8 Dance Songs You’ve Never Heard That’ll Get You Powered Up This Weekend
One of the things a DJ does, if he or she is any good, is take the audience on a musical journey. That part we know. But he or she is supposed to do this while also educating and exposing the room to sounds they’ve never heard, sounds they maybe didn’t know before. I know the last thing I want when I go out dancing is to hear songs I can already hear on the radio. It’s like, uh, hi, I didn’t pay a cover charge to buy expensive drinks to hear songs I already heard in the expensive cab ride over here! At that rate you might as well just go to the bodega, get you some box wine, cut the radio up real loud and toss your dolla bills the window.
The thing is, people take their musical preferences very seriously. Having a preference for the kinds of music you enjoy is like telling people there are foods you will not eat under any circumstances, or certain sex things you just will not do. Nobody is going to convince me that asparagus is a real edible thing that people eat. I don’t like it, end of story. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried it, and it shouldn’t mean we get to dismiss stuff we don’t like without trying, either.
And that’s the best part about sharing your musical taste with people: you get to share your perspective, your aesthetic sensibility while also maybe getting people to move their cute little asses 4 u! Here are 8 dance songs you’ve maybe never heard that are sure to get you going this weekend.
1. “Working,” Nina Kraviz (Marcellus Pittman Remix)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3omAo2QKogc&w=584&h=390]
I am kind of obsessed with Nina Kraviz right now bc she is kind of a diva and all gay men love divas. Also, hope that when she titled this track she was imagining fabulous people working to her song.
2. “Razors,” Shifted
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc9N7jmJ0Mo&w=584&h=390]
I’ve been playing it on repeat for days now. It busts right out of the barn with pumping beats. It’s really beat heavy, minimal in that not much happens besides increasingly thick sonic elements. Minimal stuff is hard to listen to for some people because there’s not much to hold on to — no verses to sing, no chorus to wait for. But that’s why you have to go in on it with your body.
3. “Stone Edge,” Felix K
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_6I6MZg6E8&w=584&h=390]
The thing about a lot of contemporary techno music is that it often engages architectural themes of despair or dystopian worlds. This track by Felix K is brilliantly set to some historical footage of a bunch of police surveying the Berlin Wall, right around the time it fell.
4. “The Resistance,” Scan 7
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxJJdd3Zl8o&w=584&h=390]
This gem from the Detroit-based secret techno collective Scan 7 always puts a smile on my face. The chords are dreamy and make you want to float.
5. “Do You Wanna Funk,” Sylvester
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bTXg9HptxI&w=584&h=390]
Yaaaaaaas. Who doesn’t love a black disco queen?
6. “I Want Your Love,” Chromatics
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQaNWQGmRo&w=584&h=390]
A bit slower than the rest of the stuff on this list, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still bust it out.
7. “Slide In,” Goldfrapp (DFA Remix)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkJujc2DEw&w=584&h=390]
Probably one of my favorite remixes of all time.
8. “Triple Darkness,” Scan 7
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUtnkcrLk80&w=584&h=390]
Imagine hearing this thing come at you in a dark warehouse-y club on a sick-ass sound system. You would lose your shit.