mono-stereo
Prog was a made up concept anyway
Sure, inasmuch as disco, house, techno, jungle etc are made up concepts, as are all genres when you break their evolution down.
that didn’t really fit any specific sound.
haha, this has to take the bait for one of the silliest things a trancecracker in denial has said. you couldn’t be more wrong. Of course it did.
Progressive is a sort of tasteful adult form of trance, slow-burning and subtle, as purveyed by globetrotting DJ superstars like Sasha, John Digweed and Seb Fontaine, and created by producers like Breeder and Hybrid. Progressive’s roots go back to the English ‘progressive house’ sound of 1992–3, as pioneered by Leftfield and Spooky (whose Charlie May now collaborates with Sasha in the recording studio) and pushed by labels like Guerrilla, Hard Hands and Cowboy. Trance without the cheesy E-motionalism, house purged of its gay disco roots, techno stripped of black feel or jazzy tinges – progressive seems mostly defined by its inhibitions and checked tendencies. So what makes it ‘progressive’, precisely? Perhaps because, unlike deep house, none of the sounds used in the style really resemble ‘real’ acoustic instruments. The music seldom ‘moves’ like a conventional instrument does (the basslines, for instance, couldn’t really be imagined as played on a bass guitar). With its abstract whooshing sounds, blurry pulses and stereo-panning effects, progressive has evolved into the ultimate ‘big room’ music, the sheer spectacular size of its sound perfect for the main dancefloor at superclubs.
In addition to size, progressive is into length: long tracks, long sets, the long mix. DJs like Sasha and Digweed deliberately select characterless tracks rather than orgasmic anthems because those ‘run of the mix’ sort of tracks can sit together for a protracted period. You can’t really tell when the transition between records starts or is completed. The result is a level, peak-less experience (Sasha and Digweed ration out three climaxes per nine-hour set). Progressive’s sonic featurelessness carries over to the DJs (an endless roll call of Nicks, Johns, Daves), and the blankness of the track titles (‘Force 51’, ‘Overactive’, ‘Emotion Surfer’, ‘Rhythm Reigns’, ‘Gyromancer’, ‘Supertransonic’), which avoid conjuring up images or outside-world evocations in favour of a vague spirituality/futurity. Purging all the aspects of rave that harked back to earlier youth movements like hippy and punk (or, for that matter, disco or hip hop or reggae), progressive has achieved a perfect non-referential purity.
Quoted in Simon Reynolds - Energy Flash, chapter 19.
Let the hot tempers commence!
