#13: XTCLVR, CHANTSSSS; The Problem with "Community" in Dance Music - ?!
Reach is back from holiday with a handful of reviews and a spadeful of criticism; just what's the problem with "community"? Read on...
What’s good people, been a while again!
I’ve just began feeling alive after a recent trip to Berlin. I went to go and see my friend Ikävä Pii play at completely smash it with their live set at Ohm, on invitation by ZULI and Rama for their IRSH night, with bela and AYA playing amazing sets studded with old dubstep faves as well. Before that, I was at the top of a mountain (half-mountain really) in Finland, and I’ll definitely be sharing a little more about that experience here in due course, BUT if you’re just too curious to wait, I’m very happy to share that I’ve got a long read about the event hosted via Crack Magazine, which you can read now.
While I’ve been away I have been wracking my brains regarding Reach, trying to answer some important questions that will decide its and my future: what is needed to make a succesful electronic music substack these days? The frontrunners are so heavily entrenched; should I imitate their approach, or try and disrupt it with something radically different?
What’s missing from music journalism these days? What do we see enough of? In response to the very obvious answer that we have more than enough opinions, I shriek loudly, and write an op-ed that’ll definitely not make me many friends.
Definitions: Club VS Community
We need to talk about “community”. The meanings of this word can be both flexible and inflexible, precise or vague, depending on the circumstances it is used in, and it is getting frustrating.
The same effect can be seen, with less contentiousness, in the word “scene: the “Berlin/Prague/London scene” is an abstract noun, the type that lets us talk conveniently about complicated subjects that don’t have a concrete form, such as emotions, the fictional borders of nation-states, the size or qualities of a community.
Having a bendable definition, these words sound differently in different ears, and taste differently depending on the tongue speaking, and we can therefore easily find two people arguing about different facets of the same thing, all while using the same words, essentially disagreeing over a lack of being able to speak clearly.
Very rapidly after COVID-19 swept through the world and through Europe, “community” seems to have become one of the most prevalent in the club culture dictionary. The cultural importance of the term is fairly easy to establish, especially considering the marginality of the groups which contributed to the generation of club culture, and what club culture meant in practice at the time of its origin.
The two main groups which have propagated the importance of community in dance music are the Queer/PoC groups, actual and ideological descendents of those which formed a genuine community to help support each other in a hostile environment, and white-owned/operated news outlets which desperately follow the scent of authenticity these groups have, reporting all the acitivities of these real communities, seeking the illusion that they themselves are somehow also involved in such a community.
Thanks to the narrative-seeking, story-selling nose of the press, an extreme social prestige has been placed on the term “community” within the electronic dance music “scene”. It carries a socially-induced weight which distinguishes it as a highly important aspect of what we lazily call “club culture”, and I’d argue it’s been centred as the single most important thing in the Western dance music scene(s) for some time.
The word is thrown about with increasing regularity, referring, by definition, to the people which come to certain events, the people which play or work at the events, the events themselves, the wider global network of humans involved in similar musical genres; a list of endlessly incremental groups, all spoken of with scant clarification.
This does two things: it groups people and collectives that are inherently not united; it obscures facets of nuance that should not be obscured. One can start talking about local “scenes” or “communities” in a negative or critical light, and all around, people — “scene”-members, invariably — get uptight and upset, pointing to the examples from their own experiences that disprove the critical theory. The vagueness, the convenience which draws so many to the term, becomes it’s biggest flaw.
Of course, filling multiple roles is the point of many words, and there’s little sense in dictating to people how they should speak, but I see the sense in critiquing the purpose or intention behind the words used. The problem is in the varying intensity of the word, and the variable specifics that make up what “community” and “community-building” is and entails to different people.
The modified version of the phrase, “community-building,” is the main lexical marker that I’ve seen for signifying the attempt at accessing the social prestige of this term. Certainly, almost every club, collective, and thrice-a-year event talks about the “community” that they are building within their social media posts, and in many cases they are indeed building community; it’s a case of knowing who the community is for.
For me, for a thing to hit the bulls-eye of being “community-oriented”, it must refer to something that is fully internally accessible to everyone (anyone can fill any role within the group), be financially sustainable though its own activities, without external or private funding (read: corporate investment), possessing a central social role that is neither capitalistic nor involving a transaction, and the individuals that make up the group have a say, however fractioned, in how the group is operated. It should also be ultimately concerned with providing benefit to the individuals involved and the collective.
For example, a bar is not a “community” in the same way an Alcoholics Anonymous group is, because a bar requires you to spend money to be able to drink and stay, it offers nothing to people who are not customers, and there is no central point of altruism to it. An AA meeting is ran through volunteering, with a lateral hierarchy beyond the necessary and trained moderator, and all possess a mutual desire for bettering the lives of the others in the group.
Similarly, a nightclub does not meet the same requirements for “community”, because there is a private room of individuals who make the decisions on how the club is run, including matters of finance and funding. Entrance into this “elite” group is difficult, typically thanks to admittance being gate-kept by existing members of the group. You aren’t allowed into the club without the right amount of money, or the right friends, and though a club can run events with no capital value, it’s a vanishing minority.
A nightclub is inevitably a business, principally indifferent to any other, and the entire premise for virtually all goings-on in the nightclub is extractive capitalism.
This fact is indifferent to what actually happens at the night, whether there’s a cheap or limited free entrance, a new faces event, anything, right up to the line of genuine charity work. If the night involves staff, a bar, an intended quota for drinks sales, you name it, this is, in an admittedly fundamentalist way, a community no different from that of a shop, pub, sports centre or supermarket.
A lot of reactionary capitalist thinking leaps into even the most avowed leftist when you say things like this: “how does a club stay open if it’s not making money?!” they parrot like SKY news economists. “Of course”, the tired socialist rolls their eyes, “the club clearly has to make money, but the club infrastructure shouldn’t co-opt the language and culture of community-oriented projects, without expecting criticism”.
This obviously bites both ways. I do want to be in a “nightlife community”, but I don’t want that community to represent precisely the same thing that clubcard holders mean to Tesco: a nightlife community, being involved in what we used to call a counter-culture, should be something more significant than a loyalty-points scheme combined with a hierarchical closed circle of like-minded individuals; it should abhor hegemony of taste, stylistics, function, for the pure purpose of capitalistic gain.
Club event promoters talk often about an “expanding community” attending or playing at their events. Their “community” is typically a self-selected one, dictated by financial status, class, and social aspiration, refering to hot, extroverted 20-somethings that like to take drugs and drink lots every weekend.
Honestly, if The Wire would like to give me a Grumpy Old Man column, I’d love that.
Of course, the people attending the events are usually happy to do so, and to pay when applicable, but — and I think this is something we are forgetting with clubs having lists of entrance rules and ideological checklists — a real-life community is not just you and your friends. A real-life community is a messy chaos of people with utterly different experiences and opinions; the point of “All Under One Roof Raving” wasn’t about getting along with people just like you, it was about realising how close we all are, finding unity despite massive differences in class, race, or politics.
Obviously it is not incorrect for the word community to be used by any and all, this is not my argument. But we must think for ourselves, when we hear the word “community”, whether what the person is referring to is within the minority of meanings — where community is mutually beneficial, near-sacred respite from the world of transactions — or the majority, wherein people are brought into categories by default, or by no intention, or by buying a place through social or financial credit.
Talking about community can therefore be a poisonous thing, something which obscures inherently non-community-oriented acts and egoistic dick-waving behind a term bent by social prestige. True community-builders rarely have their name in lights above the stage, and seek acknowledgement, more than credit, for their work.
A friend of mine writes about political matters in dance music with much more skill; I recommend Anjali’s piece for CTM Festival’s digital magazine, ‘Towards a Worker-Centred Club Culture’. They highlight some of the more toxic ways in which club culture has sidelined the essential but less glamourous side of the club community in favour of hallowing the DJ-Promoter-Booker triumvirate, with all of its incestuous gatekeeping and toxic personalities. It encourages looking down and behind, not just about the immediate surroundings, when thinking of what community has been built.
It therefore holds hands with another piece I revisited lately on Technomaterialism — arguably the only worthy port of critical theory in club culture and inarguably the best — which posits that the DJ-as-club-figurehead model is taking us towards cultural collapse via the fast lane. Quelle surprise. And with that, here’s some non-club-DJ music from the wider electronic community:
Artwork by Dana Skyts’ka
XTCLVR - Inverse
Standard Deviation - 16/07/24
I covered XTCLVR’s brilliant debut LP blurred days on crucial Ukrainian label Pep Gaffe a while back, and this makes for the first time I’ve covered an artist twice in my reviews section. blurred days sometimes felt youthful and unready, or perhaps intentionally left incomplete, in a punky, artistic way; it wasn’t a showcase of the limits of his potential, but more the scope of it.
INVERSE feels like the true epitome of what XTCLVR was hunting for on that record, and while tracks like SNAKES VIP carry very clear echoes of that earlier record, they’ve been refined clear beyond the point of basic completion.
XTCLVR is on his best form right from the get-go; merging post-club production and trap-ready basslines with ambient overtones is his modus operandi, and RUFF TITLE is his particular brand of pseudo-ambient at its finest. Dramatic and urgent, with a grimy lead lick that devolves into a whirlwind of amorphic percussion, it’s a powerful start that sees adequate follow-up with other hits throughout the record, especially on the insistent and irrepressible chaos of SPEED SERVICE.
INVERSE balances the producer’s dualism perfectly; previous releases demonstrate a desire to smudge the lines between ambient and club, and the result was they were somehow neither and both at the same time. INVERSE is far more decisive, meaning that the music tends to have a clearer idea of being clubby (FEEL ME), or ambient (ALT PATH).
Therefore, a few of the more innovative moments of his earlier productions are, occasionally, a little more suppressed in favour of less ambiguity (and he’s smart to push the gas a bit more when releasing on this label, I think), but the overall imprint is that his music is now more refined, ever-closer to the goal of perfecting their artist nous. The final spacey shakedown of TONAL TEARS is, all alone, a perfect demonstration of the producer’s equal competency with energy and serenity.
CHANTSSSS - Shyness
co:clear x Theory Therapy - 06/09/24
I first heard CHANTSSSS through Lithia, a subtle little two-track EP which did nothing to prepare me for the scale of Shyness. From the opening of if u, the record rings a magnificent tone, one sculpted through a demonstrated understanding of shaping frequency to elicit emotional response.
If you’ve been following Theory Therapy or co:clear’s releases, you’ll know that you can expect some first-rate ambient music, with a fair sprinkling of club callsigns on top. Highlight tracks lotus drips and fleur oblique fill that quota, with introverted bassy soundscapes (think of Purelink or Multicast Dynamics) hole-punched with twister-fast snapshots of breaks soaked in delay, frenetic moments which emphasise the pure space of the compositions, rather than fracture and break it.
Between these two personal highpoints on the album there’s plenty else to enjoy, and of very different mood: lia is a contemplative song, with muted acoustic strumming, closer to Grouper; (swan) might be one of the most technical offerings on the album regarding production, non-drums pounding an airy beat against aquatic membranes.
On Shyness, CHANTSSSS shows knowledge of manipulating space, time, frequency and emotion, all to grand effect. The album is restful, but not impassive; it holds your attention, rather than squander it. Emotions run forcefully through its fabric, always present, and nuance and detail are overflowing.
Shyness is released in September, so you’ve got a fair bit to wait for the full thing, but I’m jumping the gun and penning a review ahead of time, because this album was indispensable in providing airspace in my head, and on repeat while writing the intro.
It’s already quite a chunky newsletter, so no playlist this time, but in lieu, some words about just two tracks. You might have noticed a fair bit of bitching about techno on here, and that is related to the whole “vague meanings” thing I talk through at the start: it’s a dislike of the systems, hegemony, repetition — and the overapplauding of a stale artform — not the genre as a whole. These two aren’t at all part of that:
Aiwa - o ato 1
Farbwechsel - 17/07/24
This, for me, contains more innovation, stylistic variation (from others), refinement of aesthetic and precision of delivery to it than the vast majority of popular dance music out there today. It’s subdued, and it’s not exactly gonna pop off in many clubs, yet it’s entirely composed of a beautiful crescendo with an arching narrative, stretched around a variegated melody, syncopated across the octave range, that is absolutely fucking contagious from beginning right through to end.
Lighght - Buggin’ Out
Self-Released 22/07/24
Just about everything I applaud the track above for is true for Lighght’s latest release, but for this: there’s nothing subdued here. The palette, the actual sounds of the music, is familiarly techno, almost to the point of being cheesy, but the immediate sophistication in the rhythm throws all genericisms away by the 16th bar. It only gets better. I can’t pretend to know about complicated time signatures, despite my “classical training” (grade 3 piano at highschool) but whatever Lighght’s done to fuck with the beat here is so danceworthy. Give it to the 3-minute mark, you won’t be sitting still.
That’s it from me this month: don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already, it goes a long way to validating the effort spent on this!