The relationship between dance music and classical has never been an easy one. Many in the classical world look down on dance music, mostly due to the fact it’s mostly made with machines and samples rather than “real” instruments. Hence why the two worlds didn’t mix much for a long time.
But things are changing. In an age where it’s harder than ever to get listeners, crossing genres up is one way to expand your base. It’s not exactly a new method – record labels used it heavily in the 1990s by getting house artists to remix pop records – but it doesn’t work in quite the same way it used to.
There’s also a certain timeless quality to classical music. For example, a flute is not going to sound different now to what it did hundreds of years ago – whilst some of the early house records had frankly terrible mixdowns. So I’m not surprised this trend of making classical versions of dance songs has emerged.
The latest to hop onto this bandwagon are none other than Fabric London…
But a closer look suggests this isn’t going to be the shameless cash-in type of affair which most of these orchestral shows frankly are. Instead of playing someone else’s music – or even not playing anything at all, if your name is Derrick May – it looks like it’s going to be a more impromptu thing.
Something along the lines of what Jeff Mills was doing last week, only with an orchestra and a less pompous setting…
