I’ve gone to a handful of EDM shows & festivals over the last year and I just don’t get how people can dance to most of the popular shit these days (says the hipster music blogger). At least not when you’ve got such better music to dance to (also hipster). So obviously we had to put a list together (very hipster).
Our Dance Party mix for 2014 is geared more towards the club or house party rather than the rave. I guess that’s where we differ from the higher BPM, bombastic music dominating EDM right now.
We get into various forms of house music on here, but there’s plenty of other influences as well — I’m being vague because I just spent way too much of my time putting together this list and I don’t have time to articulate it (like always).
Like the iPhone every year, this is our best playlist yet! It really is.
House has been my obsession for the past few years and my favorite kind is the mid-tempo, upbeat summertime jams. Which may or may not turn out to be called Tropical House. Or Summer House. Or Horizontal Disco. It’s up in the air really.
A few tracks do stereotypically incorporate the steel drums, but we did cover more ground than that. We also decided this should be more comprehensive than our usual playlists because we wanted to get all the trop house personas in one place. There are quite a few interesting characters.
I can’t figure why Moon Boots would put this subconsciously disturbing ‘I hear voices’ sound bite in at :39 but for a little fun. Apart from that it’s all smooth disco from there. ‘C.Y.S.’ samples the three Total girls from the 90’s hit with B.I.G., ‘Can’t You See.’ And instead of calling this a remix of the original, Moon Boots has gone for the slightly polished look, removing any sense of sampling in the title.
I don’t always agree with removing any clue of where the samples come from, but as long as it’s easy to find it some other way I can understand why producers are straying away from the title of remix artist. People don’t respect the remixing community in music for reasons I doubt they can even articulate.
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Looking back over this last list for 2013, I’ve realized one major flaw to it. There are no women on here. We’ve had our love for women this year, but this list contains our most obsessed about music with musicians consistently present throughout the year.
Doja Cat was our closest girl, but we only fell for one of hers. She did have a lot of other potentials that fell short because the production wasn’t to the level of that voice. Producers, this girls got talents!
London Grammar probably has the most right to be up here, but I credited their best to their collab with Disclosure and I didn’t fall for ‘Strong’ in time (wish it was still 2013). They’re also two-thirds dude, so that didn’t help them either […]
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Try not to think of EDM or electronic dance music as purely just the dubstep, deadbeat music that the mass majority like to think of it as. Dance music has been filled with electronic sounds for decades and its reach is almost all encompassing. From disco to house this music has come a long way and we’re just at the tipping point of things to come (aren’t we always).
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I may have been more of a Michael fan back in the day, but Janet is the one making a comeback in this untraditional style, via the remix. She’s got a handful of my favorite disco, soul & funk producers remixing her right and I’ve been waiting far too long to present it to you. Now some of them have been so chopped & fucked with that it doesn’t even sound like Janet anymore, but I assure you it’s all in good taste. Guarantee you’ll find some gem to obsess over for sometime.
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There is no other sound more fun to dance to than disco. However fast or slow, it brings the spirit to soul music. This may only be our second mix of its kind (#1), but it’s got some soon to be disco legends for sure. So whether you’re alone or in public, get up & dance to this 13-track disco mix.
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So like I always do, I made up my own lyrics to Moon Boots’ Love Strong song or at least parts of it. But when I tried to figure out the actual lyrics, I couldn’t. The weird thing is that these vocals sound so familiar. I thought a simple Google search or a SHAZAM! would do it, but no such luck.
This is why credits need to be given with a simple search.. or simpler. For the first time we have the ability to properly store extensive song data, yet there’s still no widely-known & used service that gives musicians this ability, easily. This has been brought up at a few SF MusicTech discussions I’ve listened to and I’m sure it will be again, but hopefully with someone who has a promising demo to show off this time around. [Dreams]
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Independent record labels are sprouting up all over the place — in location & style. And the ones that are doing it right not only have a choice selection in catalogue, but also take the time to artfully craft their image as they do their artists.
Each of these 12 labels sport some of the most well respected producers & musicians that belong on this blog and create a culture with style around their music. On here I may point out a few that lack in proper online presence, but they are all doing it right when it comes to the perception of this era’s evolution in music labels.
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Someone in, on or associated with Bondax has got one helluva full voice. This Moon Boots remix may not get to it quick enough, but it turns into a catchyass, disco-pop track in no time (about a minute).
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