EDM "explosion"

I was first tantalized by hip-hop in 1984. I’d pick up cassette compilations of b-boy and hip-hop tunes…despite if breaks had fallen out in 1985 and 1986.

1987 I started high school…and heard WBMX for the first and only time. They were playing “Can You Dance” by Bad Boy Bill and Mike ‘Hitman’ Wilson. At that point I wasn’t into rap as much anymore as I was into house. It was five years later that I finally bought decks.

I’ve seen many “explosions” when pop culture jumped on it all. They had their good and bad points.

It hit me probably from the mid to late 90’s. I listened to happy hardcore initially as well as some commercial tracks such as Sash’s music and Robert Miles. It must have been an influence from school listening to the happy hardcore stuff and getting old mix tapes from events and radio plays. I got into trance around the time Euphoria launched their first CD compilation in 98, and it wasn’t long after that I got into collecting vinyls, despite their expense. There weren’t many people I knew who were into DJ’ing as it was a pretty expensive thing to do at a younger age then compared to this day and age.

It eventually influenced my decision to study audio and music tech at university and I got sucked into it like mad. I think I prefer producing music though over DJ’ing, although I like the way the two go hand in hand. House was my thing for a long time too after I progressed on from trance in the 2003-2008 era, especially electro house when that got going.

From 2009 I fell out of the loop a little for a couple of years and have this year gotten back into it full flow as I run a small studio in line with my work and have since moved onto DnB and Dubstep. It was hard to get into though initially, and I do feel like the whole scene is just saturated. In one way, I love the fact that electronic music is an integral part of our everyday lives for many people around the world, but on the hand, it makes it a lot harder to get noticed, and even if I make something I feel works really well, the music is so short lived, it never has a sense of longevity to it. Most trance tracks from the late 90’s and early 2000’s I knew and they had an impact for such a long time, but now they tend to fizzle away after so many weeks or months.

I’m getting a little sick of people thinking America is just now finding out about dance music. Where do you think house and techno came from? Like the others who posted I’m an old fogey who remembers the last big wave in America. I still miss dancing to Paul Johnson in dirty warehouses in Chicago. I had the time of my life. Anyway, it’s both good and bad. All the attention and scrutiny of the rave scene is what caused the “false start in the early nineties.” The music gets watered down for a period of time and then after it all dies down here the innovation starts again. Unfortunately, all the money and the big crowds are here now. We’ll see how much lasting power it has this time.

It may have been isolated but it was still in the US. Now it’s spread around the world and back. Gotta love it!