What Exactly is Progressive House?
A brief editorial by Ravi Bayanker
I genuinely like Beatport. They select a nice variety of artists for their featured charts. Those things can always put you on to some new hotness. The folks at Beatport give small dance labels a great distribution platform, helped build a great venue in Beta (Denver), gave us Manufactured Superstars and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.
What I don’t like about Beatport is their genre classification when it comes to Progressive House. And here’s why:
This is labeled as ‘Progressive House’
Krewella – Alive (Hardwell Remix) [Colombia (Sony)] – Release Date May 13, 2013
So is this…
Unisol – Hope [Sudbeat] – Release Date May 6, 2013
Lamb and tuna fish have more in common.
I’ve always associated prog house with Pryda, Hernan Cattaneo, Jerome Isma-Ae, Way Out West, Nick Warren, The Renaissance Series, John Digweed, etc.
I’ve never really considered Tiesto, Dannic, Hardwell, Steve Angello and Sander van Doorn to be ‘progressive’ by genre standards (well maybe Sander was progressive trance at one point). Yet those are the names you find at the top of the genre’s charts.
I know, I know… why do we need to use labels at all? Why can’t good music be just that? Because we’re human beings and we like things to be organized. That’s why. If a friend invites you to see Pleasurekraft, you ask what kind of music it is, and they say “good music.” That’s not really much to go on. We need points of reference.
My personal tastes are irrelevant to the discussion. My point is that a new genre of dance music has risen to the top, is being mislabeled and as a result, is burying other stuff. Call it ‘big room/melodic house’ or ‘festival house’ or even ‘electro’ or something… but please… Fehrplay and Jeremy Olander do progressive house. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike do something else. It’s good, but it’s not ‘progressive.’
So what’s the answer? Beats me. I’m just curious if anyone else agrees. Oh ya… scroll down cause Pryda Friends are coming to Ultrabar 🙂
So ya… come to this on October 24th. Click on the photo for details.
See what I did there?
