Indie dance (etc)

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

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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.

Weatherall’s work on Primal Scream’s genre-busting Screamadelica album is a case in point. In 1989, Weatherall was best known as a DJ on the weirder end of London’s acid house scene, his production output limited to a couple of remixes (notably his club mix of