EU is much more electronic music orientated, and D.J.'s here are quite different, yet same, they do the exactly the same thing this article describes.
Just watch this repetitive, yet awesome 3 minute buildup, leading to total madness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5-b33rhevQ
And that's just first clip that comes to mind.
To really understand what an edm DJ does you need to listen for an hour plus. It wasn’t that breakdown that made the crowd explode like that, it was the hours and hours of music building up to it.
I used to be a trance DJ and when I was preparing for a gig, I would build a two-hour set around two or three moments. I’d find a couple of records that I knew would get a big reaction and I’d basically treat them like a jewel that I had to find the perfect setting for. Every other song I played was about building up tension and contrast for those moments. If I had a track with a big vocal in the breakdown, I’d be sure to lead into it with nothing but non stop instrumental tracks with few or no breaks in the beat, playing repetitive songs to build up tension so when it finally opened up into a recognizable melody and lyrics people would have this huge feeling of release and I doubt most of them even knew why.
There was nothing better than getting a crowd to jump up and down and scream when you knew they would do it. It was like casting a spell.
If you’re not obsessive about dance music and haven’t tried djing, it’s really hard to appreciate what a DJ does and how hard it is to really move a large crowd. It’s not just about playing good songs. I used to think it was and cleared dance floors playing nothing but really popular songs when I first started. It took me two years of being a bad DJ before I really started to figure it out.
I think that's the problem with trying to explain this stuff. I don't go to shows like this; to me, a DJ clicking "next" in iTunes is indistinguishable from someone practicing a craft. I just don't know enough, and I think a lot of other commenters in here don't either.
There's an old interview of BT in the 1990s where he thoroughly debunks that he is a DJ even when playing other people's music. He incorporates as much live control and variation as he can handle. BT is a neat guy.. he restored a Fairlight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI) as well as computers like the IBM PS/2 model 70 to use in his productions so he's a bonafide technologist aside from being a phenomenal classically trained musician.
Matt Darey is another that does a good job, invites the vocalists to perform live whenever he can. His radio show is my favorite thing to listen to when doing software development. He's been working with Dolby to incorporate Atmos into new and old productions so he's pushing the state of the art. https://soundcloud.com/mattdarey
I think there's more to a DJ than an old school film projectionist switching projectors between reels, but maybe the future is premixed sets so nobody has to sit in the booth.
That's not going to stop people from pretending they do. DJing well is hard, and it's obvious that most people in this thread have never attempted it before.
No, no, a thousand times no. What you witnessed in that video is one of the most inspired moments in the modern history of house DJing. For the benefit of all readers, I'll try and explain the context and subtext of what's happening.
Opus by Eric Prydz is a truly absurd piece of music. It takes the build-and-release of tension that defines modern "EDM" and teases it out to the point of self-parody, relentlessly building up over the course of four minutes, exploiting every psychoacoustic trick in the book. It is the ne plus ultra of cynical house music, a track that basks in the vapidity of the commercial "EDM" scene. For all that, it carries real emotional weight, primarily because of the underlying dissonance between the adrenaline-fuelled hype of its structure and its harmonic progression; at the great climactic moment, it modulates from A major to the relative F# minor with a series of descending arpeggios, simultaneously soaring to the heavens and dying away to nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRA82xLsb_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcpFCit6r5c
The Four Tet remix profoundly subverts the original composition, reverting to the more contemplative structures of traditional house music. It hints at formulaic tension-and-release, but it never delivers, it never reaches that climactic moment of euphoria. Opus is the sound of four thousand people in a superclub going absolutely wild; the Four Tet remix is the echoes of that moment on the taxi ride home, the ringing in your ears as you lie in bed in the early morning, the bitter aftertaste of the MDMA comedown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47nIoXraa_Q
The Amnesia closing party is the full stop at the end of the Ibiza season, a non-stop 12 hour bacchanal to say farewell to the summer. Once a semi-private affair mainly attended by DJs and club workers, it's now the hottest ticket of the season, a landmark event for those who consider themselves veteran clubbers.
Maceo's decision to play the Four Tet remix wasn't a track selection, it was a philosophical statement. The sun has risen and the last moment of the last party is looming. The crowd are cheering and whistling, they're raising their arms to the heavens in anticipation of this great moment of euphoria, the drop to end all drops. They know what's coming, their phones are recording in anticipation, but the moment never arrives. Through his choice of track and cue point, Maceo pulls the rug from under the feet of the crowd, turning climax into anti-climax. He turns a moment of euphoria into a moment of contemplation and self-reflection. If you watch closely, you can see the confusion and disorientation of the crowd, you can see a room full of people who don't know what to do with themselves.
https://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/78jvne/this-video-of-co...
That's the artistry of DJing in a nutshell. It all exists on a meta level, it's a conversation that's happening entirely in the audience's heads. The American "EDM" festival scene has tried to turn this conversation into a mere transaction, but there are still DJs with the skill and sophistication to challenge their audiences and confound their expectations, to create moments of profound complexity out of sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.
That was in 2001. Trance DJ’s have been closing out sunrise sets with songs like that for going on 20 years now. I appreciate that he’s a good DJ, but let’s not get crazy here :). Lots of DJ’s played that track to close their sets. It was a top seller on beatport and an obvious thing to do.
What I see here is the same thing I see in all of these things: a nice melody, a creeping crescendo, the audience really enthused about it for reasons I don’t understand at all, because the result is predictable: the beat drops and everyone goes wild.
The thing about dance music is that the art being produced there isn’t the music—it’s the crowd, and if you aren’t out there sweating your ass off, turning strangers into friends and having the best night of your life, of course it makes no sense.
And also, a lot of them are being creative. There’s a lot of creativity in the scene— in how people dress and how people dance, if nothing else.
Doing drugs alone is great, too!
When I was young and looking to find my way in life, I think that music was sold to me as something that should have been very profound and meaningful. And without a doubt I knew plenty of people who pretty much dedicated themselves to the "scene" - dressing a certain way, talking a certain way, holding certain beliefs, and traveling all over to see a handful of bands play in different cities. But despite putting in no small amount of effort to fit in, it just wasn't for me. At one of the last shows I went to in college, I remember being at some huge sold out stadium for a Phish concert and feeling like I was witnessing mass hysteria.
I think my negative experiences were more a reflection of my own lack of direction and naive beliefs at the time than anything else. I was looking to get something more valuable out of the experience than it could ever possibly provide. Also... I'm sure the drugs also had an effect on my mood. I've been to shows since, with no expectations beyond catching up with friends and having a fun night out, and had a good time. I also have tons of respect for the performers - all of whom are talented, work hard, and have probably made sacrifices in the pursuit of their passions than I have in mine.
But that uncomfortable feeling of sameness in the crowds and that sense of mass hysteria is always still there for me. Kind of like people speaking in tongues, or rioting in the streets when their sports team wins or loses. I guess I'm just more a small gathering kind of person.
Thank you. I was going to mention these things, because they’re how I feel about these gatherings as well. Just replace a charismatic preacher with a charismatic DJ. It feels the same to me. The charismatic preacher has fallen out of fashion these days, so instead of someone shouting quotes from the Bible and telling everyone to repent, here the DJ drops the same old beat and for some reason the crowd goes wild just the same. It’s all about that sense of belonging, it seems, that people get from these experiences, but I can’t get that from an experience that feels like mass delusion.
I posted my comments expecting lots of downvoting but was hoping to find at least one or two people who knew what I was saying. Thank you!
Here's the thing: many activities that do not interest you are far more complex and interesting than they appear on the surface.