Zone Magazine Issue 033 - Jan Johnson

Parsing genres can become a hobby, a means of
bonding and finding your people within the community, or
for people who really suck, a means of being a snobby twat
and alienating others. As they say, a little knowledge can
be dangerous. Trying to pigeonhole records can be a
strange phenomenon, particularly when it comes to sounds
that are as nebulous as Balearic or progressive house -
they are genres unto themselves, but ultimately, the end
result of a track or set of tracks from these genres ideally
pull from a multitude of sources to make up their sound.
It's useful to keep in mind that "progressive" should be
thought of as an adjective, and not a noun, and for a genre
that should be as broad and inclusive as progressive house,
to try and get as specific as "dark progressive house"...let's
just say there's a fair amount of subjectivity going on here.
Sandra Collins:
Cream (Kinetic Records, 2001)
To hell with all of that "female DJ" nonsense...this
mix from Sandra Collins showed that American DJs could
stand on equal ground in the dark prog realm alongside
their UK brethren. Sandra made a splash in 2000 with her
entry in the Tranceport series, and she continued her run
with this mix. KEY DARK TRACKS: Markus Schulz's Tribal
Mix of Carissa Mondavi's "Solid Ground", Piece Process "My
Mind Is Going".
So why this music, from this era? Around this
time, the landscape of big-room music was slowly
changing. Trance had already smashed it in 1999 and
2000, and progressive house was becoming the common
tongue for many large clubs. Progressive house had
already enjoyed a period of growth in the 90s, and at the
turn of the millenium, a lot of the music just got a lot, well,
darker: minor keys, lots of drums, samples of astronauts
with transmissions to mission control, and let's not forget
quotes from Morpheus from The Matrix. Think less John
Digweed - Bedrock: Compiled and mixed, and more Global
Underground 019 -John Digweed: Los Angeles. A lot of this
music was really, really good...and some of it was, shall we
say, less good. We even coined a term for the less good
stuff on the message boards - "BSPF", or "bog standard
progessive fodder". This was also the kind of music I was
most into during my prime clubbing years in Los Angeles,
so believe me, I had a LOT of opportunity to listen to some
dark prog - the good, the bad, and the downright boring. I
was also writing for a few print publications at that time, so
the promo mixes were coming fast and furious. Global
Underground, the label probably most known for their
compilations promoting this sound, released eleven mixes
between 2000 and 2003, from DJs John Digweed, Nick
Warren, Dave Seaman, Deep Dish...these were the good
times. The DJ CD mixed compilation was still very much
the law of the land for the fan.
It couldn't last forever though, and the pendulum
of interest and cool was slowly swinging in another
direction. London club Fabric had been founded in late
1999, and their brand would soon give rise to a completely
different type of sounds, promoted not only at their club
but also championed on their own series of mix
compilations. Tech house and minimal were on the rise,
and prog was on its way out of the spotlight. Resident
Advisor was founded in 2001, and before long they were
deciding what was cool...I think they may have actually
invented ambient-trip-hop-experimental-noise. Following
are my picks from this era. This list is not meant to be
definitive, but these mixes are without question
unassailable.
" This was a great
time to be rocking... lots
of amazing vox being
produced heavy
grooves ... yum "
- John Creamer