What Was Blog House?

#1

I’ve been trying to figure out what was so special about that scene, other than it being my gateway to electronic music in general. I think it has something to do with how profoundly uncool dance music was in the time leading up to that movement. It seems like it gave people a real freedom of experimentation. Before I go and write a novel on the topic, I want to get a sense of what that movement meant to other people. I was so close to it my perception could be totally skewed.

Some anecdotal support - I was trying to think of what was going on in dance music from like 2000 to 2006 and thought “what was R&S releasing? they wouldn’t release anything uncool”, so I checked and found that R&S shut down from 2000 to 2006 because Renaat was so bored with the sound of dance music at that time, which was a funny bit of validation. By the way, I think the EDM crash will create a similar atmosphere of uncoolness in 3-5 years that will make for a really interesting scene.

Some examples of unique sounds from the era.

#2

never heard of Blog House… wasn’t it called Electro House? before it blew up and turned into ‘EDM’ around the same time Dubstep became ‘Brostep’

there was quite a bit of it in the charts in the UK. Benny Benassi, Fedde Le Grand, Audio Bullys… maybe Blog House was the more underground side…

me and a mate used to go to record shops on the weekends looking for the most stupidest shit

#3

Yeah, this is definitely stuff I would class as Electro House. Still, lots of absolute top classic tunes being passed around.

EDIT: have a version of proxy’s raven but with teki latex doing some really satisfying rapping over it

#4

Objekt has been tweeting about it this year, some cool insights/opinions to be found: https://mobile.twitter.com/keinobjekt/status/941640234210603008

#5

@avery I feel like Teki would really love that you called his rapping “satisfying”.

#6

seems like quite an odd retroactive term for quite a long term fairly mainstream genre, going from Oizo’s Flatbeat in ‘99 through to Azealia Banks’ 212 around 2011, there’s quite a distinct continuation happening.

it is interesting though how it’s one of those genres that anyone can make it fit to their style, it can be cheesy novelty chart toppers, or it can be kind of punky and weird, a bit like trap is today, audio pizza

#7

It eventually morphed into “Indie Dance” which splintered into Trop House and various strains of electronic pop/EDM. Justice’s remix of Simian seems to be the penultimate track in the blog house era. French Touch and electroclash were the obvious precursors. Almost always traditional song structures for easy portability into the mainstream. The Nu Rave brief thing was an offshoot for the NME leaning youths. It was a weird time for sure. A lot of this stuff hasn’t aged well.

#8

This is a bit of a digression, but some of the most interesting artists moved onto different and more lasting works.

I see Jokers of the Scene up at the top. In 2014 they put out a vastly under appreciated LP called End Scene that was a mix of BoC style soundtrack pieces, Badarou influenced 80’s Linn drums workouts, obscure 80’s private press records. (FULL DISCLOSURE: They hired me to make music videos of every track on the LP, as sort of a lost sci-fi VHS album long video)
It’s pretty much as far as you can get from Blog House.

End Scene Videos

#9

totally agree tbh. teki seems like a friendly lad, i wanna shake his hand

#10

“Blog” house was my first foray into electronic music back when I was about 12 years old. Is Hype Machine still a thing??? Was really drawn to it coming from an indie rock background, then someone introduced me to tearout dubstep and it was all downhill from there. A lot of it seems pretty unlistenable now in hindsight but still some fun music to be drawn from that era imo.

Would you lot throw fidget house stuff into the Blog Continuum?

#11

I called it electro house at the time as well, but looking back it’s a pretty strange name for the genre. Electro was already a distinct thing, and it didn’t have much in common with the blog house sound. As true electro is making a comeback, I’m finding the term blog house more and more valuable. Also, brings much deserved attention to the blogs that breathed life into the scene at the time. There were so many good ones with free 320kbps DLs!

In my mind blog house is bookended by justice’s ‘we are your friends’ in 2006 and the last edc in Los Angeles in 2010. I think that’s around the time time that sound and scene morphed into edm. It coincides with the release of One by Swedish House Mafia, and their rise to global prominence. That was also the year of Avicii’s first EDC performance, and the debut of deadmau5’ cube show. Around that time I think that air of uncoolness that granted so much room for experimentation had gone, a sound crystallized, and EDM took off.

There were certainly songs before that time that explored similar sounds, particularly flat beat and the stuff erol was playing at his Trash parties in London, but I think there’s something significant about that era of 2006-2010.

#12

I’d absolutely lump fidget in. It’s right in that era and was such a bloggy genre. A lot of the stuff I remember from that scene was edits and bootlegs and edits of edits of bootlegs of remixes of edits of etc, which is really only possible on blogs and the like.

some fidgety faves

#13

uh … didn’t like this at all. Too much noise … that is even not real noise :grinning:
Still glad that Dubstep etc. happened around this time because I was a bit bored by Drum & Bass back then.

#14

yeah it certainly gained popularity and creativity in 2006, and to be honest, i never made the crystal castles / mstrkrft label connection until your post. there probably is something to the idea that it was mainly ‘indie kids’ getting behind this stuff… before '06, like you mentioned, Warp had basically given up on electronic too, it was !!!, Grizzly Bear, Maximo Park, Battles… massive indie wave. But then '06 was an explosion of creativity in so many electronic genres beyond just electro-house, half of Warp and Hyperdub’s current rosters had their first releases around then. Maybe blogs had something to do with it, I don’t know. I hope we’ll see another creative burst like that again soon, it seems like the last few movements to gain traction like PC Music and Lo-Fi House are almost half a decade old now.

I always remember this Calvin Harris tune as a starting point to EDM in '09, he had been doing the electroclash thing too until he went full on Bon-Jovi-Goes-Trance. (Could even call it Proto-PC Music? :rofl:) Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj and Avicii were all quick to copy the sound.

All this has led me down some pretty funny youtube rabbit hole… Deadmau5 got bored of EDM too and started trolling pretty hard

#15

interesting u bring that up, cuz im 18 right now. i grew up in america during the edm boom which totes started with shm and deadmau5 and avicii and all that. and i rlly fucking was into it. RLLY FUCKING INTO IT. and most of my peers were as lil early teens, always wanted to be the next hardwell or tiesto without even knowing anything further back then daft punk’s discovery. and thanks for reminding me that there was shit even immediately before that, that we just didnt know about until later. the most echos we heard from it was some djs using the “we are your friends” acapella in mashups or even audiences spontaneously singing the main melodic line to “seven nation army” during intermission, tho that might even be more stemming from football chants then blog house :laughing:

btw this is still a banger i admit

#16

yeah uh about that deadmau5 vid

mcmangos was my friend at the time in the lil soundclown community as it was dying cuz people wanted to make actual unironic music now. and everyone knew how fucking pissed he was at the time (and still is) for deadmau5 to never credit him for making the parody remix and passing it off as his own. esp when joel has a big fucking manicion in the toronto suburbs to his name but mick was struggling to make down payment on his rent

also deadmau5 played this set as a last minute replacement for avicii when he canceled to recover from gall bladder surgery after constant touring gave him big ass depression and had him use lots of alcohol as self-medication, which also factored in his suicide last year. so… :grimacing:

yeah fuck deadmau5 he aint rlly shit

btw pls check out mangos other work he’s still good

#17

aw man, too drunk to get verbose on it, but these sounds were a huuuge portal for me back into dance music as a post pubescent human vs a pre teen stuck to a cassette record button…will post more later but this shit was my jam…

#18

youre absolutely on point about the uncoolness of it, i loved the fact that throughout these years this was my closet music, my guilty pleasure that nobody else gave a shit about

#19

then justice made it cool again and big labels saw money…also i’d say electro house refers to a more “electronica” styled genre bullshit labels given label…think four tet’s stuff pre-2008 rather than some Stringray 313 Detroit hardness

#20

in terms of horrid tracks that i know are bad but still love…i’ll just leave this here…2003 and “electro-housey” AF

i dont care what you think i love it…and no its not because of the visuals in the video