Second music entry, closing all the tabs

I seem to be more leaning toward conventional EDM/house these days. I've added a few new people to my Soundcloud "follow" list, which should change the composition of my stream there somewhat. I'm also trying to investigate some things that are less US/European mainstream. We'll see if that leads anywhere. Meanwhile, on with the tunes...

https://soundcloud.com/afrojack/afrojack-x-jewelz-sparks-feat
Afrojack is one of those new follows. This "Switch" starts off sounding like a vocal house piece but it has several interesting twists in the bass line and how the drops are arranged. I know I complain about this often, but I feel this track is too short. At just under three minutes it feels more like a preview than a fully developed piece. Maybe it's good that a song leaves me wanting more?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGB-42YwyJs
This came out of my exploring some more Middle Eastern sounds. Maitre Gims has popped up a couple times before (https://drwex.dreamwidth.org/tag/maitre+gims) and here he brings some strong vocals to anchor this dance track. The track comes out of an Istanbul-based collective - I know nothing about modern Turkish music and I found it interesting that they were combining French chanteur vocals with samples of English rap. Even more interesting, the base track "Mi Gna" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPjN6N8TgNI) is Armenian. I really like both the original and the remix.

https://soundcloud.com/dmaduro/aaliyah-try-again-dmaduro-remix
"Try Again" is not exactly a legendary tune, but as a high-charting, much played hit from (dear gods I'm old) nearly 20 years ago, it's not something to be handled lightly. D’Maduro’s remix pulls in a lot of additional elements, giving the track a nearly complete rework. About all that's left from the original are some vocal samples. I think that's kind of a shame - one of the things I liked about the original was the way it layered different vocal tracks. D'Maduro makes an interesting attempt but I think it falls short.

https://soundcloud.com/futurehousemusic/sets/futurism-ep-vol-1-day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GYPWo2pcUs
To wrap this up, here's a double shot for you - the Futurism EP from Future House Music and what I think is its best track. "Future House" is a designation that's been popping up here and there over the past few years. It's sometimes associated with a style that draws from deep house and sometimes it's just the name of an indie label that's trying to promote its sounds.

This EP is definitely house music and it's got some deep bits. But it's also higher BPM than I'd expect and has a wider variety of electronic sounds. Give it a listen and see what you think.

For me the clear winner is Ken Takano & Victor Tellagio' "Prisoner" which is built around some retro sounds - soul vocals, horns, and a less frenetic but still very danceable beat.

And now a nice bit of music history

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3epEnJAyu4

A really neat 10-minute exploration of how disco changed the length of pop tunes. tl;dr blame the (disco) clubs.

For about 20 years, from the mid-50s to the mid/late 70s, the length of a song was 2:30 to 3:30. That's largely because it's how much music you could fit on the 7" vinyl disc, aka the "45" because it spun at 45 RPM. It did that on personal record players, jukeboxes, and most importantly, on radio turntables. Radio controlled what was played and what was popularized, so the 45 dominated and songs adjusted their lengths to suit.

Then along comes (the) disco - first as a dance club and then as an identifiable set of musical styles that get played in those dance clubs. Club DJs needed longer material to work with - this is in the day of mixing being two analog turntables and a lot of finger action - and club owners wanted to keep people on the floor longer, dancing, rather than stopping and restarting every few minutes.

Theoretically you could put more music onto a 45 by making thinner grooves and squashing things mechanically, but the result was a poorer, squashed sound with less bass and less dynamic range. Disco is nothing without those things so the DJs rejected this. After a few years of back-and-forth, club/disco hits began appearing on the Billboard charts, even before they got significant radio airplay. In effect, the clubs and the club DJs supplanted the radio stations and their DJs as the drivers of popularity and money.

Once the 12" format became available record companies realized they could have both things out and sell both - usually the base song rerecorded as a "club" mix or similar going out to 8 minutes. But by the early 1980s songs started being made in the new format, not as remixes but as longer originals. And radio hits followed.

See if you can guess the first song specifically released for the new format before you watch the video. Hint: it's possibly the most popular single ever released in that format.