All posts tagged: dance

Strange names but great music

The trends in the music scene have always been fast changing but with the advent of digital downloads and the internet – music fashions are spreading faster than ever. Band names seem to all be taking the same route too… Ten years ago, bands had to put “The” in front of their name to get signed and along came “The” Strokes, “The” Kills, “The” Datsuns,  “The” White Stripes and “The” Libertines. This all seemed to take influence from “The” late 70’s and early 80’s punk and post punk bands such as The Clash, The Stranglers and The Specials. Nowadays the bands getting all the attention are taking their names from either Japanese mystical manga or straight up animal names… Flying Lotus, Wolf Mother, Fleet Foxes, Caribou, Empire of the Sun Pantha Du Prince Panda Bear, Gold Panda, Bear vs Moon, Grizzly Bear, Crystal Fighters, Crystal Castles, Crystal Stilts, Crystal Antlers. Dance music have their own fads too with names coming from their initials or symbols such as SBTRKT, !!!, AFX, XX and MGMT. Actually, a …

A Loft Party

Mancuso’s legacy to dance music goes deep. He was there at the very roots of New York Disco culture, dating way way back to ‘Love Saves The Day’, his inaugural party, held at his home, a loft space in NY’s NoHo district, on Valentine’s Day in 1970. Mancuso structured the party into three stages or, to use the term from ‘The Tibetan Book Of The Dead’, three Bardos (Leary had applied this to his LSD sessions): “The first Bardo would be very smooth, perfect, calm. The second Bardo would be like a circus. And the third Bardo was about re-entry, so people would go back into the outside world relatively smoothly”, he explains in ‘Love Saves The Day’. David Mancuso’s London Loft party, ‘Journey Through The Light’, celebrates its 10th anniversary on June 23rd. Held Upstairs @ The Light in Shoreditch, it’s a party like no other, underpinned by a high-end audiophile sound system that has to be heard to be believed. Although its originator, now approaching his 70’s, hasn’t been able to make it …