“Fucked,” it seems, was an understatement. Greater than a 12 months of closures, cancellations, restrictions, and on-again-off-again ups and downs lay on the horizon. Summer time festivals that canceled their 2020 editions deliberate 2021 comebacks, solely to place the kibosh on these, too. And whether or not it was the catalyst or just the primary hyperlink in a grim chain of misfortunes, COVID marked the start of huge financial shifts within the business. Roughly 31 p.c of the UK’s nightclubs went out of enterprise between March 2020 and December 2023; a report this spring tracked the continued lack of 5 UK nightclubs each week throughout 2024. Some commentators theorize that golf equipment are struggling as a result of partygoers are reserving their raving for festivals. (That was one of many causes the house owners of Berlin’s storied Watergate membership gave once they just lately introduced its closure, after 22 years on the heart of Berlin’s scene.) However festivals are struggling, too. Coachella’s ticket gross sales slumped this 12 months, as did these at numerous different massive festivals. And, within the UK, 50 festivals have been reported to have given up on 2024.
For dance-music historians, the primary few years of the 2020s might find yourself wanting like the start of a misplaced decade, the blackened rings within the proverbial tree trunk the place a fireplace decimated the forest. What’s unusual, then, is that simply 4 and a half years after COVID-19 hit, it may be exhausting to do not forget that it occurred in any respect. Musically talking, the dance and digital music scenes at this time look kind of like enterprise as regular. Lineups aren’t a lot completely different from what they have been 5 years in the past. Look at Pitchfork’s greatest digital music of 2019—4 Tet, Caribou, Pleasure Orbison, Overmono, Peggy Gou, Octo Octa, AceMoMa—and it will be simple to imagine it was a listing from 2024. And vice versa: Pitchfork’s 2023 checklist—Aphex Twin, Actress, DJ Koze, 4 Tet, Every little thing However the Lady, Octo Octa, Overmono, Skrillex, Yaeji—is closely titled towards established artists and sounds.
This shift again to enterprise as regular is even stranger when you think about the social upheavals and international turbulence of the previous 5 years. In 2020 and 2021, the Black Lives Matter motion briefly appeared to presage a second of reckoning in dance music, a scene largely rooted in Black communities and traditions in the USA and worldwide, however the concept that dance music is likely to be a car for social change feels extra distant than ever in 2024, within the context of Russia’s battle on Ukraine and Israel’s aggression towards Palestine and Lebanon. Torn between engagement and escapism, dance music’s nominally progressive communities have struggled to agree upon a significant response. Maybe a scene predicated largely on partying isn’t a great car for political organizing within the first place. On the similar time, it appears odd that in an period of social upheaval on any variety of fronts—the precise wing’s assault on civil liberties and reproductive freedom in the USA; white nationalist and populist events’ electoral victories in Europe; the looming disaster of local weather change—digital music, on the macro stage, appears barely to have seen.
If any fashion benefited from the doldrums of lockdown, nonetheless, it’s ambient music. Ambient had already been on the upswing, aided each by a inventive resurgence (signaled by exploratory, atmospheric work from artists like Oneohtrix Level By no means, Emily A. Sprague, Huerco S., and Sarah Davachi, and the roster of the Music From Reminiscence label) and the rising demand stoked by streaming tradition and mood-based playlists. However, in 2020, as folks discovered themselves confined to their houses, pulse-lowering temper music grew to become an enormous temper certainly. Artists from all throughout the style spectrum acquired in on the act—Massive Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and James Krivchenia; members of Future Islands and Napalm Loss of life; even trance maven Ferry Corsten and EDM chameleon Diplo.
