I saw advertised on a club night's poster today the styles Jackin House, Electro House, Dirty House, Fidgit House, Deep House, Progressive House, Tech House, Tribal House, Old Skool House, Acid House...
Enough house there? If they slipped in 'detached house' or '5 bedroom house' in the middle would we notice? What's going on here?!
Basically any 'inspiring' or 'active' word in front of the word 'house' creates a new genre. Imagine you're mucking around on the keyboard...'I will call this music Dark House, Renegade House...Dungeon House'. See, it works.
(If you don't believe me, 'darkcore', 'darkstep', 'neurofunk', 'drill and bass' and 'intelligent drum and bass' are all subgenres of the 'oh-too-ordinary' drum and bass)
Acid is obviously code for 'psychedelic' and appears in front of every music genre in the world - Acid House, Acid Jazz, Acid Rock...Acid Soul perhaps, or is that a bit of a contradiction? Soon songwriters will feel it's become too cliche...'we'll have to call this 'Citric Acid House...or maybe Battery Acid House...or maybe flip the spectrum and call it Alkaline House...yeah, that'll confuse them'.
Some genres are a bit misleading though. Jungle, usually 'a dense forest in a hot climate' (Wikipedia) is also drum and bass (which isn't actually one drum and one bass guitar as you'd forgiven for thinking). I see what they did there...actually no I don't.
It looks like probably any word would make a genre these days. Dancehall, lounge jazz, house, garage...how about shed? kitchen rock? loft conversion soul?
Or if grime's the new genre of the 2000's, how about 'dirt', 'filth', 'that-sweaty-feeling-when you've just been for a run...music'.
So next time you're describing a band's style, say something along the lines of 'oh, well it's a little bit funk, jazz, jazz-funk, funky jazz-funk, liquid funky-jazz-funk...with a bit of old skool futuristic niche groove liquid house'. Easy.
