People are often confused as to what dark-house is, and what makes it different to progressive house. Many house connossieurs deny the existence of this sub-genre or condemn the creating of new sub-genres in house music, and just refer to this type of music as progressive house. The reason for this may be because the dark-house sound at its peak was rather short-lived (between 1998 and 2001) in clubs and amongst artists. However, dark-house has a very distinct sound.
Structure
Dark-house is usually trippy and minimalistic. It often features echoed trance-like claps (as opposed to progressive house snare drums), and low pitched, driving basslines. The tone is almost always melancholic and somewhat dreamy. Probably a good way of expressing the sound is as follows:
- Where Detroit techno may feature raw basses usually looped between 4 beats, dark-house usually has intricate basslines with a possible pitch change looped over 8 or more beats.
- Where progressive house is 'housey', dark-house is 'trancy'.
- Where tribal house is very percussive, dark-house is very minimalistic (although it may exhibit some features of tribal house as well).
Often, dark house consists of sophisticated sound elements and moods that can only be noticed with conscious, fully attentive listening.
Examples
Some excellent examples of dark house are the following tracks:
Tijuana - Groove Is In The Air
Jamez Presents Tatoine - Music (16b Remix)
Satoshi Tomiie & Kelly Ali - Love In Traffic (John Creamer & Stephane K Remix)
Dirty Harry - Musica
Moshic & Landa - Faza
Angel - Powerplant (Hamel & Medway Remix)
Filur - You And I (Trentemoller Free Dub)