First Floor

As a general rule, First Floor tries to steer clear of loudly crowing every time an exclusive piece of content gets published in the newsletter. First of all, the value of exclusivity only means so much in the context of niche electronic music, and in a time when the exclusivity of something pretty much ends the second it goes online, it usually makes sense to keep the self-congratulation to a minimum.

Who or what is Topdown Dialectic? Until a few months ago, this was a perfectly reasonable question. For more than a decade, the project had steadily dropped releases—most of them populated only with songs that were exactly five minutes in length—and had done so while A) racking up a growing amount of critical acclaim and B) sharing almost no information about how the music was made or the identity of who’d actually made it.

Who is Quoting G? According to the Clone Records gang, the producer is a “long-time label mainstay,” but beyond that, they’re not saying much. If the “G” is any indication, veteran Dutch producer Gerd (a.k.a. NY Stomp, along with many, many other aliases) is a solid candidate, especially since I Can Feel It (In My Bones) deals in the same sort of soulful, early-’90s house music that’s long been one of his primary calling cards.

Trisomnía is a good record, but “Drak”—the marauding number that closes out the EP—is a truly great track. Coming from Chilean-born, Mexico City-based producer (and longtime N.A.A.F.I affiliate) Imaabs, it’s a corroded club smasher, one in which his jackhammering, take-no-prisoners drum attack appears determined to bust through the monotony of the modern dancefloor.

Considering that the current progressive house revival has now been going strong for several years, it’s interesting that Sasha—the artist responsible for some of the genre’s most timeless releases—hasn’t really been embraced by the crowd that’s now salivating over every new release from labels like naff, Kalahari Oyster Cult and Butter Sessions.

First Floor is in many ways a one-person operation, but on most Wednesdays, the newsletter fully cedes the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from Star Eyes, a Los Angeles native who’s spent decades foraging through virtually every corner of the rave ecosystem.

When was the last time that dance music felt truly healthy? Depending who you ask, the responses to that question will vary wildly, but the post-dubstep era of the late 2000s and early 2010s is bound to be a popular answer. Although the nomenclature leaves something to be desired—both “post-dubstep” and the term that supplanted it (“bass music”) are frustratingly vague—those years were unquestionably a time of profound creativity, innovation and hybridity.

Over the past few months, you’ve likely noticed that First Floor has assembled a small crew of contributing writers. And while that’s mostly been a good thing—especially for me, as I no longer have to write every single word that gets published in the newsletter—it has presented me with some new challenges to navigate. One of those challenges is that every month or so, a record comes along that pretty much everyone wants to write about.

Nashville has arguably been a music town for more than a century now, but the place has never really be known as a techno hotbed. Sure, Nikki Nair grew up in Knoxville—which, for the record, is nearly 200 miles away—but if you do a quick Google search of “dance music artists from Nashville,” I’m guessing that the results will leave you scratching your head.

Artists in Latin America don’t just make Latin music. It feels ridiculous to even write something like that, because of course they don’t. Yet if you look around the contemporary electronic music landscape, it often seems that the only Latin artists who find serious traction are those whose work conforms to (frequently outmoded and stereotype-driven) European and American notions of what Latin music, culture and identity is “supposed” to look and sound like.