"Girls want to go out and have fun
too, they don't want to stand
around at a sausage party!
They want songs they can
remember or sing"
Dennis Ferrer
minimal grooves, the tide has turned, the
pendulum has swung back in favour of
the funk, and those black and whites are
everywhere.
“Melodies are coming back because
minimal dominated for so long,” believes
Will Saul, the DJ/producer who also runs
forward-thinking labels Aus and Simple.
“People got bored of just a kick and a snare
with some weird effects so they’ve started
to write melodies again.”
Indeed, it’s a trend that has seemingly
spread like wildfi re, uniting a variety of Kevin Saunderson
traditionally separated scenes, from the
diehard techno crew to the disco-punks and
house traditionalists, under an umbrella of Defected, ‘Sinfonia Della Notte’. The hugely line, and half-way down I thought, ‘You
resonant funky notes and tinkling ivories. infl uential Ferrer, respected by the under- know what would be cool? Putting an old
It was in 2008 that two singular records ground and mainstream alike and capable skool piano back, like an old skool, jacking
dropped on taste-making NYC hipster of producing anything from Detroit-lapped piano kind of thing where nobody expects
imprint DFA (Death From Above), seemingly
Eric
techno to full-on gospel grooves, has it.’”
so alien and at odds with the time as to be
Kupper
etched a razor-sharp, futuristic missive Ferrer believes that a return to more charis-
seized upon and gradually championed that builds from funky space-age synths to matic dance music is long overdue.
by those who might have turned their disco — was untainted by the capricious an enormous low-down piano drop that is “You can’t go anywhere and tell your
nose up at a feelgood melody only months ebbs and fl ows of dance music trends, and destined to go down as an instant classic. friends, ‘I heard a record in the club that
before. The Juan MacLean’s self-explan- in creating ‘Happy House’ simply wanted to Ferrer has clearly captured the zeitgeist and went derderderderder!’ You just can’t! The
atory ‘Happy House’, with its pneumatic, draw on his love of melody, a constant since claims it’s high time that big riffs returned thing is with a lot of these minimal parties,
euphoric Steinway stomp and sun suffused his rock years. to club cuts. a lot them are just all guys, just sausage
vibes, was like a double Dove surge of “I come from a rock music background “We needed something melodic and repeti- parties, and at the end of the day girls want
MDMA to the cerebral cortex, a fl ashback and to me the piano is the guitar of dance tive that everyone would remember, and it’s to go out and have fun too, they don’t want
rush of secreted last grains of Mitsubishi music,” reckons MacLean. “It cuts through been a while since there was a record that to stand around at a sausage party! They
draining from the system, bathing you in all the other elements of a track much like a everyone can remember, something very want songs they can remember or sing. So
glorious afterglow. guitar would and it’s immediately identifi - simplistic. Take, for instance, ‘Blackwater’ that way you’re knocking out two birds with
Its author Juan MacLean — originally a able on the dancefl oor.” by Octave One or ‘Knights Of The Jaguar’, one stone, giving people a song they can
member of punk rockers Six Finger Satellite For MacLean, the combination of the you know?” Ferrer remarks. remember and giving the girls something
who later gravitated to Chicago house and synthetics of electronics with warmer in- “For me, I sat there thinking, ‘It’s been a to dance to. The same theory applies that if
strumentation is one that makes the piano long time, we need to hear something like you get the girls dancing then 90% of your
Dennis Ferrer
such a powerful tool in the production of a that’, and so I started making that melody job is done.”
club monster.
“A great piano riff functions much like a
classic rock guitar riff. The best examples
Trevor Loveys
are adrenalin inducing and hypnotic,” he
says. “Also, the piano is an acoustic instru-
ment so it sounds quite nice when nestled
on top of electronic elements like a 909
drum pattern and synth bassline.”
The other piano masterstroke of DFA
Records, Still Going’s ‘Still Going Theme’
was a proto-house regressive gem, with
a simplistic but lethally addictive piano
line that was impossible to erase from the
mind. These two tentative steps were the
initial trickles and now the fl oodgates have
opened wide.
Potent Realisation
Perhaps the most potent realization
of the new piano resurgence in
house is Dennis Fer-
rer’s new cut for
www.djmag.com w.djmag.com
073
DJ474.piano feature.indd 73 13/5/09 16:59:56
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