Let's bring blog house back.

Hello everyone - welcome back at the discotheque.

This is a very special post for the blog, and you'll find out why as you read on.

When I started at the discotheque, my main mission was to bring back a small portion of the blogging scene of the 2000s, while mixing it with a couple of musical scenes that I absolutely love. What I soon learnt, through numerous hours trawling through archives, Soulseek and old articles - was that between 2006-2012, there was a pivotal movement for house music - blog house.

For those that don't know what blog house is - "blog house" refers to a movement most popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where places such as MySpace ruled the internet, and using tools such as WordPress and Blogspot - people would create their own custom blogs and post about the music and things they liked. Along with the boom of blogging during this time period - the birth of fidget house, the French electro revolution (looking at you, Ed Banger...) and the second wave of filter house music also exploded - leading to these elements to clash together brilliantly.

This period in dance music was unlike any other - it was fun, creative, quirky, the fashion was great, the record labels were fresh, the events were awesome and above all - some cracking records were made - mostly in bedrooms by virtually unknown producers who possessed lots of talent right from the get go - or in studios by genius producers who loved the scene just as much.

I'd say this movement peaked between 2007-2010 - with the rise of Ed Banger (Justice, Uffie, SebastiAn, DJ Mehdi) - the explosion of electro thanks to acts such as Crookers and DJs such as Jaymo and Andy George, formerly of BBC Radio 1 (they also ran the iconic label and club night Moda) - and of course, we can't forget our favourite filter house acts such as The Phantom's Revenge, Poka, LBCK, Duck Sauce and others such as Cryda Luv' and Dawood Helmandi.

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Despite some strong offerings in 2011 and 2012 - after these years, the blog house movement took a sharp nosedive in popularity - artists left the scene for other pastures, some quit entirely and others just got tired of the sound. Blogs themselves were shut down or left inactive - those that remained were sparse.

Eventually, as the internet moved on, bloghouse became something of a relic - and although it was seen as something very special once - it was quickly swept over by new genres and ideas, understandably - that is, until now.

Recently, there's been a bit of a stir going on right now, and blog house's popularity seems to be ramping up again quite quickly in various areas of the world. For a start, Ed Banger came in strongly with the release of Justice's latest album Hyperdrama in April 2024 - and it ended up becoming an award winning release. Also in the same year, Charli XCX released Brat - and on the deluxe edition - American musician The Dare produced "Guess" - a track which is obviously inspired by the electro side of blog house.

Furthermore, recently a six part documentary series was made on legendary DJ, Ed Banger legend and fabled producer DJ Mehdi - bringing more attention to the already incredible producer's fantastic work. I myself adore Lucky Boy. If that wasn't enough - Cassius came back under Boombass' direction - L'Etranger debuted a whole album of kick ass remixes from the blog house era, and of course - US based photo journalist Glenjamn recently debuted an entire art exhibition about the era, fittingly titled - "Low Resolution, Highly Definitive..." - in which he showed an entire wall of iconic photos of legendary acts performing, and even art produced by So Me.

In other words - blog house is coming back - but not just on the electro side of things!

Currently, me and an entire group of filter house producers and bloggers have been trying to openly revive the filter house scene of the late 2000s - currently, producers such as Artemis Morte, Disco Sides, Opierm, Luv4Loop, Sboulouf Le Detective and mayo1109 have been producing absolute BANGERS in the late 2000s style - all while some (Opierm, Luv4Loop, DJ Supernick) have also been writing blogs to really get the feel of the scene back.

There's also been lots of other things that have happened to bring this scene back - one of the most key things being the revival of MySpace through HeySpace - a social media platform which mimics the aesthetic of 2008 MySpace - when the scene was at its peak. Numerous new gen producers have signed up for accounts there - so at least a few people on this post are likely going to be on there!

Add the fact that Y2K fashion is returning, electronic music is becoming more varied and exciting, and that French house is beginning to also have a third wave in popularity for a variety of reasons (ie, the Crydamoure revival through Da Syncopator, DJ Double Dutch and various others) - and it's fairly obvious that blog house is going to return, if we work hard enough.

This summer is looking packed for the blog house scene so far - I recently played a set at "The Afterparty" which was stuffed with two hours of blog house bangers from the era - the set is up on my YouTube now - Opierm has recently begun a new alias for rough blog house stuff known as "broken embraces" - with several new tracks and edits being released this week - couple this with new bangers from greats such as DeeJMD, the return of KNMN, legends such as FIBRE and A-Trak touring this summer and a brand new Creux La Nuit compilation in the works which aims to be released sometime soon - including a track from me - it's safe to say, that we are going to try our hardest to bring this scene back in style. 

However - and this is for every reader of the blog - spread this around. Let producers and DJs know, eager fans, blog owners, even people who are just generally into electronic music - as something awesome is on the horizon - and hey, if you've never heard of blog house - give some tunes a spin. You won't be disappointed, whichever avenue you go down.

Let's bring this back together, everyone.

As always, thank you for reading, and keep enjoying your stay at the discotheque.

PS - on the sidebar of the blog - there's loads of great pages to go to - including the House of Supernick blog, Patrick's Hard Drive, French House Club, Filter Traxx and a whole lot more. Enjoy exploring.