Hyperbole made it to this months jmag cover story, dope! The music editor over there, Sam Clode, asked me some questions about the convergence of dance music in hitherto pure blood indie circles as well as people like Bag Raiders, The Prodigy and Aston Shuffle. The whole issue, with a tasty feature on Jay-Z and all, is out there on a magazine rack near you, but I’ve included a scan of one of the pages along with the full Q&A chat below with what didn’t make the final edit of the story.

Personally, when it comes to your blog how do you discover new music in 2010? Any specific websites, blogs, DJs, clubs, email lists etc who really help you share and discover new sounds?

Having worked pretty hard at my blog and other journalistic pursuits for the last four or five years I get a lot of music sent to me from promo people, labels or artists themselves. But I’m also always out there looking on something like the Hype Machine for new stuff, on a forum like Hipinion or using the connections and leads from Grindin (a sort of bloggers alliance email list built by the Discobelle guys that includes all the big blogs like Discodust and Big Stereo) to grab new stuff.

How has finding new artists evolved over time for you – is it easier now or more complicated, due to the sheer volume and turnaround of new music out there? With the music world moving so quickly, how difficult is it to keep in the know?

The internet has really been a blessing and a curse for music lovers/consumers. It’s so simple to get new music (I added five records to my hard drive today alone) from blogs, mailing lists, RCRD LBL, etc, that you’ll often be clicking the download links just for the sake of it. Naturally the bulk of that music can and will get lost easily, which is a shame because we’ll probably miss a gem or three in it all. Thankfully, if you’re reading enough blogs and sites the same artists will come up and remind you to go trawling through the ‘listen list’.

Can you recommend 2/3 other blogs that dance fans should be checking out?

Blogs that I check every day are Discodust (http://discodust.blogspot.com) and Discobelle (http://discobelle.net). Both are truly always getting great exclusive tunes to post and have pushed the scene forward. Disco Dust offers a bit of everything whereas Discobelle focuses a lot on mixtapes and tracks from club DJs worldwide. Locally Electrorash (http://electrorash.net) would be at the top of the list, being one of the longest lasting Aussie dance blogs.

Today, musical ‘borders’ are practically non-existent. From David Guetta infiltrating the mainstream via BEP’s remixes, to pop & dance fans embracing La Roux; ‘underground’ bands like Animal Collective taken in by rock crowds, to house lovers the Bloody Beetroots earning radio airplay on chart shows worldwide. When it comes to embracing new electronic music, are we less likely to categorise now? Do fans (particularly indie rock lovers) make any distinctions any more about what they’re hearing – is there any difference, say, in the way we approach a Digitalism record to a Grizzly Bear?

I think a lot of it has to do with changing attitudes and trends towards electronic and dance music. Because it’s so easily accessible now, kids might get a keyboard or a copy of Ableton Live for their first instrument instead of a guitar, and therefore it’s no longer weird to find synths and drum machines in an indie rock setup. I actually think it’s pretty cool that the lines are blurring as much as they are, because this is music that I love and I want other people to experience it and hopefully feel the same way about it.

The Aussie dance scene has changed – a lot, to understate – over the last two decades, let alone the last year or two. Years back street press was hugely influential in the dance scene; now it’s more about sites like ITM and blogs. What changes do you think have made the most impact and how?

Again, we’ve got to point the finger at the internet on this one. As sad as it is for free street press, there’s a diminishing motivation to pick up that bulky A3 news sheet when you can get all that and more online at a blog or website in a much simpler fashion. Online you can read something, click a link and be listening to a new Justice remix in an instant, and nothing can beat that. Another important factor to remember is that online avenues are interactive so somewhere like inthemix you can have an ever growing community of dance music fans interacting with one another and talking about their favourite artists together, building that connection and feeling of a genuine dance music community.

We’ve seen trends like chillwave, haze and dubstep hitting clubs here in Oz. What’s a new sound/direction exciting you? Can you tell us about a few artists/producers/DJs we should be keeping an eye out?

Chillwave might just have the legs to last for a while longer but coming up beyond that I think we’ll be seeing a lot more ‘drag’ acts like SALEM and oOoOO, who’ve developed their own oddly named niche with these dark, murky productions. Acts like Classixx, Aeroplane and Holy Ghost! are also on the rise, fusing disco, electro and retro-pop appreciation into one lovely mess and should all be making big waves this year. To add to the list I’d say Tanlines who I’ve been enamoured by for the last few months. They’re from New York City and make this wonderfully weird stuff that I’ve been calling calypso-electro. Lots of pounding drum circles mixed in with bright synthesizers.

Over recent years the indie dance crossover scene has been absolutely massive. How much influence do you think dance music has on artists today – even if their own music isn’t necessarily filled with bleeps?

I think the indie-dance scene has been pretty instrumental in bridging the gap here, with indie DJs slipping dance tracks alongside rock tunes to the point where it’s now commonplace to hear Warp from the Bloody Beetroots mixed out of Pulp. I think bands are mindful of that now, and so you’ll see artists and labels nut out a release strategy that specifically includes multiple remixes of their singles or working with traditionally dance based producers like Erol Alkan with The Long Blondes, Ewan Pearson with Lost Valentinos and James Ford with Arctic Monkeys. You don’t need to look any further than the recent Future Music Festival which had Franz Ferdinand and Operator Please sharing stage space with club-world heavyweights like John Digweed, Boys Noize and Above & Beyond. There’s a whole new audience open to them.

In Sydney, electro continues to rule, while over in Perth the drum’n’bass scene is hotter than ever… and indie dance is everywhere. What’s some of the biggest trends, city to city, you’ve noticed on ground?

Dubstep is slowly taking over in Perth and making inroads in Brisbane as well. That scene is feeding right out of the DnB community in Perth and is only getting bigger thanks to some really quality tours over the last twelve months. Likewise there’ve been some boutique dubstep nights set up in Canberra that have already developed a loyal following. Sydney is interesting for its melting pot of styles, including electro but also hard-dance and trance which have hugely popular club nights. Also rising in Sydney is a very cool strain of thoughtful house and electro championed by the guys over at the Future Classic label. They’ve been bringing out some really great DJs recently and have sunk their heels into weekly shows at the Civic Underground.

Lastly, big question: who do you think is making music for the future? What’s so special about them?

That’s the most difficult question of the bunch because every day I’m usually finding somebody new that excites me! But narrowing it down to some of the names I think people should be looking out for, I’d say our home grown lads Bag Raiders will blow us all away with their 1st record later this year, as will former Damn Arms member Gloves, not to mention Beaufort, Cassian, Light Year and Youth, all young producers doing interesting new things in electro. Internationally of course there’s the aforementioned Tanlines, the Valerie stable of acts and their ‘80s electronica fetish, Mirrors from the UK are like this year’s White Lies but with keys, Heartsrevolution do noisy club stuff in style and Chateau Marmont and Breakbot from France make essentially perfect electronic pop music.

Tags: Bag Raiders, Blogs, Grindin, Interview, jmag, Tanlines, triple j