I like electronic music.

I like electronic music.

There, I said it. It’s not an easy thing to admit. People look at you differently. It does not matter that I’m into all types of music – it’s the style that’s wrong to like. The look that Erich gives me when he hears me listening to some of my music is very judgmental, for example. He likes hair bands, though. I’m going to explain why I like electronic music.

I did not really like dance music, trance, electronica and all of that shit not long ago. I think, like a lot of my American study abroad fellow alums, that Europe broke down my taboo. I wouldn’t think of going to a club in Chicago. It’s expensive, and you know what kind of people are there. They’re not bad, they’re just not your people. I’d much rather be around the Rainbo/Innertown/Club Foot/Ola’s scene. That’s just a fact.

Over there everyone goes out to clubs and dances. It was off-putting at first. I didn’t want to be a club person, but one doesn’t have much choice when you want to drink at night over there. The bars closed early at that time, which I’ve heard they’ve since repealed.

So you get there, and you’re on the floor and everyone is dancing. Your stoner flatmate who you would never think would be a clubby guy is dancing with his hands in the air. Your Greek flatmate is predictably grinding up on a chubby English girl. You feel embarrassed at first, I can’t fucking dance. Perhaps a drink. Back out there. Loud-ass dance music that you can feel throughout the frame of your body blasts through the room and you’re like, ‘fuck it, I’ll give in.’

And you dance and listen to the rhythmic thumping and abstract sounds and effects and samples and let it just flow right through you. It’s like a drug in and of itself, though I was drunk and many around were on pills. Everyone dances, hands in the air, feeling the music. It’s atmospheric music. It renders the air not able to carry messages from person to person, only forced into the music, thumping, pulsing, subtly carrying your mood from breakbeat excitement to calming lull and back to terrible ecstatic crescendo.

It’s dark and futuristic and the music is not like music you see at a concert or hear on the radio, though you do catch snippets of songs here and there. It’s all wrapped in a powerful overriding bass line and it’s everywhere in the dark room full of colored lights shooting everywhere.

It’s hardly music because it’s different than that. It’s like post-music, denying you a traditional start and end, but rather just a melodramatic journey designed to get you excited, then calm you, then excite you like mad in what is like a tribal trance.

So that’s what I think of it, and it isn’t for everyone, I suppose, but it is most definitely an art form. The compositions are often thickly layered with rich sounds carefully found and perfected. Others use complex or ultra fast beats convoluting the creative process further. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of crap out there, and lots of cheese, but the best trance is lyrical and looping and complex and is really quite an experience. Good drum and bass is manic and dumfounding while extremely exciting and upbeat.

Oh, and I’m listening to Sasha’s Fundacion right now.