The classic combo of cascading chords and four-to-the-floor beats can still create emotional mayhem
Viz once printed a map of Europe on which it claimed that one of the defining characteristics of Britishness was a love of house pianos. They weren't wrong. The sound of cascading ivory chords over a four-to-the-floor beat seems to induce a Pavlovian response, even among Brits who weren't yet born when Derrick May's Strings Of Life sashayed irresistibly into the world in 1987. The Italians may have established "piano house" as a distinct genre, but we took it to our hearts, making Black Box's Ride On Time our best-selling single of 1989. From there, the emotionally charged piano riff became a defining motif of UK dance music, from K-Klass's Rhythm Is A Mystery to Heller & Farley's exultant Fire Island remix of New Order's Regret.
Synths soon re-established their dominance over Steinways as darker forms of dance music prevailed in the mid-90s. But canny producers knew they only had to alight upon a suitably uplifting three-chord piano hook in order to unleash a tide of misty nostalgia for rave's halcyon days: think the Streets' Weak Become Heroes, or Axwell's 2008 banger I Found U (the best thing a member of Swedish House Mafia has ever put their name to).
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Then, late last year, a video went viral of a chap called Davos regaling his mates with a great live piano house medley at a house party. The sound began to mount a twin-pronged comeback. Both John Newman's Love Me Again and Katy Perry's Walking On Air owe their surging elation to chunky piano riffs straight out of an early-90s Rimini discotheque. In the clubs, there was an unmistakable piano house flavour to Paul Woolford's storming Untitled and Dense & Pika's Colt. Even Berlin's stern techno scene got in on the act with Berghain regular René Pawlowitz AKA Shed issuing another piano-led thumper under his Head High alias.
In September, 4hero's Marc Clair felt it was time to reactivate his piano-driven hardcore alias Manix for the first time in almost 20 years with a new (but decidedly backward-glancing) album, Living In The Past. Even better was a single that appeared from nowhere on New York's Beats In Space label. Break The Dawn, by Japan's Crystal & S Koshi, offered seven minutes of unmitigated piano house nirvana. It even went as far as to depict a wibbly-wobbly piano keyboard on its sleeve, the first joyously literal interpretation of the subject matter since Pianoman's Blurred in 1996.
As with all the best piano house records, Break The Dawn's euphoria came tempered with a hint of poignancy, a reminder that the good times are fleeting. Having infiltrated the top of the charts as well as the darkest techno clubs over the last six months, perhaps the piano house revival has already peaked. That is, until the next DJ decides they want to create emotional mayhem on the dancefloor.
by Sam Richards via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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