubble out of the masses though. Infinity kids playing with infinity copies of Ableton live and one of us is going to write Shakespeare eventually.
Pictureplane: People emulating justice. Trend hopping. A certain sound came out
(distorted bass lines, "club banger" stuff) it became popular with kids who had never heard dance music before, so everyone started to make it. It already seems very tired. I don’t think anyone will be talking about blog house in a few years.
PUBLIC ACCESS: What does blog house means to you?
Keen House: To me blog house is pretty much a grass roots type of movement. I think it involves the type of electronic music that is just around the corner of being accepted as a legit genre or trend in dance music. Right know it even seems to be split into a couple of blog house sub genres like the more banging type of stuff, grime, 80s revival and 90s rave oriented tracks. I think it's really exciting to see what new kind of genre will evolve out of this pool of different influences.
HRO: Blog house is a label for people who don't consider labels to be authentic. It is a very
exclusive, yet all-inclusive term.
P2K: Blog house = 20 year old kids plus Ableton live & a pocketful of dreams.
CFCF: It hurts my ears. I don't like to hear it in most cases.
Pictureplane: Blog house is just a term. A simplistic phrase designed to put a name to
something that cannot be defined by one phrase. It’s stupid really.
PUBLIC ACCESS: What are important blogs to the blog house phenomenon? Hipster Runoff (HRO)? 20 Jazz Funk Greats?
CFCF: I like 20jfg. They are neat and have good music. And I like lovefingers a
lot.
Keen House: Valerie, Discodust, Indiekrush, Trash Menagerie are really great.
P2K: HRO = classic, HYPEM (is that a cop-out)?
Pictureplane: Ghettobassquake.blogspot.com and a few others.
One music blog in particular that eventually crossed over into general alternative-cultural commentary, Hipster Runoff, has come to define the genre with now classic post “WTF is Blog House?” I spent a little extra time with Carles of Hipster Runoff:
PUBLIC ACCESS: What made you decide to write about blog house?
HRO: No one even knows what blog house means, and no one will ever know what it means.
Even the bloggers who have 'blog house blogs' don't even really know what to say. It's just electro music / post-post modern pop music for a highly selective audience.
PUBLIC ACCESS: Will blog house be remembered as a passing phase or a term that defines a
new era of music and culture?
HRO: I don't think many people even read music blogs when blog house was in its prime. Now
we are sort of in a post-blog house where there are so many different things being blogged (since there are so many blogs) that it is tough to pin down any direct evidence of evolution. It's just a lot of remixes, and a lot of crappy stuff showing up on Hype Machine. But blog house never 'meant' anything, so it's okay.
PUBLIC ACCESS: What do young, unknown bands have to gain by positioning themselves in
the blog house genre? What do they have to loose?
HRO: Being associated with blogs, whether you are a blogger, a musician, or a self-proclaimed
Blog House band, is a battle to overcome the long tail of the internet. While the internet has given more people an outlet to be heard, the chances of being heard are still slim, and even if you are heard by 1000 people, it doesn't even really matter. [illustration:] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
PUBLIC ACCESS: Besides HRO, what blogs are critical to the genre? If you had to read just
one music blog, what would it be?
HRO: I feel like most of the stuff blogged about on Big Stereo or Missing Toof from 2k6.5-
2k7.5 is probably the blog house golden age. I only started copying these electroblogs a year ago since I wanted to be perceived as being 'relevant.'
PUBLIC ACCESS: What is the musical alt-culture opposite of blog house? The Fleet Foxes?
HRO: I think the opposite of blog house is pre-blog era indie rock. Sort of when there were a
few 'indie labels' (Matador, Saddlecreek, Subpop) that controlled the content flow & consumer perception of what was relevant. Back then, these labels were a place for people feel like they were actively searching for music. Listening to music from blogs means that you want new music more than any one else.
PUBLIC ACCESS: What are the wider cultural implications and trends that involve, or arise
from, blog house?
HRO: Not that many people will remember Blog House on a wide cultural level, but mildly
alternative people who used the internet too much between 2006-2010 will kind of remember it because they used the Hype Machine to find tracks. Blog house is more representative of a time when the music industry was changing, and there was an economy of decent-enough creative/talented musicians who were able to reach the people who knew how to utilize technology to get new music.
Image credit goes to HRO's post on blog house
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