The Dance Music Press - Muzik


Reflecting the retrospective sensibility of contemporary dance music issues of Muzik typically mix new music with older stars.

KEY BRAND VALUES: CUTTING EDGE, INFORMED, FUTURE CONSCIOUS CLUB CULTURE.
OWNER: IPC 1995 TO 2003
MASTHEAD: MUZIK
PUFF: NONE
PRICE: £3.90
HOUSE STYLE: POP ART COLOURS – YELLOWS, PINKS AND ORANGE
ADVERTISING PORTFOLIO: DANCE 12” SINGLES, COMPILATIONS, CLUB NIGHTS, HARDWARE, CLOTHING

Muzik was a dance music magazine produced between 1995 and 2003. The magazine reflected the proliferation of dance music from the 1980s onwards. The magazine was less interested in musicians and songwriters and more focused on the role of the DJ and the producer.

Unlike more traditional titles the magazine celebrated the influence of hip hop and the proliferation of sample culture. As well as focusing on the music the magazine also placed records in the cultural context of the nightclub. Unlike competing titles in this sector Muzik was notable for the way in which it positioned new music in relation to its historical antecedents. Many issues emphasize the influence of reggae, punk, disco and hip hop on the evolution of contemporary dance music. Like many magazines since 2000 it could not compete with the Internet and competition from other titles like Jocky Slut and MixMag.




Pop Will Eat Itself: Analysing Muzik and DJ Culture
In an attempt to update the model of music magazine publishing provided by Shukar it is perhaps worthwhile to spend some time considering a new type of magazine that has come to take a big share of the market. In direct contrast to Q, dance-music magazines, aimed variously at club goers, bedroom DJs and anyone with an interest in contemporary pop music, have taken off as CDs have come to dominate the album market, but as sales of 12” singles have risen steadily. It is possible that the success of titles like D.J, Mixmag, Jockey Slut and Muzik are responsible for the death of titles like Vox, Melody Maker and Select. Fairly obviously their rise is inextricable from transformations in music technology in the 1980s and the proliferation of the remix culture.

What is fascinating, however, is the dexterity with which the magazines negotiate the cultural value of the music they write about. For example, in Muzik it is implicit that many of the records reviewed are not composed of originally recorded instrumentation, but rather assembled like a collage from a collection of samples. This is encoded in specialist vocabulary, which refers to ‘drum rolls’ and ‘filter disco loops’. It is also evident in the review of Aphex Twins recent compilation ‘26 Mixes For Cash’ that Muzik sets itself against the mainstream: ‘(D)espite his avowed disdain for the corporate pigs’, suggests Duncan Bell, ‘Aphex actually seems to save his best remix work for artists who don’t deserve it’.

However, there is no suggestion that the magazine is either sub-cultural or for minority listeners. For example, one lead article entitled ‘Hot in Herre’ focuses on the recent ‘cross-over’ success of hip-hop star Nelly, who along with Jay Z is no stranger to the pages of Smash Hits.

What is interesting about Muzik is that it explicitly mediates the same problem of transition from minority to majority listenership first identified by Reisman: ‘Saviour or sell out?’ Rap megastar Nelly shows us how to walk the hip hop-pop tightrope.

In his line of questioning Pete Cashmore does not locate himself either side of that divide, but rather toys with it so that the reader is ultimately unclear where he stands. For example, it is ambiguous when he asks the question ‘Are you mates with Justin (Timberlake – latest male pop sensation)’ whether the question is genuine or merely to draw attention to the rapper’s new lowbrow friends. Ultimately, however, this flippancy seems healthier than the levity of Q because it does not run counter to the wider narrative of the magazine.


Muzik magazine anticipated the way in which an awareness of pop history would shape people’s understanding of contemporary music in the digital age.

In spite of transformations in the technology of its production, contemporary dance music, it would seem, still operates within the same traditional notions of creativity and authorship Andrew Goodwin was talking about in the late 80s. For example, Muzik magazine celebrates DJs and artists whose work is composed mainly of samples in the same way Q or NME champions anyone who can play three chords on a guitar. However, what is truly remarkable compared to other music magazines is the explicitness with which it mediates the history of music.

Recent issues of Muzik magazine have shown a tendency for using the images of stars from the history of popular music as cover-shots for the magazine. The issue from February 2003, for example, was a ‘Three Cover Legends Special’ with identical versions of the magazine featuring period portraits of Madonna, Prince and Kraftwerk. Following on from this, March’s editions showed the faces of both Keith Flint from the 90s techno-pop act Prodigy and Adam Youch (MCA) from 80s white-boy rap ensemble Beastie Boys.

In both these editions of the magazine the articles accompanying the pictures were fairly standard archive reports dwelling upon the contemporary significance of the artists featured. At first glance April 2003s edition of Muzik looks like the third in a trilogy; the headline reads ‘Disco Punk Explosion’ and is accompanied by a single shot of a trashy blonde in layered punk attire. To anyone reasonably conversant with the history of popular music, it is fairly obvious that it is meant to be Blondie singer Deborah Harry.

Closer inspection, however, reveals that this is not Ms Harry: Muzik it would seem has been caught in a pastiche shock: what Jameson characterises as ‘a neutral parody of mimicry; the wearing of a linguistic mask; and speech in a dead language’.

Not only does this suggest the collapse of the relationship between the signifier and the signified but it renders impassive all claims to qualitative aesthetic judgement within. Of course, this is not the case: the cover of Muzik has ‘satiric impulses’, and ‘ulterior motives’.

This is encapsulated in the slogan ‘Dancefloor Anarchy Hits the UK’ However, it is a close thing, and only the physicality of the model performs the slippage between pop present and pop past. It is with relief then that on the opening page of the magazine a picture of the real Deborah Harry appears. It demonstrates that ‘alongside the abnormal tongue’ Muzik has ‘momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists’. What this inaugurates, however, in the accompanying article is a sensibility in which the understanding of the aesthetic qualities of a new ‘disco punk explosion’ is contingent upon understanding its relationship with the history of the genre.

The relationship between pop past and pop present is mediated explicitly in Muzik in the use of a dual narrative. In ‘Disco Punk Explosion’ the main article is featured in white and catalogues the development of the movement in New York since the summer of 2000. Alongside this, however, runs a second piece entitled ‘The History of Disco Punk ‘79 to 03’ in which the legacy of the genre is considered. This is transforming because unlike other music magazines Muzik has found a way of presenting the clandestine relationship between pop past and pop present, without compromising the integrity of either.

For example, there is no claim that any of the artists featured are the ‘New Slits’ or the ‘New Material’. Instead, a number of artists are interviewed about what they are doing and the way in which this fits into the idea of a movement. There is a self-consciousness about the artificiality of the process that challenges received ideas about sub-cultural innocence. For example, when Ellie Erickson of Erase Errata is asked if she would describe what she does as punk-funk she replies: ‘No, never in a million years. We’ve started calling it dance damage’.

Most refreshing of all, however, is the accompanying discography of unlikely Disco Punk records. Not for Muzik has a glib compilation of usual suspects: The Clash and Blondie, Ian Dury and The Slits. ‘What the F**k Are You Doing Here’ is remarkable for its determination to habilitate outlaws like Cat Stevens and Simple Minds into the vanguard of pop:

(F)rom their Krautrock styled debut album ‘Reel To real Cocophony’ to the trans-Europe impressionism of ‘Empires and Dance’ the band fronted by Jim Kerr (one of Patsy Kensit’s production line of rock star husbands) brilliantly matched propulsive bass lines to arty abstract guitar and synth squiggles.

On the surface this is fantastic because it articulates the meaning of pop aesthetics in an ‘abstract verbal manner’ in a way that Paul Willis’ working class teenagers could still understand. ‘Synth squiggles’ one supposes are within the grasp of most. However, like all the magazines, there is a sense in which Muzik is foregrounding itself. That vocabulary is already within the grasp of those people who read it, in the same way that a ‘multiphonic scream up’ is probably just an every day occurrence in the ‘post Cagean’ life of the ‘tribalist jazzers’ who read Wire. The fragmentation of pop and pop history into niche marketing areas makes it very difficult to have a consensus about what an aesthetic theory of pop might be.




Discussion Points

What music from the past is still considered to be cutting edge or ground breaking?
What enables a band or artist to achieve classic status?
Why is the use of technology in pop music so controversial?
Can the DJ or Producer ever be considered as important as the musician and songwriter?
Who are the most influential figures in dance music today?
Bibilography
Riesman, D (1950). Listening to Popular Music in On the Record – Rock, Pop and the Written Word by S Frith and A Goodwin (1990). London: Routledge.