Deep house accidentally siphoned itself into the UK’s mainstream a few years back and for some time now has been in the awkward position of being too popular for its own good. One minute muso-bloggers were discovering this cutting edge label called ‘Hot Creations’, the next you can’t get down the street without hearing Bashmore’s Au Seve, as deep house was yanked out from beneath its cosy underground safety blanket to the delight of new fans and dismay of old ones. Well America is totally lapping up our sloppy seconds, as per.
Now before all you genre-nazis internally combust with righteous indignation at my flagrant abuse of the term – let’s accept that I don’t mean deep house in the pure and traditional sense of the word, but deep house in the fluffy new sense – the Solomuns, the Finnebassens, the Jamie Jones’ and so on. America’s mainstream discovery of this luscious and laid back genre was a natural progression that many foresaw, and now the clues are mounting to signal that the arrival of America’s move from Hardwell to Hot Since 82 is nigh. The first clue begins with T and mostly rhymes with pesto. Yes, it’s the ultimate popstar of the DJ world, Tiesto. Long ago Tiesto learnt the cardinal rule of popstardom – which is reinvent or perish. Britney knows it, Madonna knows it (though it’s possible that she’s changed skin one too many times and the new epidermis just isn’t sticking properly), and all the countless American R&B stars who decided to ditch the slow beat and inject some Guetta into their ditties know it.
Tiesto may have been a trance demi-god for most of his career, but just when everyone was starting to realise that maybe trance had been left out for too long and was starting to smell like eurovision, he shifted gears and went electro house on us, later moving to Vegas and re-branding himself as EDM. Whilst Tiesto has been hinting at his new love of deep house for about a year now, he had previously kept it separate from his sets, claiming deep house was great for chillout and listening, but not the shows. But he’s sniffed out that the time is ripe in America for a mainstream shift to deep house and returned to the iconic BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix series after an eight-year hiatus with what is a largely deep house playlist. America’s candy-ravers are freaking out ‘cause there’s no siren synth and no drop and UK’s deep house fanbase is freaking out ‘cause Tiesto has his sticky paws on their music, but the cogs are already in motion.
Tiesto’s Essential stunt isn’t the only indicator that a shift is in place, a backlash to EDM is already bubbling up in its home ground, the epicentre of America’s commercial involvement in dance music – Vegas baby. A photo of DJ booth ‘rules’ is doing the viral rounds, from an ‘after hours’ club (it actually closes at 8am, awww bless!) in Vegas named AFTER. AFTER management are pretty chuffed with themselves for being so totally underground that they expressly ban the tunes of EDM stalwarts Guetta, Avicii, Hardwell, and other such musical Voldemorts. They’ve made a point of rejecting this music and promoting something ‘deeper’ and their PR stunt has gone viral and received a lot of support. Despite what they may claim, AFTER is not an underground venue: they have a strict dress policy, take table bookings and ladies get in free. So if a club like this is eschewing the Deadmau5 drops and going deep, it’s showing a shift in perception in The States of what is or isn’t cool anymore in mainstream dance music.
Pete Tong has made the move Stateside now (ditching an Ibiza residency in favour of Vegas) and is sure to champion the change. And if Swedish House Mafia are really no more, Tiesto is playing deep house and Avicii has square danced off on some country music tangent, then EDM will surely struggle to hold its ground against a steadily rising tide of smooth sounds and sleepily slow BPM.
Most of the young kids are still chasing their arm candy in circles wondering where the drop got to, but soon they’ll be slapping an unnecessary acronym on that bad boy and called it DHM (Deep House Music), digging the flat caps out of the closet (all Americans necessarily own caps) and getting their shuffle on. After the last few years of abrasive EDM, neu-dubstep and trap, deep house is going to sound as hard as marshmallows – but maybe that’s what they need after weathering such an onslaught of musical razorblades.
Will the progression continue for America in the conventional dance music discovery trajectory? Will they rave their way to techno and finally learn the meaning of repetition? Will the mainstream youth find themselves punching the air to a manic Drumcode number and will Rihanna be begging to collaborate with Richie Hawtin (he’d do it, you know he’d do it), or worse – will they discover Berlin!?!
The future is unclear, but I'm all for the change. Anything that means less of Steve Aoki spraying champers on sixteen year old girls in inflateable boats has got to be a good thing.
Jordan Smith
