A friend who is a DJ once said, " The type of music one prefers is all in the heart. Don¢t let your head rule it."

I kept quiet when I heard that, because I was guilty of not thinking that way before.

Let me just ask you, when you first started moving your body to the beat of the first dance track you ever heard in your life, do you remember what sort of music it was? I do. I remember when I first started dancing ( or ¢getting into spasms of fits¢ as nicely described by a close friend), it was to euro techno. You know the sort that was the rage in 1995-96? Those played at tea-dances (hehe, admit it, it’s a phase most of us have gone through), with rave tracks released by the likes of Masterboy and VMP?  Yeah, that was it, and no matter how stereotypically ¢ah-beng¢ or cheesy that sort of dance music was, I really enjoyed it during that period of my life. In fact, hearing it being played once in a while brings back a sense of nostalgia. Sick, I know, but no one can take away that nostalgic pleasure from me, regardless of how badly we deem that sort of music nowadays.

Ask yourself, do you listen to a dance track because you really enjoy it, or simply because it¢s the fad to hear it.

Getting back to the point, how does one actually define which genre of dance music he or she prefers? What kind of dance music actually gets you grooving on the dance floor, or simply lets you start tapping your feet to the beat unknowingly? Well, there is only one way to find that out – try everything! And listen without prejudice! Prejudice in this sense is used to describe the shunning of a certain genre of music due to its negative (stereotyped) labeling.

Music is not fashion. Music is you yourself

Ok, let us not turn this into some gloomy affair. I shall now share my experiences in how I went about choosing the type of dance music I liked:

As I mentioned earlier, my first brush with dance music was during those rave euro techno days. Not a great start, but it was a beginning…

Then it was during my Junior College days, stretched over to my BMT phase in the army, that retro started being the rage here on our little isle of Singapore. Everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE was playing retro. That was three years back if I remember correctly, when all you needed to do was just to take a short stroll down the aisle of Mohd Sultan, and you would hear Bananarama crooning their tunes or perhaps Erasure singing about how one should give a little respect to them. Mambo Nights at Zouk were also Vibrant with the sounds of the 80s, packing in full house almost every Wednesday Night with Adam Low at the console. Retro was hot then and still is a rage in our local dance scene currently. This is justified by the upcoming opening of the retro club ¢Grease¢. I have respect for retro music, perhaps because I increased my interest in clubbing and dance music due to my exposure to retro music back then and that was a starting stage for me to get myself more involved in the the dance scene. But I have to admit, I do not touch retro now. Maybe the fad has died out on me or simply because I feel that retro is being over-played everywhere. Admittedly, I am one of those fashionable goons who thinks retro is passé. 

Now, fortunately, or unfortunately, I have progressed to yet another level of dance sounds. This level involves more intriguing beats and more mesmerizing effects, and this dance music genre is termed ¢progressive¢. That term includes progressive house and trance.

I first started listening to progressive dance music one day more than a year ago, during my now defunct NSF life, when a friend in camp kindly agreed to let me listen to this CD he had in his player. I took a listen to it and for that moment, was totally enchanted in a surreal sort of way (ok, ok, I am exaggerating here…). I mean I have listened to dance music before, but never as deep in substance as what I heard at that moment. I then found out the title of that CD that would change my entire life… Stated in nicely sized fonts on the CD album sleeve cover with the DJ posing casually in front, it read: ¢ Global Underground 007 Paul Oakenfold in New York¢.

Since then, I have not stopped. I introduced myself to the likes of John Digweed, Sasha, Dave Seaman, Nick Warren, Darren Emerson and Paul Van Dyk to mention a few. My ambition was to hear every single Global Underground CD release there was! To date, I have not achieved this, but I am proud to say I have managed to catch almost every album except for a few which I am not going to name because of my non-preference of the DJ¢s style.

I then switched to listening to other progressive stuff, like Way Out West, DJ Tiesto and Max Graham.

Later on, I started trying out other types of dance sounds, like techno from Dave Clarke¢s ¢Live at Fuse¢ and the Wetmusik live mixed-up CD releases that featured the mixing likes of Will E Tell and Simon Digby. I opened my ears to chill out stuff like the café del mar series and Nacho Sotomayor¢s ¢dies irae¢. I also listened to stuff from Massive Attack (That’s considered Trip-hop), Mandalay (more chill-out jazzy stuff) and Chicane (trance with a tinge of ambient sound). I have to admit, I enjoyed all these works tremendously and am proud to be able to proclaim my tolerance of so many dance genres – a feat unaccomplished by many. hehe. J

So, all in all, you can say that I am open to all sorts of dance music genres, be it trance, progressive house, techno, chill-out, trip hop etc. Sadly and with a little guilt, I have not been able to expose myself to more types of dance music, like Drum and Bass, hip-hop and breakbeats. But I hope to do so in the near future, especially with so many friends raving about such music repeatedly that its driving me nuts.

As a dance music fan, as I said earlier on, do try to listen to every sort of dance sounds available. Don¢t shun anything that you haven¢t heard before due to its negative labeling. Local websites like www.vivamusic.com offer online radio mixes and dance music samples,  which are pretty neat. Kay Ling¢s www.danceandsoul.com also has mixes available for listening. And most foreign sites offer mixes too. Like Dave Clarke¢s ¢Technology¢ online radio station. Or if you are ¢cheapo¢ enough like me, hog the test stations at HMV or Tower Records and listen to all the new released dance stuff you want, but try not to incur the wrath of all the other customers queuing behind you for the test set. Radio stations like Heart 91.3 offer dance music on our local airwaves, though theirs’ are the more commercialised trance anthems and euro techno sort of music. Sadly, Singapore does not have a radio station totally committed to the dance scene or catering to dance music fans in Singapore. This is unlike in the UK, where they have dance music stations, and where even BBC has its ¢Essential mix sessions¢  that features great mixes by well-known UK DJs on a frequent basis and which are listened to by many a staunch fan.

And then I picked up DJ-ing. It was then that I decided I had to stick to something when spinning. I mean, vinyl records are really expensive and I could not do that ¢jack of all trades and master of none¢ thing when I had my finances to consider. I mean if I were rich and all that, I wouldn’t mind buying vinyls of all dance genres and spinning like mad!

• Underground Clubbing 06.08.01

• Our Local scene. Support? or Just easy Talk? 10.07.01

• Music Taste 18.06.01

• Equipment- the rest 13.06.01

• Equipment- Turntables, 26.05.2001

• Introduction to DJ-ing, 14.05.2001