Indie dance (etc)

How do you define this range of hybrid genres blending dance music with rock, funk and punk influences?

Andrew Weatherall has been celebrated in these pages on countless occasions before now. The London-based DJ, artist and producer sadly passed away in February, aged 56. Among his many contributions to music, Weatherall was a key proponent of a particular type of dance and rock crossover, a reluctant figurehead for what we might grudgingly call indie dance – a kind of ill-defined intersection of dance music, rock, punk, funk, disco and whatever else you choose to throw into the pot.

As such, indie dance is a dissatisfyingly narrow classification, especially for a DJ and producer like Weatherall who not only eschewed genre tags but also dabbled in a vast array of different styles over the course of his career.

Perhaps a better way to talk about indie dance is alongside other equally flawed classifications. The idea of taking an open-minded approach to music-making isn’t new, but the roots of what we now consider to fit under the broader umbrella of the sound – genre tags like post-punk, dance rock, disco not disco, indie disco, alternative dance and punk-funk – all fit. The difficulty in defining the sound comes from its very conscious rejection of genre constraints: these subgenres exist as a deliberate collision of sounds from disparate worlds, whether fusing the drum beats of house and disco with the aesthetics of rock, or replicating funk tropes from a punk perspective.