Why, unlike we mere mortals, house music will never die
A party in a vast, disused railway depot in Manchester. Heavy rain outside. Nearly 10,000 people within. Light shows piercing pools of darkness. Legions of security guards watching for trouble that never comes. The music beating slower than many racing hearts. Young women in cycling shorts of every shade and skinny young men with their shirts off. Drops of sweat falling onto the crowd from the ceiling girders. And, standing in the middle of the throng, rapt: me.
Three summers ago, with my life in some turmoil, I went to Ibiza with my wife and friends. It was my first time to the island. I was enamoured. We ate late, delicious, inordinately expensive lunches, which doubled as breakfast, and pedalled through swift hours in hot night-clubs, writhing among armies of the buff and the nearly naked. Our hangovers were addressed by laying horizontal under green-fringed parasols on the world’s most beautiful beaches, and by eating ice cream. It was bliss.
But now? I wonder why I wasted so much of my life in ignorance. The problem is one of description. “Dance” or “electronic” or “techno” or “house” are about as useful generic catch-alls as “classical”: they contain multitudes. And while there’s plenty of dance music I still find boring, there are large swathes I find as addictive and moving as any music I’ve ever listened to. Among the attractions of the music is a conflict at its heart.
In the depot, such angst was more than balanced by many moments of uncomplicated and giddy fun. You will make many friends in Manchester if you play “Fools Gold” by The Stone Roses in the middle of your set, as Camelphat did. The attraction of the music, and these nights, is in the mixture of emotional colours. It’s like going to an evangelical church: some fire and brimstone, some joyful praise.
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