GIVE ELECTRONIC DANCE A CHANCE!
The rise of the US-coined “EDM” phenomenon — and the Dutch hardstyle scene — has largely displaced trance in this year’s Top 100, but the genre’s biggest DJ is back on top of the pile, knocking Guetta off the throne…
Words: CARL LOBEN returned to the summit after being displaced by David Guetta last year! W
Armin’s legion of trance fans are going to be delighted with the Dutchman’s return to the No.1 slot — just call him the comeback kid. The millions of listeners to Armin’s A State Of Trance radio show, and the tens of thousands who see him play somewhere in the world every week, have pulled out the stops to reinstate their hero at the top of the pile — for the fifth time overall. By the time you read this, Armin will have already played both awards parties — in Amsterdam and in London — and will have stormed the American Top 100 DJs party celebrations, too.
ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC So it’s congratulations to Armin as he continues to pioneer the sound of trance music all around the world. Yet it’s been the inexorable rise of EDM in America that has led to the most interesting developments in terms of genres of late. EDM — standing for ‘Electronic Dance Music’ — has become a catch-all term for an amalgam of big room house beats, epic trancey synths and wobbly dubstep breakdowns. In fact, anything from electro-house to anthemic trance to scintillating brostep gets called ‘EDM’ in the US these days, and this tidal wave is threatening to sweep away the delineation of big room genres in its path. Just a couple of years ago, around half of the Top 100 DJs self-defined as trance jocks, but nowadays it’s hard to find more than a handful who exclusively call themselves ‘trance’ when describing their DJ style. Tiësto — who has risen one place again to No.2 — abandoned trance a couple of years ago, but when UK duo Above & Beyond (No.8) stop using the term, and former Top 100 winner Paul van Dyk (No.16) and trance stalwarts such as Cosmic Gate (No.39) start calling themselves ‘EDM’, we know that something is afoot. No.14 jock Gareth Emery’s description of his sound as “house, progressive, electro, trance... whatever really” just about sums up the pick ‘n’ mix style that many of the big DJs are adopting these days under the auspices of the umbrella term of EDM.
Psy-trance pioneers Infected Mushroom (No.43) have broadened their sound out now into EDM too, and even Armin is making (‘We Are Here To Make Some Noise’) and playing some house music these days — and seems to be promising more of an eclectic ‘EDM’ selection with his next album. So does this mean that trance is dead? Well, it seems more to be the case that trancey sounds — arpeggiated synths, melodies, epic breakdowns etc — are being absorbed into the amorphous blob of EDM.
Pete Tha Zouk (No.47) might drop the genre ‘trouse’ into his description, but it’s a term that hasn’t really caught on. In the US, where the scene has exploded in the last couple of years, trancey electro house tends to be called ‘progressive’ — a term that has already been through several different variations in the UK and Europe over the past 20 years.
WHAT IS IT? So who or what is EDM? The sound of Avicii (No.3) is as much EDM as what David Guetta (No.2) makes and plays — even though the Swede is more on a trancey tip, while Guetta is perhaps more electro/
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ho’d have thought it, eh? The first bit of big news in this year’s Top 100 DJs poll, which you’re probably already aware of, is that there’s a new No.1 DJ — or rather, there’s a different No.1 to last year. Armin van Buuren has
urban/pop. But when it comes down to it, a lot of these guys are playing the same big records. They’re big room records made by the Swedish House Mafia (No.12), Thomas Gold (No.82), Nicky Romero (highest new entry at No.17) and so on. EDM, instead of describing all styles of dance music, has mainly come to mean all big room house floor-fillers. However, even the bass-heavy sounds of Skrillex (No.10), Knife Party (new entry at No.33) and Steve Aoki (up to No.15) often get lumped in with EDM in the US.
EDM taking over Vegas and the American explosion has meant that it’s been a bad year for techno jocks in terms of Top 100 placings. You could say that techno, by its very nature, is the antithesis of EDM, and former Top 100 winner Carl Cox is the highest techno DJ, down at No.45. Richie Hawtin (already looking ‘Beyond EDM’ — see page 14), meanwhile, is down to No.76 — down 31 places. Umek (No.59) holds steady, though, but he did have the President Of Slovenia recording a campaign video urging the whole country to vote for him!
HARDSTYLE The other big story in this year’s Top 100 DJs list is the continuing rise of hardstyle. Headhunterz leads the charge, up to No.11, while Noisecontrollers (up to No.27), Zatox (up 11 to No.36), Coone (up to No.37), Wildstylez (up 39 to No.41) and Brennan Heart (up 49 to No.49) have all increased their vote. Wasted Penguinz, Frontliner, Ran D and Da Tweekaz are all new entries in the lower half of the chart, while Psyko Punkz (up 11 to No.67) and Angerfist (No.42) stay strong. On the face of it, hardstyle — what hard house or hard dance has become — is quite a niche scene, with fans of harder-edged boshing sounds limited mainly to a few festivals and big events in Europe. But just lately a lot of hardstyle producers have been bringing more accessible melodies, hooks and vocals into their productions, meaning that those tracks can be played in more mainstream clubs without the DJ getting thrown off the decks. There have even been some moves to rebrand hardstyle as ‘HEDM’ — hard electronic dance music — and scene leader Headhunterz has been remixing the EDM likes of Nicky Romero, Kaskade and Hardwell (not a hardstyle producer, despite his name).
The continual enthusiasm of hard dance fans for voting in the Top 100 poll has meant that a number of long-term stalwarts have dropped out of the chart this year. The non-appearance of Sasha, Sven Väth and Fatboy Slim in the Top 100 this year — not to mention Joris Voorn and James Zabiela, and with John Digweed down to No.98 — is going to disappoint many, but is perhaps symbolic of a new rush-happy generation coming through. In other news, there’s only one drum & bass DJ in the chart this year, Hospital’s Netsky — “the Belgian Bieber of bass” — and only one female entry, although there are actually two Nervo twins, Miriam and Olivia, who have come in at No.46.
The triumph of EDM this year is borne out by the fact that the most votes came from the United States — about one-fifth, nearly three times as many as the country where the second most votes came from, the UK. The next countries in terms of votes were Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Canada, France, Portugal, Australia and Spain. Six hundred thousand votes came from 246 territories this year, including Equatorial Guinea, Malawi, Bhutan, Gambia and Chad.
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