2022 seems to be bringing about some unusual things. For starters, it brought about the situation where Ears To The House was the first to defend Annabel Ross from vile attacks by Carl Craig and Alexander Omar Smith. But then again, when you think you can get away with trying to intimidate a journalist who revealed disturbing sex abuse allegations against your own friend, what does anyone expect?
It also seems to have brought about a case of mass amnesia in the dance music scene. Those discussions early in the pandemic about doing things better and fairer in the future have been long forgotten – mostly because many of those people who could initiate change in the scene deliberately stayed out of the debate. All the talk of making the dance music world an inclusive and safe place has been cast aside purely for the sake of money.
This season has been one of the existing names trying to jockey and re-establish their previous positions in the first full season since 2019. This is why virtually no new names have emerged this year – in a scene filled with stale, ketamine fuelled house music, this should be deeply concerning and should fill the pages of the mainstream dance music press.
This amnesia appears to have also extended to Nervous Records – a label which occasionally still releases great material, but has an appallingly outdated idea of how to advertise itself. We suppose we shouldn’t therefore be too surprised to see this photo of label boss Mike Weiss posing next to Diplo, referring to him as “my brother”…
Thomas Wesley Pentz, or Diplo as he’s known in the music business, has been accused repeatedly over the past 15 years of allegations including sex abuse, rape, grooming, sharing intimate videos for revenge and of even giving one woman an STD. Now, we don’t know if Pentz has done everything he’s accused of – but perception is a strong thing.
Perhaps Mike Weiss will happily pose next to Derrick May on his next visit to Detroit? This would be unlike his friend Louie Vega – who was recently not photographed with May at Movement Detroit, yet who wrote in 2018 that he was “a barrel of laughs”.
After all, what are principles when there’s money to be made?
