Notes From a Bloghouse Apologist

Hi, my name is Jonny. And I’m a bloghouse apologist.

For the peak bloghouse years, 2005–08, I was there. Maybe I’m still wearing stutter shades and drinking the PBR-spiked Kool-Aid, but I think it was glorious and explains a lot of where we are in relationship to mainstream dance music in 2016.

For those too young to remember, bloghouse—a combination of a new wave electro typified by tons of distortion, the nu disco/disco-not-disco thing, hipster house, and even some hip-hop—wasn’t so much a strict genre as a far-reaching catchall of overlapping genres you’d find on MP3 blogs at the time (usually in shitty bit rates): Gorilla vs. Bear, Discobelle, Disco Delicious, Hollertronix message boards, Palms Out Sounds, Aggregators like Hype Machine, and hundreds and thousands more that are (mostly) now in some digital graveyard, along with their expired Megaupload. In fact, many of these bloggers turned their hobbies into legitimate careers or labels, using their blog clout to leverage “real” music industry jobs.

Most bloghouse was uptempo dance music with snarky-cum-slutty lyrics, some of it more aggressive techno/rave style, with some of it more disco- or rock-tinged. But that still doesn’t really do it justice. Keep in mind all these things going on: George W. Bush’s second term, 4Loko, VICE, the rise of ironic facial hair, alt fashion and music becoming vertically integrated. It was a confusing time all around, before social media got us all fully self-aware and woke.

Carles of Hipster Runoff fame coined the term “bloghouse,” as he did so many others in a nascent social media world. SoundCloud and other streaming services weren’t really popping off until closer to 2010, so blogs were really one the best places to discover dance music in the States. MySpace and YouTube were obviously major points of entry as well, and perhaps the best way to describe the era, for those who weren’t there, is MySpace. The scene was tacky, retro-future, and on occasion involved moshing. Yep, moshing. And to be completely frank, it was very (but not exclusively) white but still relatively inclusive in its “everyone is welcome to the party” update on the PLUR ethos.

The scene was full of acts of all stripes: New Young Pony Club, Mylo, Optimo, Simian Mobile Disco, Justice, Tiga, Chromeo, Soulwax, SebastiAn remixing Sebastian Tellier, TTC, Hollertronix, Daft Punk, Erol Alkan and Rory Philips of Trash fame, Bloody Beetroots, Van She, the Presets, Crookers, Spank Rock, Kitsune Maison, Modular, Bang Gang, Ed Banger, Institubes, and on and on. Getting fucked up at Cinespace and Star Shoes. Cobra Snake and Misshapes. The inescapable “We Are Your Friends” remix that later became the title of a film about EDM (and not bloghouse), oddly enough. A whole lot of American Apparel and neon. We all knew at the time this wouldn’t age well, right? Like there’s some Decline of Western Civilization Pt. 4: The Bloghouse Years around the corner to expose the fact that this scene is probably in the same continuum as hair metal, punk and nu metal, and that we were all kidding ourselves.

It wasn’t just electro DJs; bands like LCD Soundsystem fall in here, too. “Losing My Edge”—all drums and sarcastic swing—is like the ultimate proto-bloghouse record. Bloghouse could even stretch to include some post-punk and rap acts, because it was so malleable. Note: This was also the era when “hipster” became a legitimate descriptor in the popular lexicon.

Genre was thrown out the window, and the whole scene was one living, breathing mashup. In many ways, bloghouse is indebted to and an extension of the rock + rap + techno formula of big beat—the late-‘90s scene that hit American shores. Once upon a time, it was a fresh move to throw Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” in your set. It’s easy to bash mashups (it’s very easy to make terrible mashups), sure, because Girl Talk and several other artists kind of rinsed out and ruined that for everyone else. But for a minute, crowds didn’t turn up their noses at hearing two tracks blended on top of each other.

In many ways, bloghouse hasn’t aged that well. Chalk that up to the recency factor—it’s too recent and garish to be respected in 2016 but not old enough to be vintage and cool yet—and the naturally brief life cycles of scenes that burn red-hot neon. And it was garish in spades, almost enough to make a hair metal fan blush, but that was also part of the charm. It knew it was stupid party music, but that kind of liberated it to be that.

It’s also worth mentioning that at the time, there was plenty of “adult techno” and house. Remember, the other big thing at that time was minimal techno, which was essentially the antithesis to bloghouse. All buildup, no drops. Unfussy arrangements. Clean, crisp and precise. Perhaps a bit lifeless and square, some might argue. I’d still take electro bangers over the ineffectual politeness of minimal any day of the week.

Full disclosure: I met one of my best friends at a free MSTRKRFT show held at the Puma store on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade in 2006. He would go on to become a writer who covered electronic music as well. Neither of us made it to the Daft Punk Coachella set in 2006, but I’d be damned if I missed the kickoff of the Alive 2007 show at the Sports Arena (RIP). That Daft Punk tour was probably the most influential thing in mainstream dance music and electronic pop culture this century, and it was most certainly a defining moment of bloghouse culture.

That culture was obsessed with Daft Punk, as the group’s discography was the perfect melding of hard, acid-y techno and smooth disco/funk songs and melody. Added to that, their stage show put most rock shows to shame, becoming the gold standard for festival dance performances that dubstep and EDM artists would later copy and try to expand on. In fact, I’m not convinced those genres would have ever even landed the way they did without some of the groundwork Daft Punk and the bloghouse scene created in the 2005–07 stretch.

While Daft Punk has grown to become a household name since then, many of the other acts that emerged via bloghouse are actually still going strong. MSTRKRFT and Uffie mounted comeback albums earlier in 2016; whereas MSTRKRFT stuck to the template a bit, Uffie is trying to branch out into other sounds. Justice’s new album (though a more “mature,” love-song centric offering) is gaining positive reviews and proves they’re still trying to evolve their once-brutal sound into something more proggy and melodic. LCD Soundsystem is back together. Sébastien Tellier has a new album in the works. Simian Mobile Disco has been a mainstay on the festival circuit and has been putting out quality music consistently in the last decade. Erol Alkan’s Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve project just dropped a long-anticipated LP. While some of the bloghouse artists faded away, a surprisingly high number of them are still around and kicking, which I’m not sure anyone would have believed in 2006.

Plenty of bloghouse revival nights have been cropping up in major club cities in the past year or so. The subject seems to be on a lot of people’s minds. It’s doubtful that a full-on revival is in any way imminent, though I predict our collective nostalgia for the era will improve as we get further removed from it. It’ll be our “1980s”: a neon, gender-bendy, shameless mess now considered vintage Americana.

But I don’t think this fascination with the scene is driven purely by nostalgia. We’re just realizing how fully bloghouse culture has bled into many other facets of our electronic-centric lives and pop culture. Yeezus is a bloghouse record, for example; it just came a few years later. Its influence is all over the mainstage at the next festival you attend. Its fashion is still surprisingly relevant, as well.

So, here are some classic tunes of the bloghouse canon I remember most fondly. Pour out a 4Loko for all the blogs and club nights we lost along the way: