If your career, mortgage, and more, shall we say, “grown up” social life have left you feeling disconnected from the house music scene you once loved, you are not alone. I swear I used to feel my heart break a bit more every time I talked about my music as something I used to do, rather than something I still actively enjoyed.
The biggest barrier was that the longer I spent away from the scene, the more out of touch I felt with it. I was far too young to be an old nostalgic, yet didn’t seem to have the time or social life to stay up to date. If you’ve got a career, or kids, or both, I’m sure you can relate.
As I discovered back in 2017 when I was finding my way back, there are some simple ways where you can start to rediscover your inner househead whatever your daily grind.
- Start with soulful house genres: Whilst the tech genres tend to date quickly I found the vocal-driven, more acoustic arrangements of soulful, disco or jackin’ house offered me a bridge between the classics I knew and the new sounds that were hitting the charts. The tracks somehow felt more familiar and connected to the house music I’d loved before so I didn’t feel quite so alien flicking through them. Check out people like Cafe 432, Richard Earnshaw, Dave Lee or Bobby and Steve, for example.
- Give the algorithms a spin: Whilst not perfect, you can use platforms like Spotify’s algorithms to your advantage. Search for “soulful house,” explore one of the playlists, and add a few new tracks you enjoy to a fresh playlist. Scroll to the bottom where Spotify recommends more tracks and add another unfamiliar artist. Hit refresh a few times and keep adding until you have 10-15 new favourites to explore. This gives you a sprinkling of new names to search more deeply and continue redeveloping your house taste buds. You’ll find Tidal works in a similar way.
- Explore the Traxsource genre charts: Traxsource offers genre charts with previews for each track. While genre names might shift slightly, I found Traxsource’s tended to more closely resemble what I knew. Each genre has a chart so you can discover new producers and artists, and either purchase their music there or find them on Spotify. Beatport also works, but I found Traxsource a bit nicer to use. This means you’ll be bang up to date with the scene, and find a wide range of genres to test out and try. This was actually my first port of call when I realised I was a good ten years out of date!
The best part of all three is you can do them all in not much downtime—whether it’s during a coffee break at your desk, on the free station wifi, or when everyone’s asleep at home.
Even better, subscribe to Soul Essence Radio for a fresh selection of soulful house tracks every two weeks. As well as some of the latest releases, I always play some classics to flash you back to your clubbing days. I also publish the playlists so you can put names to voices.
Welcome back!
Martin Gale 