The late 1980s brought about the Dance music scene along with several sub-categories. Suddenly the dance beat could be heard everywhere you went and even artists in other genres were caught up in its commercial possibilities.
It seemed, for a while, that everyone was being affected/infected by its sound. Even bands like The Cure got caught up with it and caused them to release ‘remixes’ of old songs on a rather naff collection called; ‘Mixed Up’ If an artist had any material lying around that had previously been deemed as being substandard, it could now go out as a single once that a Dance bass line had been added.
Dance continued well into the 1990s and remains mostly unchanged. Thankfully some bands began to add to it and mould it into something more interesting. If they had not then Dance would effectively have remixed and remixed and remixed until it vanished up its own bottom.
· Faithless gave a bit more depth to the Dance genre with intelligent lyrics and the use of other instruments.
· The KLF turned it into a parody of itself and wrote some great material.
· Enigma gave it an interesting Spiritual/New Age vibe by blending it with music from other cultures.
· Moby integrated it with Blues/Gospel/Hip-Hip/Rock and came up with some very poignant bits of music.
· David Gray stole its heartbeat and merged it into his brilliant acoustic work.
· The Prodigy moved on and made better use of electric guitar and other instruments.
· Miike Snow used their background of House/Dance and mixed it all up with Reggae, Pop and Acoustic to make their own sound.
Things were finally beginning to change in the Dance scene. Even DJ Tiesto looked to Classical and recorded his own version of ‘Adagio for Strings’. It seemed to have been a long and rather boring process, but evolution had come about in the genre; and with it came some very interesting new styles…
I have thrilling news for you all, I was talking to my friend last week and he has just got a excellent new gig at an human resources software company. Well done Harry