December 15 2007, 10:46 AM It Remains That Neither Of Us Understand Happy Hardcore

I know some folks that have little use for dance music. It is all on 4/4, they claim. There is very little dynamic range, they say. It is thump and bass and drum and beeping. They do not see the proposition in it. They are not wrong in any of these things.

Well, sort of.

I used to be able to passably play the piano. One of the things that came with the house is a serviceable but mildly detuned piano, an one of the first things I did here was pull out my collection of Joplin scores and put it in the piano bench. I should really get the piano tuned, but it's not so bad that I cannot recognize what I'm doing, and rebuilding the tactile habits isn't really affected by the dissonances. Like everything else, I need to pour more time into it.

Ragtime is interesting stuff. The right hand takes a syncopated stroll through melodies, dancing with sprains over keys strange. The left hand is the steady driver, darting is known pattern with quiet, solid insistence. The collision of these things is what makes the stuff so much fun.

The sort of dance music that I find myself enjoying is rife with this kind of stuff. It is less abashed than the right hand of ragtime, but bits and pieces dance and float against the unrelenting thump in the basement. All of the artists I admire use this well. It must be said that there is a lot of work out there that never ventures deeply into this territory, or even comes close to the terrain, shying away and staying on the beaten track of the horn stabs and progressions of sixes and whatnot. This is a shame. The genre is brash, but there is room for subtlety even in the sharp shadows, and it's fun to listen to the play that goes on in those spaces where depth can be hidden.

I am dusted with flour; soon, there will be calzones.