SoundProof - Feature: Teaching Indie Kids to Dance

"I just got sick of boring rock shows," complains a fellow concert goer at a recent Presets/Crystal Castles show, explaining why she's all about going to indie dance concerts and DJ nights now. It's as much a comment on the lamentable state of rock 'n' roll performances, as it is a call to arms (or feet!) for all the cynical and disparaged rockers who are tired of the blasé stand-around or mosh routine.

Subterranean pockets of dance-punk, thrash and indie house-rock have always existed, but only now are they truly becoming en vogue, with DJs and remixers enjoying almost as much hype as the next fresh-faced, vintage-clad quintet from a hitherto unheard-of London suburb.

Paris-based electro label Ed Banger Records is home to probably the most talked-about cluster of artists, including Justice (pronounce it more like "zhoo-stice" if you want to be taken seriously by the kids at The Drake), a DJ duo who skilfully remixed Simian's "We Are Your Friends" and made it an indie club anthem. Other artists from the mushrooming Ed Banger family include DJ SebAstian and a young ingénue named Uffie.

The French aren't the only electro acts who've amassed widespread indie cred — Toronto's own Crystal Castles and Holy Fuck are gaining momentum and basking in the dance-rock spotlight as well, often opening for acts like !!! ("chk chk chk") or doing smaller headlining tours abroad.

Heck, even Brit poppers are taking a stab at this new beast, with The Klaxons emerging as the more mainstream heralds of a New Rave electro genre, sparking moshing and glowstick homages at their shows.

So to what do we owe this sudden explosion of purely dance-oriented bands and purely rock-oriented DJs? Wasn't it just a little while ago that dance music was uncool to the indie crowds? Doesn't dance music belong to beefcakes in wife beaters and Richmond Street ginas with umpts, umpts, umpts bass-lines throbbing and emanating obscenely from their vehicles as they make those very pigeon-like motions with their head?

Well, it seems such stereotypes are a misconception — on my part, at least. Indie rockers have actually always liked dance music (see Daft Punk, for example, who recently had a partial hand in promoting the Ed Banger roster) or Aphex Twin, whose pop muscle garnered MTV attention in the '90s.

As always, though, Europe has been just ahead of the curve. Dance and dub and different variants thereof have been more popular than rock music in a lot of EU countries, so while we ignorant North Americans have been satisfied with our synth-rock revivalists and our post-grunge hardcore, our brethren across the pond have been happily vibing to the likes of The Rapture and Air in dance clubs for years.

Even Madonna, it seems, took note of these trends in her adopted homeland and purposely made her latest album all about dance music. But that was for the yuppies. At the other extreme, there's flamboyant dance music, usually associated with the gay club scene. In fact, forget Madonna; let's hark back to Cher's "Believe" and her drag-inspired dance anthem revivalism. Cher made it very pop in '99 and Scissor Sisters made it indie rock in '05. And then of course there was Moby and Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails, introducing electronic beat-machine sensibilities to pop and industrial. Those bands, however, were more about the electro-infusions and less about actually making people dance — they were embraced into the mainstream via commercial success. (Quite literally; a lot of electro acts in the late '90s found fame by licensing their tunes to TV ads.)

Enter MSTRKRFT in 2005. A duo from Toronto, they quickly found underground notoriety all around the world for remixing and dirtying-up pop tracks, making electro less shiny and happy and therefore more palatable to every major metropolis' scenester trash. But Jesse and Al-P weren't club divas or iced-out hip-hop DJs — they were rockstars; dirt-staches and Kensington-market clothes; on the street they could've been mistaken as a member of Broken Social Scene. Scenesters in Toronto and abroad latched onto their mashed-up style, and brought it to the surface, like greedy divers uncovering a musical treasure chest.

MSTRKRFT and DFA 1979 are now some of the biggest Canadian indie exports, on par with the Arcade Fires and the Feists. And thanks to this culmination, scenes like the one I saw at that Presets concert are becoming as frequent as the stand-around-and-sip-your-drink shows at the 'Shoe — crowds of indie kids dancing with abandon and feeling the pulse of a refreshed genre.

But will this trend last? Like all things dragged up into the mainstream, will indie dance music be re-appropriated and perverted and made uncool all over again, causing all the scenesters to retract back into their vintage-clad cocoons, standing around, noses turned up, dancing shoes left at home? I think not. Dance music has already been perverted and misappropriated enough, by the TV commercials and the Madonnas, and there's nothing to thumb your nose at anymore. If anything, DJs now play on this irony, making hip Beyonce remixes and Britney versus old-school hip-hop mash-ups. I doubt this mutual re-appropriation cycle can now be demoded.