Sense of meaning in music: is it gone, or has it changed?
We still operate, by and large, as cavemen. Humans are complex creatures, and the problem of finding meaning in life is directly tied to our happiness, and by extension to how we function overall. In the caves, surrounded by the same familiar faces, we built a sense of security. Caring for each other, and for the world around us, makes us feel needed. Being needed is fulfilling, it gives us sense of purpose. Think back to the days when there was always someone on the dancefloor handing you water, and how good it felt to gulp it straight from the bottle neck.
There’s no scarcity of songs being produced in this age. However, there's a scarcity of songs that connect to anyone at all. That’s not a coincidence – it's the byproduct of making music not to make music, but to “make it work on the dancefloor.” Loops, patterns, scaled-up engineered drops with a pre countdown to it to make it as primitive as possible.
If all you’re thinking about is the drop in the middle of the track, you've given up on telling a story in full. What's missing is the prelude – the tease, the tension, the walk to the edge before the drop. A truly monumental drop feels like a release, not an explosion. The best producers of our time build tension first, so there's something to let go of. An explosion with nothing behind it is just noise with good timing.
We’re in a meaning crisis, and the younger generation’s response to it has been newly discovered industrial techno. Which is funny, because it has been around for decades. Yet, it’s only now that large crowds are actually picking it up and putting it on the main stage. Why? An easy answer is social media: shortened attention spans, a constant craving for high energy. Compare it to what punk did to rock – fuck the rules, speed it up. Same move, different decade.
If you've seen behind the scenes of this industry, you know how closed down the booking circles are and how hard it is to penetrate it.
Industrial techno, hard groove, schranz, these genres have been revolutionized, again. There's a renaissance on its way. Stay closed off and you’ll miss it.
If you're one of the people who's spent years calling the new wave of industrial and hardstyle ravers “TikTok dancers,”you might be the snob they're avoiding. And it's working. Look at the dancefloors around you. The "yappers on the dancefloor" complaints are old heads talking to other old heads in a loop. The younger crowd is dancing to the same tracks, just having fun, and it does not matter how "performative" it might look at the first glance for an untrained eye.
