Page 43 - Zone Magazine - Issue 033 - Jan Johnston

Parsing genres can become a hobby, a means of bonding and finding your people within the community, or for people who really suck, a means of being a snobby twat and alienating others. As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Trying to pigeonhole records can be a strange phenomenon, particularly when it comes to sounds that are as nebulous as Balearic or progressive house - they are genres unto themselves, but ultimately, the end result of a track or set of tracks from these genres ideally pull from a multitude of sources to make up their sound. It's useful to keep in mind that "progressive" should be thought of as an adjective, and not a noun, and for a genre that should be as broad and inclusive as progressive house, to try and get as specific as "dark progressive house"...let's just say there's a fair amount of subjectivity going on here.
So why this music, from this era? Around this time, the landscape of big-room music was slowly changing. Trance had already smashed it in 1999 and 2000, and progressive house was becoming the common tongue for many large clubs. Progressive house had already enjoyed a period of growth in the 90s, and at the turn of the millenium, a lot of the music just got a lot, well, darker: minor keys, lots of drums, samples of astronauts with transmissions to mission control, and let's not forget quotes from Morpheus from The Matrix. Think less John Digweed - Bedrock: Compiled and mixed, and more Global Underground 019 -John Digweed: Los Angeles. A lot of this music was really, really good...and some of it was, shall we say, less good. We even coined a term for the less good stuff on the message boards - "BSPF", or "bog standard progessive fodder". This was also the kind of music I was most into during my prime clubbing years in Los Angeles, so believe me, I had a LOT of opportunity to listen to some dark prog - the good, the bad, and the downright boring. I was also writing for a few print publications at that time, so the promo mixes were coming fast and furious. Global Underground, the label probably most known for their compilations promoting this sound, released eleven mixes between 2000 and 2003, from DJs John Digweed, Nick Warren, Dave Seaman, Deep Dish...these were the good times. The DJ CD mixed compilation was still very much the law of the land for the fan.
It couldn't last forever though, and the pendulum of interest and cool was slowly swinging in another direction. London club Fabric had been founded in late 1999, and their brand would soon give rise to a completely different type of sounds, promoted not only at their club but also championed on their own series of mix compilations. Tech house and minimal were on the rise, and prog was on its way out of the spotlight. Resident Advisor was founded in 2001, and before long they were deciding what was cool...I think they may have actually invented ambient-trip-hop-experimental-noise. Following are my picks from this era. This list is not meant to be definitive, but these mixes are without question unassailable.
Sandra Collins:
Cream (Kinetic Records, 2001)
To hell with all of that "female DJ" nonsense...this mix from Sandra Collins showed that American DJs could stand on equal ground in the dark prog realm alongside their UK brethren. Sandra made a splash in 2000 with her entry in the Tranceport series, and she continued her run with this mix. KEY DARK TRACKS: Markus Schulz's Tribal Mix of Carissa Mondavi's "Solid Ground", Piece Process "My Mind Is Going".
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This was a great
This was a great
time to be rocking... lots
time to be rocking... lots
of amazing vox being
of amazing vox being
produced heavy
produced heavy
grooves ... yum
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grooves ... yum
- John Creamer
- John Creamer