Recently, deadmau5 and Afrojack took a few virtual jabs at each other. This started over Twitter, and culminated in a couple of SoundCloud clips where they openly mocked each other’s signature sounds.
Afrojack dealt the first blow, with an obscene sounding spoof of deadmau5’s glitchy, off-beat prog sound. He even mocked Joel’s penchant for randomness by naming the track ‘something_’.
Deadmau5 pulled no punches in retaliation, with his release of ‘DROP DA BOMB’, an absurdly clichéd chord-laden build, followed by a gimmicky, generic minimal drop that metaphorically splayed Afrojack all over the mat. The mau5 wins round one easily.
At first, this was all very amusing to me. At least until it struck me that, if ‘DROP DA BOMB’ were an actual release, it would legitimately challenge for the top spot on Beatport. This was not just a jab at Afrojack, but a slap in the face of the entire industry. The fact is, most big name artists are churning out the same formulaic drivel: chord-laden builds with minimal, big room drops. Rinse and repeat. Ad nauseum. And the festival junkies are eating it up.
In a perfect illustration of my point, Swedish duo Daleri put together a minute long compilation of the drops from several recent Beatport chart-topping singles. Our good friends at Rager Onions aptly call this clip ‘the downfall of EDM, in :54 seconds’, and they just might be right. The lack of creativity is downright embarrassing. Take a listen:
(keep in mind, this :54 second clip includes the drops from 16 recent tracks)
My philosophy with regards to EDM has always been very simple. I am not a genre snob, nor am I an elitist when it comes to music. If it has a bassline and I can fist pump to it, then I’m good to go. When Nari & Milani first unleashed this minimal drop trend with ‘Atom‘, I embraced their creativity; but twenty festivals and some 9,000 releases later, it is really starting to become old. I don’t hate it, but some variety would be nice.
Is this a byproduct of the Ritalin-crazed ADD generation? Perhaps. The paint-by-numbers, insta-melody appeals to a broader audience, and the DJs are playing to that peak time festival crowd because that’s where the money is. It could well be that EDM has gotten so mainstream that artists feel the need to continue to force feed that cash cow. Either way, the genre will need to reinvent itself or suffer the same fate that trance did in the mid 2000s.
It’s sad that this quest for ‘a piece of the pie’ is causing artists to compromise their very identities. Tiesto is the richest DJ in the world today, and this is the kind of stuff he’s putting out these days. Can you believe this is the same guy whose portfolio includes the magical Suburban Train? He’s probably cringing all the way to the bank.
I probably sound like a grouchy old war vet, but I miss the old days. Whatever happened to the confluence of different instruments? the subtle ebbs and flows? the intricate layers feeding off each other? Whatever happened to patience, and making the audience work a little bit, instead of spoon feeding them?
My message to today’s artists: If you continue to pander to the masses they will drop you like a hot brick once this fad passes over, and your style becomes passé. Stop churning out insta-melodies in pursuit of that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Make music from the heart and us fans will follow. Carve out your own niche. Invent your own signature style. Evolve. Step out of your comfort zone. EDM is in dire need of a shake up. Don’t be afraid to be a little different.
In this era of mind-numbing conformism, I salute the likes of Eric Prydz, Above & Beyond and Daft Punk. Keep fighting the good fight fellas.