The 10 Best Dance Music Documentaries

No matter what you think, you can only learn so much by listening to your favorite artists, or reading your favorite blogs (present company included).

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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No matter what you think, you can only learn so much by listening to your favorite artists and reading your favorite blogs (present company included). One must seek higher power from other sources, including the almighty documentary film. Documentaries about dance music aren't as scarce as you might believe, but there are weak ones out there. What you want from a great documentary is a mixture of intriguing subject matter, engaging experts, and a solidly paced story. DAD's combed through hours of dance music documentaries to present the 10 best—ones that will help you learn a lot about a particular sound or part of the dance music scene.

Moog

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Director: Hans Fjellestad

Year: 2004

The Moog synthesizer might be one of the greatest musical creations, ever. It's at least top 10, especially for dance music. First produces in 1960s, the instrument has touched a number of different genres (and producers), with both the actual piece of equipment and Robert Moog's theories on it mirroring what many electronic music artists have said about humans and aliens communicating. You can't deny Moogs place in history, and it's always great to learn about what's being used to make music—not just the sounds you download and might not fully understand.

Limelight

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Director: Billy Corben

Year: 2011

In 2011, Bill Corben (the man behind documentaries like Raw Deal and Cocaine Cowboys) turned his attention to Peter Gatien, the owner of legendary New York City clubs like Limelight (the film's namesake), the Tunnel, and the Palladium. While we live for the music, it's played in the club, and seeing the seedy underside of and 1980's club kingpin is just as important as the brighter, more historic side of the evolution of certain styles of dance music.

Electric Daisy Carnival Experience

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Director: Kevin Kerslake

Year: 2011

This movie had a lot of people talking... mostly for the pandemonium caused by Kaskade and his flatbed DJ setup outside of the Chinese Theatre, where it was being premiered. The actual flick is a thing of beauty, and encapsulates what's going on with one of the world's largest EDM festivals—the Electric Daisy Carnival. Many of today's top DJs, from Afrojack to David Guetta, spend time talking about the scene and, well, the EDC experience. Perfect for anyone who's attended an EDC or wanted to know what the famed festival was like.

Bassweight

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Director: Suridh Hassan

Year: 2010

It's harder these days to drop definitive documentaries on evolving dance music scenes, but Bassweight, when viewed now, is a great time capsule highlighting dubstep's growth. From interviews with Skream, Benga, Kode 9, and others, you get the history of the scene, how many of the producers got together, and how the different avenues (from the DJs and label heads to pirate radio broadcasters) help pushed the genre to where it is now. Or at least where it was before America fell in love with it.

From Jack to Juke: 25 Years of Ghetto House

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Director: Sonali Aggarwal

Year: 2012

Ghetto house is a staple of the Chicago house music scene. Yet if you aren't about that life, you might be confused by it and its many machinations. From Jack to Juke breaks down the Chicago-centric sound (which has been known as "trax," "booty house," and many other names before being introduced as "juke") with DJs like Gant-Man, V-Dub, Traxman, Spinn, and other Chicago legends charting the progression of the sound. You also have input from Detroit DJs like Godfather, helping shed some light on how the sound of Chicago migrated to different states, taking on new influences and the like.

Better Living Through Circuitry

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Director: Jon Reiss

Year: 1999

Using dance music as its basis, Better Living Through Circuitry takes a glance at rave culture. You get a host of interviews from many of the scene's luminaries, including Keoki, DJ Spooky, The Crystal Method, Moby, Frankie Bones, and Carl Cox, but you also get insight from others associated with the scene, including the designers of rave flyers to the people putting on the parties. Film is a great look at the scene before the Internet explosion.

Modulations

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Director: Iara Lee

Year: 1998

What a frantic, awesome look at the electronic music scene. Modulations does well in landing interviews with legendary artists like Robert Moog and Can alongside contemporary artists like Future Sound of London (who only spoke via computer), Moby, Coldcut, and Roni Size. The result? A sound piecing together of a global scene so vast that it often hard to pin down.

Pump Up The Volume: A History of House Music

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Director: Carl Hindmarch

Year: 2001

If you ever wanted to look at the full trajectory of house music, this is the documentary you need to see. From the disco days in New York to the Chicago scene to Europe (and back), house music has bstood the test of time. Props to this documentary for digging into subjects that aren't always spoken about—like how big the gay and black communities were in the early house days—as well as the different points in its journey that the mainstream started picking up on the scene (Saturday Night Fever, anyone?).

High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music

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Director: Gary Bredow

Year: 2006

Many dance music genres are products of their environment, highlighting and/or reflecting the joy and pain of the people creating it. Detroit's rugged exterior plays a big role in the techno sound, and High Tech Soul went right to the source. Speaking with Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, director Bredow discovers how their outlook and their surroundings fueled the influential sound.

Talkin' Headz

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Director: John Klein

Year: 1998

This is the seminal look at Goldie's Metalheadz imprint and the artists that both made up the stable and helped push the drum & bass scene. There aren't too many documentaries on drum & bass that feature Goldie, Grooverider, Dillinja, Ed Rush & Optical, Source Direct, Photek, and many of the scene's pioneering producers all in one spot. Heads who never hit the Blue Note night will be in awe at the footage from those legendary events, as well as scenes of Goldie and the crew playing football, racing cars, and genuinely being PEOPLE as opposed to the mythical breakbeat warriors we know from their music.

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