Oh what a difference just a few years can make. Around three or four years ago, the garage house sound started to emerge from London and quickly spread. The best of the genre paid homage to the house and garage of days gone by, yet wasn’t afraid to push the envelope with new ideas.
Around two years back, a campaign started to get Traxsource to give garage house its own category. It didn’t happen. According to a source who’s closely associated with Traxsource, the campaign failed because the scene came across as disjointed and the music was poorly defined.
The garage house crew didn’t give up. They regrouped and went back to the drawing board. And this week, Danny J Lewis started a new campaign to get garage house recognised in its own right as a category on Traxsource. I reported on the campaign on Tuesday afternoon.
A little over 48 hours later, I’m very pleased to report – well, see for yourself!
And what a glorious sight it is indeed. The compromise appears to have been to call the category “garage” instead. As long-time producer Grant Nelson said on Tuesday, “it could service everything from garage house to speed garage and other new school 4×4 UK garage and also what is classed as classic garage from back in the day”.
Posting on the renamed Traxsource Garage group on Facebook, Danny J Lewis celebrated the news saying “This is truly a chance for our scene to grow and an opportunity for so many of you to develop your sound in a safe place. I encourage all of you to push your capabilities, support your peers and turn this thing into something massive for us all. There are so many people who have contributed in both big and small ways but each have made a difference. Let’s make this a landmark moment and totally maximise on the opportunity.”.
Credit too, of course, must go to Marc Cotterell – the boss at Plastik People. His Essential Garage weekly chart, published every Monday, started giving the scene the attention it deserved and frankly, needed in order to develop and grow.
There are, of course, many other names worthy of a mention. Expect a longer article about this over the weekend…
