You Should Go Out Of My Space
How attitude and how you express it have shaped modern dancefloors.
Marketing departments of a variety of different festivals and certain club spaces since the 2010s have made it their sole objective to persuade audiences that their weekend outing is a mecca of peaceful and serene energy that traverses and deconstructs all forms of conflict that exist in the world through the gathering of people around music. If you are to believe the reviews and responses from the usual suspects when they write about shows from the weekend, you’ll meet phrases such as high-octane energy, vibes, and smiles on all faces. Over positivity is an inherently difficult aspect of dance and techno culture that, while good-natured in intent, loses credibility through continued attendance. It's terminology that’s easy to slap on the back of promotion as inoffensive vocabulary that can often mean nothing. Not every gathering has this overtly positive feel to it. Techno music should never be treated as a solely positive, harmonious, and euphoric experience. Techno is more than that. It’s the difficulties, the wildness, the self-assuredness, the complexities, the shade, and everything in between. It’s music born from non-traditional structures that sets itself out to be different and not fit in. To relegate the experience to only positive is dishonest and simply not accurate of the full circle experience. In all my years of traversing dancefloors, navigating the amalgamation of identities that populate it, including but not limited to the queer scene, fashion industry folk, straight bros, gays, circuit gays, autistic music nerds, addicts, and scenesters the loudest commonality between all is attitude. Attitude, in whatever way you choose to express it, reigns supreme. Your energy with intention is what the space becomes. It’s carried by and held together with the music, of course, but it's often the main talking part of the party after the fact. It wasn’t what you listened to, it was the energy in the room when you listened to it.
So what exactly do I mean by attitude? To me, it was this blend of investment, nonchalance, coolness, and standing simultaneously aloof and within it. Seemingly contradictory on paper, in reality, these attributes sit tightly beside each other as the building blocks for the way people want to carry themselves at the party. Yes, inside you do care, and you will express that through movement; however, you don’t want to give all that away from the get-go. It’s self-invested and a primarily individualistic way of being. It can be amplified through association with like-minded people, but if you lack it to begin with, you're not going to have much fun attempting to be propped up by people on their own mission. Attitude is selective; it's weakened through overexposure and thus shields itself from wasting energy through words and time on those it deems unworthy. Simultaneously, mean, playful, bold, and rude, it becomes this invisible force to be reckoned with. Of course, it's somewhat attention-seeking. It thrives from glances that linger for seconds too long. Ironically, it's also used as a defence mechanism, a signal outwards that an individual does not want to be bothered and to stay back.
This way of being is complicated for some to grasp initially. It's a sentiment that's expressed by many taking their first journeys to any of the bigger scenes, Berlin, New York, London, or Paris. Time after time, the story repeats itself where people are shocked and horrified that when they finally cross the threshold of Berghain, Bossa, Corsica, or FVTVR, it's not all rainbows and sunshine. This, of course, does have a link to the major cities these spaces exist in. Arriving at any of the big four is going to be very difficult, whether you like staying up in dark rooms all night or not. Tempers are shorter, words are harsher, and attitude isn’t only a currency with value inside the club. While it is where you may think you want to be, be aware it isn’t simply as described. The unrealistic and bizarre expectation that this world is an inviting and warm space where everyone sits around amplifying each other's being and is just waiting around for you to turn up is not based on any rationality. The dancefloor and the scene are constantly stuck in a state of chaotic perpetual motion propelled by complex individuals with mixed intentions. It’s a world of extremes, and within that world, people will not always be kind to you at a time that suits your needs. It’s tough, these are not artificially pleasant spaces where all the jagged edges of the nighttime experience are sanded down to something you can’t hurt yourself on. I’m not against it. All I wanted was something real. Something brutally honest, something that's not going to smile and lie to my face.
I’m fond of Nastia Reigel's words on the Home of Sound podcast
“I love the feeling when you hear the track and somehow it turns on the feeling, that you feel cool”.
Simply put, yet extremely true. We all want to feel cool, and it's easier than usual listening to music that lights this spark. Yes, of course, this sounds a bit corny (seven-year-old me is screaming you're not supposed to say you're cool), but when it arrives, you can’t help but lean into it. Cool is a bizarre concept, the desire of many yet to say it's your objective loses your ability to achieve it. When I was younger, I wasn’t cool, but I certainly wanted to be. When I got older, I didn’t understand what being cool meant anymore or if I wanted to be a part of it. My association with techno culture presented to me a certain perception of what cool is, primarily in the visual aspect. We’re all familiar with sunglasses, all black, mesh tops and the glazed look of dissatisfaction. While that’s an idea of representation, it never really articulated the feeling for me. An aura of coolness on the dancefloor meshes together the worlds of the physical and audio into a symbiosis. When the bounce in the kick is within you and outside you, and you're simply gone with it. On the back of sequential rhythms in dark spaces, I get to experience the idea of feeling that my younger self was dying to be a part of. Is that exact feeling my younger self was after? No, definitely not in fact it's probably better (lucky me). It's the self-engrossed version of myself that's pulling at the attributes I understand to be cool, of confidence, wildness, and dancing without an iota of a care how anyone perceives me. It’s bliss. A brief window of self-absorption, located in the correct environment that hits just right.
Attitude is something learned through association. It’s a behaviour trait that's the object of desire, for many, to appear in the same light as they perceive others around them. Of course, we all want to belong, but what exactly to? The cross section of the modern day content production society and techno has resulted in an ever-increasing amount of dance move videos that teach people how to express themselves to 4x4 rhythms is one of the most truly bizarre phenomena that has reared its head in the last few years. There’s nothing wrong with dancing in any way you perceive to be preferential to yourself. The point is that you move, not how you move. That includes this style of dancing that has become a stereotypical understanding of the way people dance to techno. While, of course, there is space in the room for this type of expression (it doesn’t fill you with joy, but as internet trends go there's worse stuff out there), what’s bizarre is the implication that derives from these videos and further attendance is that you should be moving like this. Techno isn’t voguing, it never was. Dancing was never supposed to be structured into a harmonious room filled with hundreds of people doing the modern-day interpretation of the Macarena. There's something inherently off with it, almost uncanny valley or surreal to witness. The collective assimilation creates an atmosphere devoid of the intricacies of difference that a dance floor can hold, where individuals of variety slot neatly beside each other like oddly shaped jigsaw pieces, creating a sparse picture. When movement is too clean-cut, it simply lacks the realness and honesty that the space is capable of.
Attitude, in its most primal form, can come off as aggressive. The aggression stems from self-preservationism of a feeling. You don’t want to be disturbed when you're in this mode. Yes, you may be in a room with hundreds, if not thousands, of others, but that's not the point. For this moment, it is simply just you. It’d be too easy to just label this as narcissistic and be done with. Yes, I suppose it does have those connotations, but with the knowledge that we are selfish creatures who gather in a room and take substances that directly promote self-serving tendencies, we can understand that the attitude radiated to at least to be candid. It’s physically described with movement of popping hips, flared hands, and a syncopated chest. Protective of this momentary way of being, we don't want to give up what we have. Most of us spend our weeks not feeling excellent due to our individual circumstances of difficulty. Then, along comes this brief window where, for a short time, none of that is relevant. The worse things get outside, the more important that moment becomes, and you can rest assured it's not going to be stolen away by frivolous nonsense.
Pre-COVID, the reactions I’d watch people create disturbing those dancing through bumping into them or worse, talking in their vicinity would often times be so mortifyingly intense it would leave you wondering if they’d leave some sort of lasting scar. This sentiment was sufficiently articulated by U.S.A duo Scraaatch when they dropped Don’t Talk To Me back in 2019, where the lyrics and screaming whistle seemingly emulated the look of disgust on a person's face who’s been taken out of their immersion in the dancefloor by something they deem irrelevant. While it’s not like this aspect of the dancefloor is gone, it definitely feels like it's gotten quieter since reopening. The hard line in the sand has faded, and there are maybe not as many fanatics who are so quick to dissect your infractions. You’d miss them, the self-righteousness bursting out to the background of slamming kicks and the slowly sinking realisation of someone who knew they messed up rarely got old. Almost like a strange rite of passage, if done for any positive reasons, it encouraged people to keep the dancefloor for dancing only.
In summer 2022, as the dust had settled on the post-COVID dancefloors and we were investing ourselves with an intent ignorance for the past and obsessiveness for the present, a significantly relevant track was released on Kaos. You Should Go Out Of My Space by Spanish artist Not A Headliner, managed to capture exactly the feeling of the complete expulsion of frustration, malice, and dissatisfaction with everything that had been normalised in the world at that point. The composite of the punchiest and cleanest claps that fire like photographers' flashes, settled on top of this shuffling groove at 145 and narrated by this monotone, couldn’t care less vocal simultaneously spoke to the crowd and for them by exemplifying something deeply personal within the psyche of the time.
“Time to time, I say it’s my day, something worse, we’ll be ok”
“You know what I live to play with the attitudes written by everyone else”
“You should go out of my space, that's my time, I don’t wish to stay here”
The lyrics stare you down with a piercing discontent, lazily disregarding others around them. It’s atmospherically reminiscent of those parties that continue further and further, and the vibe begins to sink towards an entirely self-centred mode of being. The atmosphere doesn’t shout fuck off I want to dance, it simply screams fuck off. This is attitude at its most outlandish, unadulterated rudeness and dislike towards everything around it. Is it justified? Probably not. Is it honest? Yes. I’ve stated before that the party is the whole human psyche. The good must exist beside the negative. The timing of the release of the track is highly relevant; our self-imposed box of repression had been dismantled, and what was left was simply the individual. Justified with a sound that nods towards questions and dissonance rather than unity and a happy-go-lucky way of partying, set the foundations for what's currently surrounding us.
The atmospheric shift on dancefloors that has occurred over the last five years is characterised by attitude. An attitude that does not follow any rules of the past, and self-confidently seeks its own pleasure within the walls of the party, tearing apart anything it deems irrelevant. While I’m not going to lie and say I’m not somewhat impressed by confidence that knows no limits, it’s evidently exhausting to be in the presence of it constantly. This is attitude that doesn’t care, it's not aloof, it bores down on you and makes you want to suffer to allow its presence to exist. Instead of protective, it's antagonistic. It enters and rearranges the room to suit its needs despite the shouts of protest around it. It’s somehow like your childhood bully managed to find out where you go to escape their torment and is now making it their only mission to destroy this space. This attitude exists due to several factors occurring simultaneously. The changing of preferred substance types and consumption habits, the explosion of popularity of a genre that has attempted to situate itself away from extreme popularity, an introduction of a large number of people who are unfamiliar with the unspoken rules of the dancefloor (age is not a factor here), and the hyper narcissism that plagues society due to the self absorbed digital age we live in. Each of these nails in the coffin permeates the space and deconstructs what many understood it to mean.
Is this the end of it all? Well, no. Some would have you believe that due to their frustrations with the change space, we are now entering some new age where this is all we can expect forever. Like every point of hysteria and rise of complex emotions like frustration, sometimes it's best to take stock and do a brief reality check on what's happening. First, it needs to be understood that the modern extremity of attitude that I’ve just described has always existed in club spaces. Through the digestion of online discourse, you’d be forgiven for thinking that before Covid, we lived in a world where every Sunday we all went to Panorama Bar, held hands, listened to Pachanga Boys Time and talked about the progress we were making with self-improvement. It was thankfully never like that (except maybe in a villa afterparty in the Balearics), the meanness, rudeness, chaos, and artificial hierarchies were always there. They are not the most positive attributes, but they are very real ones and do, whether you like it or not, have a right to be there. These are all now magnified due to the collection of world events we are currently going through. They’re louder than before and come with a new sense of self-assuredness that doesn’t seem to have an off switch, which makes it harder to deal with than before. However, like nearly every emotion or period in life, this is simply temporary. What has come to be will soon pass. Genres and scenes are cyclical. There is a natural rise and fall to all of this that will run its course. We can see this trying to be forced with the calls for dub techno to fill the dancefloor. These are the same calls for the pacification of the space. A hope that the monotonous layered textures of Basic Channel, Deepchord, and Monolake can smother the chaos people perceive and shift into something less self-absorbed. With cheap focuses of attention, be aware that the faces you see beside you today will not be the same ones next week. Techno has and always will form an orderly queue to exit when things become tough.
Enjoyed the read and loved the photography. Both gave me something to think about.