The garage house movement is having another one of its “stand up and be counted” moments. Admittedly, most of these in the past have just resulted in shouts of “sit down”, but there are few people who defend their craft more.

This blog is sometimes accused of having some kind of problem with the garage house movement. Not guilty. I happen to think the combination of tougher beats and lighter melodies can be a real winner. Garage and house have influenced many an other genre over the years, so I see no reason why a sound which fuses the two together cannot.

With the right songs and the right marketing, I think it could go far. Which is why I was highly amused to see that the garage house crowd are once again making moves at getting Traxsource to officially recognise them – by giving them their own genre category on the website. Previous attempts have been rebuffed – a source at Traxsource tells me “the consensus was it was under developed and poorly defined when they last looked at the question”.

Danny J Lewis – a blog favourite, coincidentally – posted about this on the public Traxsource Garage House group on Facebook. He points out that “those of us whose music gets put into soulful house are losing any opportunity of gaining traction because it’s a purist genre where we are simply not accepted” and that garage house doesn’t really fit into anything else.

Legendary producer Grant Nelson, in the meantime, mentions that “it could service everything from garage house to speed garage and other new school 4×4 UK garage and also what it classed as classic garage from back in the day”.

Do I think it needs to happen? Most definitely, yes. Will it happen? My take on it is Traxsource are a business. They’re going to want a business case for making this change. A scene which presents itself as professional and having lots of good music in it stands a pretty decent chance of getting its own category.

Which is why those of you who are engaged in infighting might want to seriously think about what you’re doing. If you really love garage house, put your egos aside and work together…