James Griffin: Understanding EDM

Calvin Harris. Photo / Getty Images

In this week's instalment: a 50-something man whose dancing days are long gone attempts to understand EDM.

EDM, for those of us of an age to remember when LPs were what you bought because that's what there was rather than as part of a cool new retro trend, stands for Electronic Dance Music. EDM is an umbrella term for a bewildering array of dance genres like house, dubstep and techno, most of which I cannot tell apart for the life of me. I freely admit I am not coming from a position of strength in attempting to understand EDM.

EDM is the realm of the superstar DJ, and there are none more super and starry in the EDM world than a Scottish bloke by the name of Calvin Harris. According to Forbes magazine, Harris raked in a cool $66 million in the year to June 2014. Clearly the earning power of EDM is nothing to be sneezed at.

When I saw on my computer that Calvin Harris was doing a gig as part of the iTunes Festival, I put 1 + 1 together and came up with 66 million. The iTunes Festival is a series of gigs in London which celebrate the victory of the download in the war against the CD. These concerts are then streamed around the world so that everyone can enjoy them and then consume the music of the artists. Here was my chance to see Calvin in his element and learn everything I ever needed to know about EDM.

The task was simple: Calvin's set was a nudge under an hour and 10 minutes and all I had to do was make it through in one piece and understanding would be mine. Well, that was the plan, anyhow.

To set the scene, there is not a lot to look at a Calvin Harris concert - just a bloke standing on a platform, playing his music. No actual musical instruments are required, just enough technology to do the job of playing music loud. Therefore what you do is to turn the entire stage into a light show, like Calvin is the centre of an epic meltdown at an LED factory. But the thing about the set that intrigued me most was that you can't see what Calvin's hands are doing. There is a lip that shields the instruments of his popularity from view most of the time, so for all anyone in the room (at least on ground level) knew Calvin might have been doing the dishes in an extravagant and energetic fashion while listening to Calvin Harris on his headphones.

What de (overwhelmingly white) yoof of London (and me at home) lost in terms of visuals was more than over-compensated for by the sound. Calvin deals in beats; relentless jackhammer beats, in a variety of pitches, keys and beats-per-minute, which rain down on the crowd like musical hailstones.

The crowd loved the beats; but for me, however, it was very much a case of being beaten to death.

Calvin did actually pick up a microphone from time to time, usually to tell de yoof to put their hands in the air. He did this a lot. In fact, he did it so soften I began to worry that he had an armpit fetish. There were lots of hands in the air most of the time, and most of them were holding cellphones.

To be fair there is some quite nice singing from the likes of Florence from Florence and the Machine to go along with the relentless beats that after a while sound like a robot dinosaur trying to dislodge something from its throat. The weird thing, however, is that there are no actual singers to be seen, just these disconnected voices as a weedy Scottish guy shouts at the audience: "Do you know the words to this song?!!" They clearly do and Calvin dials down the noise for a second so they can have a bit of a sing before the beats kick in again. Machine 1, Florence 0.

There are actual moments of relative stillness in the concert, when Calvin is bathed, Jesus-like, in a celestial top-light, as the crowd either gaze at him adoringly or check their e-mails. The slow bits don't go on for long, however, before a new beat that sounds like a toddler turning a gigantic vacuum-cleaner on and off and on and off and on shatters the silence and then Calvin exhorts everyone to "get the party jumping." Everyone jumps, clutching on to their cellphones for dear life. Calvin jumps too.

After 52 minutes I could stand it no longer and I shut down my computer feeling none the wiser and a lot older.

And then I remembered that I don't understand opera either and I felt much better.