House Is A Feeling

So here’s the first installment in a new monthly column I’ll be doing for Resident Advisor. I’m quite excited about the chance to write about house and techno at length in a place that still gives me plenty of freedom to pick the topic or the artists to speak to.

As for this month’s edition, since it’s the beginning I’ve made an effort to gather up the last few years of house and techno discussion into as neat a 1000 word bundle as humanly possible. So this piece is by no means a definitive history of anything. I’m not a historian, I have opinions and probably biases just like everyone else.

Of course, another good reason to discuss some of the recurring questions about “minimal” in the first piece is so that I never have to discuss them again!

Also I think it’s important that from the very first column, people get a clear idea of how I approach some of the fundamental taste-defining questions of 00s dance music, and they can then make up their minds whether they want to read more or not.

So with the tricky debut out of the way, I’ll be looking forward to writing less about scene semantics and more about music. I already have a great idea for the second column that should be really interesting.

And that’s bottom line with all of this really: whether I’m writing, doing a radio show, or DJing, I’m mostly happy to act as a conduit for the music, or to introduce people to new music. So if I can do that with this column, to a much wider audience, then that will be a real pleasure.