Can you dance fast enough for the latest nightclub fad?
Teens who were locked down during the pandemic now demand music so hard-charging it forces them to move with their hips if the feet fail to keep pace.
In nightclubs across Europe, people are literally breathless as they try to keep up with the fast-paced music that is the latest fad.
While conventional techno is often played at around 120 to 130 beats per minute, DJs now often play at 145 or above. The resulting hard-charging, breakneck sound has become the defining sound of Europe’s dance floors since the lockdown phase of the pandemic.
Dance music has become faster since the pandemic and the rise of TikTok. Getty
Although fast electronic music is not new, its broader dominance is. A data analysis by German public broadcaster RBB this summer found the top electronic music tracks of last year had much faster tempos than similar songs in 2016. Specialist dance music publications such as Mixmag and Beatportal have noted the trend. Many of the buzzy DJs of the moment, including Spain’s Héctor Oaks, Ukraine’s Daria Kolosovaand Poland’s VTSS, are known for cranking up the speed.
“I see it everywhere,” says Casper Tielrooij, the founder of Dekmantel, a label and annual electronic music festival in Amsterdam. “It’s not only techno, but jungle and trance and drum and bass.”
He argues that although the zeitgeist had started to change before COVID-19, the faster, harder genre of techno had “exploded during the pandemic” and tastes were partly being shaped by young people who had spent their late teens or early 20s in lockdown.
Luigi Di Venere, a techno and house DJ who often plays at Berghain, a Berlin techno club, says: “There’s this idea that they need to speed things up to make up for it, and in case it happens again.” He adds that the less “organic” and more “robotic” fast music suited a generation of clubgoers more connected to online culture.
He argues that the brisk sound is partly sustained by a kind of feedback loop: as some DJs play faster, their co-headliners imitate their style to keep up the energy in the club. ”You can’t just be a grandma and go, ‘Tra-la-la, 120 BPM’.” The trend has yet to peak, he predicts.
Oaks began developing his sound in 2013, melding traditional techno sets with genres such as trance. Music played at a higher speed, he says, causes dancers’ hips, rather than their feet, to resonate, fostering a movement more akin to hovering than dancing. “I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says.
He recalls that the music he played was an outlier on the European club scene a decade ago. But he partly grew a following at Herrensauna, a Berlin-based queer party known for its harder sound. The Herrensauna DJs’ 2018 appearance on the influential Boiler Room platform, which hosts livestreamed sets, was a “turning point” for his kind of music, he says. “After that, you could see everything switched.”
The style’s success was fuelled by other developments, including the proliferation of online DJ streams, such as Hör, during the pandemic lockdowns. According to Di Venere, because these streams were often shorter than normal club sets, DJs were pushed to squeeze in as much energy as possible, and the high-octane results became a staple at Europe’s illegal pandemic-era raves.
Since coronavirus-prevention measures were relaxed last year, the sound has transitioned to the continent’s clubs, including in smaller cities, such as Münster, which has a population of about 300,000. Oaks is now regularly booked at venues in Ibiza, which were previously known for their softer, warmer sound.
Tahliah Simumba, 25, a Scottish musician who DJs as TAAHLIAH, grew her following during the pandemic with pop-inflected sets that often culminated at 170 BPM. She says TikTok has been crucial in shaping post-pandemic club culture. The app, which focuses on snappy clips, has a large user base of techno fans, and its short videos favour fast-paced music.
She adds that, as a younger DJ raised in an online environment, her sound largely developed away from the dance floor. “I try not to be held back by hierarchical ideas of what DJing is,” she says. “I want to be having as much fun as possible, and what is DJing, after all, other than playing music you like?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
