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Together in electro dreams
Electro pulls a coup in the clubs.
There’s no getting around it: Electro is on the upswing in Chicago. One of New York’s major electro cats, Spencer Product, hits the Dark Wave Disco monthly Saturday 20 at Sonotheque with sleazy, indie-leaning dance. So, we thought it would be high time to toast the rise (or return) of electro and check out some of the recently launched electro nights that are bringing up the rear in this nightlife takeover.
Successful monthlies like Dark Wave Disco have given rise to an entire venue, Debonair Social Club, whose residents Jordan Z and Ryan Paradise keep electro heavily rotated in its red-light-district–like lower level. Z also holds a residency upstairs at the house-oriented Ohm and curates Sonotheque’s New Indie Mafia night every first Friday.
Electro nights are popping up early in the week. Smartbar’s Sunday industry night, The End, is extremely friendly to electro and brings in Atlanta DJ Le Castle Vania on January 28. Mondays belong to the six-week-old, low-cover Electro A-Go-Go at the Note, a spin-off of the Note’s jam-packed house event. Make it till Friday and Neo’s RazerX has got you covered.
On the weekends, there’s no shortage, either. Three Saturdays a month, Dallas-bred DJ Treadway spins his unky Ass Electro gig at tapas joint People Lounge; across town, a newly launched Socialite night in the River North party zone of Cabaret is chock-full of slick big-room electro, with resident DJ Shawn Edwards slapping us silly with dirty beats.
Obviously, electro is everywhere. But what is it? Technically, the term references both the synth-playing post-punk acts, and electronic-favoring black artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force of the ’80s. Most folks will agree that Kraftwerk laid its foundation with purely synthesized, rigid rock tunes. But it’s come to define the punky side of dance, where distorted bass lines often sit in for guitars. More crudely, it’s dance music that rocks today’s skinny-jeans set.
Still, electro hasn’t totally disassociated itself from electroclash, the ’80s-obsessed, club-focused “movement” that hit New York in 2000, cultivated by Product and Brooklyn DJ Larry Tee (who coined the term). Electroclash didn’t last, in part because it hitched itself to performance group Fischerspooner, a band that exhausted most of its musical ideas in one song and went on to release two mediocre albums.
These days, electro is an ally of indie, not a challenger. Product tells us that though he plays electro-dance music, he pushes “the punk sort of vibes.” “It sort of blurs a lot of boundaries of different genres,” he says. “It really pushes the indie feel.”
What Product likes about electro is its rebellious spirit. “It’s all pretty punk in that it does whatever it wants,” he says. “I definitely identify with punk. It’s very DIY and doesn’t follow any rules.” Like punk, electro’s tempos are energetic and the melodies are unsubtle, but catchy. Naturally, dance-punk is electro’s live, raw sibling. And as the most rock-friendly of the dance genres, electro tends to be the style of choice for remixes of breakout indie bands. A skilled hand—such as that of Chicagoan-in-Brooklyn Tommie Sunshine—can turn a boilerplate emo tune into an electro banger, enabling that all-important second life in the clubs.
Electro broke once, in the ’80s, when Depeche Mode got mobbed at the mall; the more recent boom went populist last year, with the double-disc Ultra Electro compilation. Still percolating into Chicago nightlife, the electro boom is a long way from flaming out.
Spencer Product spins at Dark Wave Disco on Saturday 20. See listings for info on Debonair Social Club, Funky Ass Electro, Neo, Socialite and Electro A-Go-Go.
