READ THE MANIFESTO — THE THESIS BEHIND FILTER/DISTORT●CURATOR'S PICK: DUMME JUNGS CHEMICAL JUMP GUEST MIX, DEC 2011 — STREAM NOW●THE CANON — 36 TRACKS, 24 PLAYABLE INLINE●FIVE LONG-FORM ESSAYS LIVE — MORE SHIPPING SOON●READ THE MANIFESTO — THE THESIS BEHIND FILTER/DISTORT●
DAY ONEA NEW PUBLICATION ABOUT 2007–2014 DANCE MUSIC
The seven years dance music caught fire
From Cross to the Avicii hangover. A field guide to the era critics misfiled as a bubble and fans misfiled as a phase. One continuous argument, and a canon we should have written ten years ago.
The essays
FEATURED
MANIFESTO2007–201412 MIN
The seven years dance music caught fire and we pretended it didn't matter
Critics gave Justice a documentary and Avicii a eulogy and skipped the 2,500-day middle. This is the thesis behind FILTER/DISTORT — what the era was, who built it, and why it deserves the canon it never got.
FILTER/DISTORT EDITORIAL
LISTENING LOG — NO. 012010–20128 MIN
The emotion engine: five tracks that did what punk did
Five records pulled from the archive, arranged in an arc — anger, warmth, texture, joy, beauty. What electro house was actually doing when nobody was paying attention.
FILTER/DISTORT EDITORIAL
DEEP CUT2010–20127 MIN
Dumme Jungs were the secret engine of the entire scene
Three remixes on the same playlist. Not coincidence. The Hamburg duo who quietly soundtracked everyone else's biggest year.
FILTER/DISTORT is a new publication and we'd rather find readers one at a time than scrape them off a feed. Drop your email below and we'll send a note when something good ships — long-form essays, new mixes, archive finds. Occasional, never daily, easy to leave.
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The Canon 2007 — 2014
Thirty-six tracks. Seven years. One continuous argument that this was the decade's most important moment in dance music. The list isn't ranked — it's chronological. ◆ marks essential entries. Tracks with the play icon stream inline; the ↗ icon opens YouTube in a new tab.
◆ NOW PLAYING —
The Mixes
We haven't recorded our own mixes yet — those are coming once the publication has its feet under it. In the meantime, here are four sets from the era that we keep coming back to, streamed from the original artists' SoundCloud pages. The Dumme Jungs guest mix for Chemical Jump from December 2011 is the lead pick — it's the founding document of this whole project, made by the duo we wrote about for the blog we're trying to spiritually succeed. Click play on any of them to stream inline.
The Crate
Every essay, every listening log, every deep cut, in one place. The featured pieces sit up top. The full index is below — live pieces marked with ◆, in-progress pieces with ○. New writing drops here first.
The featured
START HERE
MANIFESTO2007\u2013201412 MIN
The seven years dance music caught fire and we pretended it didn't matter
Critics gave Justice a documentary and Avicii a eulogy and skipped the 2,500-day middle. The thesis behind FILTER/DISTORT — what the era was, who built it, and why it deserves the canon it never got.
FILTER/DISTORT EDITORIAL
LISTENING LOG — NO. 012010\u201320128 MIN
The emotion engine: five tracks that did what punk did
Five records from the archive, arranged in an arc. Anger, warmth, texture, joy, beauty. What electro house was actually doing.
FILTER/DISTORT EDITORIAL
The full index
—
The archive notes
SOURCE MATERIAL
NOTES — DAY ONE
REAL THINGS, REAL LINKS
01
SOUNDCLOUD
The Dumme Jungs guest mix for Chemical Jump from December 2011, still live on Dumme Jungs' SoundCloud. Forty-two tracks, sixty-eight thousand plays, six thousand downloads. The founding document of this entire project. Streamable in our Mixes section.
02
SOUNDCLOUD
Hardwell's BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix from November 2012 — the document of Dirty Dutch at peak power. Two hours, on Hardwell's own SoundCloud. Linked in our Mixes section.
03
SOUNDCLOUD
Skrillex's June 2013 Essential Mix. The moment OWSLA's entire roster — Dog Blood, Knife Party, Torro Torro — went from curiosity to canon. On Skrillex's official channel.
04
YOUTUBE
Twenty-four tracks from our canon are now playable inline on the Canon page, sourced from verified official artist and label channels. The other twelve fall back to YouTube search — we'd rather link out than embed the wrong video.
FUTURE ISSUES
COMING SOON
·
TBD
The plan: one new piece every fortnight, with archive notes, reissues, and interviews surfacing in between. Have something we should know about? hello@filterdistort.com
About us
FILTER/DISTORT is a new publication dedicated to the seven years between 2007 and 2014 when electronic dance music caught fire, broke containment, and rebuilt the global pop landscape on its way out the door.
We exist because critics gave Justice a documentary and Avicii a eulogy and skipped the 2,500-day middle. The blog house revival has been written about endlessly. The EDM bubble has been written about cynically. The continuous arc between them — the Dutch house, the complextro, the Beatport-era electro that connected one to the other — has barely been written about at all.
This is the canon for the era nobody got around to canonizing. Long-form essays. Themed mixes with proper liner notes. A regularly updated crate of new finds, reissues, interviews and rips. The closest thing left to the MP3 blogs we used to actually love.
We write for people who remember and people who weren't there. We assume both audiences can keep up.
Where we are
Day one. Five long-form essays live, the canon up and playable, four curator's picks streaming inline. Six more essays in the pipeline. The publishing cadence will settle as we settle.
Editorial
No reviews of new releases. No festival coverage. No artist news cycles. We don't compete with Resident Advisor or DJ Mag — we cover what they finished covering twelve years ago.
Get involved
Have a pitch, a tip, a rare find from the era, or a record we should have covered already? Write to us. We're small and reachable.
Contact
hello@filterdistort.com
Get the next one
FILTER/DISTORT is new and we send sparingly — long-form essays, new mixes, archive finds. No daily blasts.