• Music

  • Downtempo / Ethnic House

…I have a playlist for lower-tempo house, (refuse to refer to it as downtempo. as that means a million other things), tracks that appear on albums/ep’s that don’t generally fit the tempo of the music I play when I DJ, but that I nonetheless really love. For quality recent tracks in the style you describe above, listen to Derun, Wild Dark or Coeo, which IMO go really well with stuff that’s perceived as being more ‘housey’ like Compost Black stuff.

I have a massive problem with the labelling of this music though… WTF is ‘organic house’? Its basically a lazy way of lumping together anything that is vaguely ADID-related, and has some hippy-house, Burning Man connotation. Problem with that is, it makes people who are predisposed not to like that, completely disregard many really good artists/labels, often based on completely inaccurate biases. I’m totally guilty of this myself too… I’ll not listen to anything that calls itself ‘progressive’ these days, because in my head it is a dilution of what I first heard in 1993 (and was also v different from what was called that in 1999).

Not really sure what I’m trying to say here, except that I much prefer describing music based on the artists that make it, rather than some meaningless tag a Beatport employee has come up with.

Think I first heard the term ‘ethnic house’ in about 1990, probably referring to something like Djum Djum’s ‘Difference’ or something with congas by Fabi Paras 😄

    Unbroken1 Not really sure what I’m trying to say here

    “it’s all bollocks” might be a good précis?

      I had a look at the whole Organic House thing when Bearpott first used it, more out of curiosity to see what’s shockers were in there knowing how badly they mis-label music, and tbh, i was genuinely surprised how much decent music is in there.

      Possibly the genre I check out most on there now.

      …don’t check by genre Erik, you’re falling into their trap!

      • erik replied to this.

        Unbroken1 Too much information on Innervisions…..modern day take on Difference. Culoe De Song has been on this sound for years.

            Dan Innervisions can do one for misappropriating Stevie’s greatest album. Cunts 😂

              Unbroken1 agreed mate… tbf I rarely use Beatport now, promos and Bandcamp are where I source most of my music

                I’ve actually been really getting into my lactose-intolerant drum and bass lately.

                  pure shite - music to listen to whilst recovering from a penis amputation

                  the end

                  Melodic Techno.. WTF is that. Can we not just go back to house & techno

                  https://hearthis.at/2jgrqphy/dopium-1/

                  Hello chaps! Been a while. Hope you’re all well. Yeah, this is where all the interesting stuff is at the moment. I can’t stand most of the melodic house & techno tunes right now. All so generic and formulaic, doesn’t seem to be going forward at all. The organic/downtempo section however is where the party’s at. There’s plenty of amazing tunes without all the oriental instruments/vocals and even though the bpm is low it can be surprisingly intense.

                  alistair I’ve been giving this some thought and, whilst I think I kind of know where you’re coming from, I wondered exactly what you meant?

                    Unbroken1 I remember not so long ago when the Organic House label came out - I too saw bits and bobs but wasn’t keen to look back on it until I discovered M.O.S. / MODD tracks and realised Beatport was giving some of their music that label or Melodic House.

                    Personally, as a DJ, I find the subcategories quite useful and welcome - in the 90s/2000s there just wasn’t this sheer volume of music to sift through and it makes what might be “1 million+” house records that bit easier to find and (whilst I don’t look at them, plenty of people find them useful) chart and talk about and create hype in niches.

                    Ethnic House to me just means music that contains sounds which a culture or ethnicity is known for and proud of, which the world doesn’t normally get to hear.

                    My guess is that much of what I’m hearing in the ethnic house category is from Persian, Indian and Oriental descent and being a British born half Iraqi I’ve no qualms with it being more broadly generalised into Ethnic House for the purpose of an easier search experience just like Progressive House doesn’t cover all the sub types we think we know.