Death to Electroclash

I really, really, really hate the musical genre – movement – lifestyle that is Electroclash. Ergo, I was amused by this how to be Electroclash guide, presented in an appropriately tongue-in-cheek tone by someone who genuinely seems like to like real electro.

I’m generally not one to undermine people’s taste in music. I may poke fun at mainstream R&B and bad no-longer-alternative rock, but it’s my strongly held belief that “whatever gets you moving” is valid; as a DJ, you pretty much have to have a musical mind open enough to fit a big record collection into. But there’s something about Electroclash that makes me cringe. Perhaps because it’s Generation X’s latest fad, and I do so loathe that whole age group – disaffected, self-consciously ironic, and desperately clinging onto relics of their youth. Maybe it’s because I quite enjoy the two genres that were blended and butchered to form Electroclash – 1980s synth-pop (Human League, Gary Numan, etc.) and “ghetto electro,” an odd and short-lived branch of hip-hop that took the sounds of the then-emerging techno scene and folded them back into a rootsy, booty-shaking style that had as much to do with the bouncing drums of hip-hop as it did with the booming, spacey bass of Jamaican dub.

These are two fine genres, but both with limitations that forced them out of style relatively quickly. There have been some good reinterpretations of ghetto electro pre-Electroclash, most notably by English DJ Andrea Parker, and of course periodic waves of interest in the whole ’80s sound, kept largely to bad Cleopatra Records compilation albums or mediocre New Order covers by the hard rock flavor of the month. But Electroclash drags out these well-aged sounds, now comfortably rocking away in the Sunnydale Home for Golden Genres, and forces them to have a night on the town in sequins, headbands, and entirely too much makeup.

A recent XLR8R magazine editorial suggested the painfully obvious racism of Electroclash (look at the average e-clash club night crowd) with a quote from genre “impresario” Larry Tee: “There hasn’t been a voice for disaffected white youth since grunge.” Christ. XLR8R says: “here’s another shovel, dumbass,” and I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps there hasn’t been a “voice” for Gen-Xers in some time because no one wants to hear what they have to say. And if they weren’t the current generation running the entertainment media, we wouldn’t be hearing about Electroclash at all. Why publicize a trend that embraces the ugliest values of the already deplorable 1980s, turns some of its best musical output into self-conscious, generic drivel, and does it all with a sickeningly ironic flair, teasing us to decide how seriously the genre even takes itself?

Thank god people seem to be rediscovering dub in its intended positive spirit and not bastardizing an urban lifestyle out of it. ‘Cause then I’d really get mad…