New Beat music? What ever happen to it?

[Weareonenation303]

Yeah, as some of you know New Beat music was a short lived music genre based mainly on Belgum that was based on Industrial and Acid House music I think. I can't say too much about it since I only know a but from It. as far as I know the genre lasted from 1984-85 to 90-91 then no one cared about it just like Dream House but Dream lasted lesser than New Beat I only know common artists like Confetti's, Rhythm Device, The Maxx and some short projects like Space Opera and Code-16 My question is what exactly caused it to die so suddenly. Was it lack of interest, some other genre like the dominating Eurodance killed it, or was it too undergroundnish for peoples knowledge.

There were even some even more obscurer sub-genres that It had like a more techno influenced faster sub genre (Don't know the name.) I think an example would be Abfahrt's 1989 classic: "Alone (It's Me.) as it's quite techno influenced and in my opinion. by the way shows very similar hypnotic melodies to early techno derived trance music.

[The Ghost]

I don't know very well this genre, I know it is (or was) very similar to the Acid House, the sound was a bit more electronic and less psychedelic than the Acid sound.
Perhaps this similarity and the evolution and the boom of Techno music has meant that this kind of genre disappeared from the musical scene .
But that's just my opinion, I don't know for sure :)

[IRL303]

There were quite a few difference between this and acid house that made them very distinguishable from one another. New beat was around from about '84 onwards and the earliest of the acid house tracks were just coming out in '85 so I would tend to think that acid house took some influence from new beat. Maybe a few years later as acid house grew more popular and new beat fell in popularity more artists looked at what acid house producers were doing and tried to incorporate the techniques they used into their own tracks.

The most easily distinguishable things about the two were they differ in sound is the lack of the TB 303 or acid sound bassline and synth/lead lines almost acid house tunes share. The lesser used pianos/organs in new beat, less frequent sampling and vocal sampling in new beat, I'm sure there is many but house music sampled heavily over the years. The lesser "shuffled" or flam effects used on the drum machines from new beat...Its like there is no "groove" of "rhythm" in the percussions sections.

New Beat was drum, snare and relied heavy on synthesizers to give it its particular signature "new beat" sound. A lot of new beat and acid house tracks share similar sounding snare patterns.

As for what happened to it...Whos to say really? I'm not an expert on everything but I suppose its just like a lot of things in life, not enough demand or no real "audience" to cater it specifically for and so it just fades away with time to become yet another old, forgotten unappreciated genre that many of todays styles originated out of.

[Weareonenation303]

That's really a well put comment IRL303! I know little about acid house and thought that New Beat came from Acid House however you can definitly say it has some Industrial & Synth-Pop influence. also I think Age of Love's - Age Of Love (Radio Mix NOT the Jam & Spoon version) has some New Beat Influence due to the male vocals. So trance music could had some New Beat influence but then again, Acid House greatly influenced early trance music (Especially Acid Trance) very common example is the trance version of The KLF's "What time is love?" some consider it Proto-trance and others Acid House

[IRL303]

Here is an great example of what I was saying. Listen to this and you can clearly hear the New Beat influence. This is also very "Disco" too. Its from 1985 so its really the very start of house music which explains why you can hear these two predominant styles in the track. But notice the similarities between this and other house tunes that followed it for the next 6/7 years. You can hear what they kept and left out from this trend setter as it were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXN2NSzRAts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXN2NSzRAts

[Aquarius1975]

Originally Posted by IRL303

Here is an great example of what I was saying. Listen to this and you can clearly hear the New Beat influence. This is also very "Disco" too. Its from 1985 so its really the very start of house music which explains why you can hear these two predominant styles in the track. But notice the similarities between this and other house tunes that followed it for the next 6/7 years. You can hear what they kept and left out from this trend setter as it were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXN2NSzRAts

Funnily enough, the bass line to that record was the inspiration to several Stock Aitken Waterman pop records. Most notably THIS ONE:

You Tube

You Tube

[Aquarius1975]

Legend has it that the genre was "invented" when a DJ played this track:

You Tube

You Tube

At 33 bpm instead of 45 bpm, making it sound like this:

You Tube

You Tube

Pure new beat for you!