Trends

So... In the last few years we've seen the rise of minimal, slo mo house, disco sampled house, 'funky' house, and a form of bass house that straddles the divide between house and dubstep. All of which have either been represented or been repeated from an earlier time. So whats coming next?

Far from me to stick my neck out with some predictions but there do seem to be some trends:

For DJs such as Jamie Jones the progression has been from minimal, dark edged techno through to starting Hot Natured and the funk fuelled explosion that has come with it - as Little White Earbuds has noted:

"Over the last six months that’s meant a deluge of house tracks with full on vocals, not just the snippets that dotted 2010′s output."

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/chart/lwe-2q-reports-2011-overrated/

Does this indicate a move back towards vocal house do we think? I might think so... The funk has been returning for a while through influential producers such as Sergio Santos, Soul Clap, Lee Curtis etc... I might even go as far to say that we could see a return of the full on 'proper' funky house of the late '90s and early '00s that dominated Defected, Soulfuric and Subliminal's output. These producers and accompanying DJs are in the enviable position of being trend setters and it would be interesting to see older tracks popping up in their sets.

The next trend has been around the bass house/dubstep house/funky house (not to be confused with the 'proper' funky house), I think this may indicate a 4/4 garage comeback, with DJs such as Scuba pushing this kind of sound theres no reason to think it may not happen...

http://boilerroom.tv/scubas-45-min-mix/

Scuba's boilerroom mix containing some of the sounds indicated...

Lastly and perhaps most controversially... Progressive house... interesting this one and its not that clear to me why there is such a stigma attached to the genre, I still dig out my old Digweed or Kleinenberg CDs. It is a type of melodic house that may not be out of place:

Or try Groovemates - Natural Sound on for size - couldn't find it on Youtube...

This next year will be an interesting one as it seems like there has been a decade of innovation in the dance music arena squeezed into a few years that has flown by...