AJ Dance Legacy

After the music comes to an abrupt stop, the sound of metal grinding its teeth on meth explodes into the air. As if nails were scratching a chalkboard, the drums scowl with a nasty drawl. This is grime music, the choice sound of U.K.’s underground edge. Seconds later the grime thrusts straight, four-counts that is, into the arms of acid. All the while, the sight of purple and pink lasers pushes toward the ceiling and pulls to the floor again in erratic shifts. The performance stage’s dynamics border haywire. In the audience an army of fists arises. Voices cheer. Welcome to… (more…)

Long before The Beatles stepped foot onto American soil, the British Invasion had long occurred. Look no further than the indigenous peoples. Britain’s hunger for world dominance, a British World Order is no covert. Evidence today: James Bond, David Beckham, Adele. Even so, America’s house music community was not immune to a leveraged buyout. The Brits accepted early Chicago imports that served as blueprints for their very own commercializing of house and acid in the late 80’s. Their brand of copy & conquer continued well into the latest century. Today, a slew of fresh-faced blokes are discovered, dissected, and signed to major recording labels at fiber-optic speeds. From social media to Shoreditch no cobblestone is left untouched. At the forefront of acquisition stars Disclosure: the regal face of millennial dance. With a polished PR script that reads: two brothers hailing from Regail, Surrey, musically educated, plays instruments, acquired MySpace stardom, signed with an indie-label, and remixed a songstress that charted in music magazines, online, and commercially, after all, is what the machine is made of. Perhaps more settling, on June 3, 2013, their full-length release “Settle” and earlier released single “Latch”(ed) Disclosure as dance music’s emperors, except in the land that birthed their sound. In America the saying goes without saying, you only make it once you land on the American charts, a landing Disclosure accomplished fifty years after the more proper titled British “Music” Invasion should have been coined.   (more…)