History Of House Music

I’ve been watching a documentary on youtube about the history of house music. It’s pretty interesting. It starts in Chicago, with the emergence of house from disco, then it moves to Detroit and techno’s emergence. Then it looks into the eruption in the UK of electronic music. One of the artists they interview is Orbital, one of my favorites. Then it discusses ambient (e.g. Orb) and the adaptation of house beats to slower stuff. Then it talks about hardcore techno, which gained ground in the UK but not so much in the US. Then drum n bass (e.g. Goldie), which doesn’t just sample and speed up other tunes, but tweaks, loops, reverse loops and more, i.e. it gets more complicated. Then Leftfield, what they call England making house music its own.  Then the US again, and how djs are no longer just people who play records, but now they are people who make records. In general, I really enjoyed this documentary. It covered mostly stuff I didn’t know, especially the earlier stuff (i did skip a couple videos near the beginning, I’d recommend skipping to parts 6 or 7 if the earlier stuff is boring to you).

One thing I’m wondering is, how does French electronic music fit into this. Was it a separate world? They’ve got some great stuff, it’s hard to imagine they didn’t know each other. I imagine the documentarians just chose to focus mostly on the UK and US. And then it closes (part 15) with some unattributed Daft Punk! How can they play Daft Punk but not mention the French scene?! Or what about other countries? What has happened since 2001 (which is when I think the video was made)?

Also, how does breakcore and idm and similar genres relate to those discussed in this documentary? Is seems like it has to have emerged from the crazy beats documented here, but taken to a greater extreme. It’s hard to imagine, however, that breakcore is actually intended for clubs and dancing, so I’m guessing it’s a different world.

Here’s a variant of a track discussed in the video, that I think is pretty cool, a remix of Tori Amos. The cool stuff is especially between 1:20 and 3 minutes.

Professional Widow (Armand Van Helden’s Star Trunk Funkin’ mix)

History Of House Music