Dance Music...

I was dragged kicking and screaming through the rave years by my techno obsessed friends. I have danced like a d!ck for hours to the spinning turntables of Jeff Mills & Derek May, both regarded as masters (?)

I will defend some dance music. Dont judge all dance music by what you hear in the charts, and what appears on those horrendous Ibiza compilations. 'Intelligent' techno artists have been mentioned here, like Aphex Twin & Squarepusher, and they are worth checking out IMO, but it could be argued that they dont really make music you would want to dance to. Its more listerning electronica really.

I always thought Orbital made great tunes, and were very capable as both musicians and as manipulators of the technology they used to create it. Same goes for Leftfield, FSOL and The Orb.

Thank you for all of the responses (including PROGMAN's hilarious post and goose's very-true post )!  I checked out almost all of the artists mentioned here, and I must be honest (and hopefully not very rude), the only dance artists that I seem to like are Steve Hilliage, The Orb, and a few of the IDM ones.  However, many of the songs I liked can easily be called NOT danceable (just like much of Electronica and Ambient)!    Evenmore, I would not be able to listen to these albums longer than a couple of songs (let alone the entire albums where I would hit NEXT quite often).  But, after hearing many samples, I can understand why people appreciate the music (but not all of the time).  It has that annoying, repetitive dance rhythm going, but there is some background substance and many textures added to it (like some of Chaos Unlimited and many others), showing off some serious talent with the boards!  But, I can satisfyingly get that in much of Prog music and other genres, etc. (with emotion attached to it)!  Futhermore, almost all of the dance music is lacking other more human (instead of simply animalistic) emotions as well, which I did not mention before as being something that I also look for in music.  I can, however, see why dance textures (etc.) have been put into other types of music, as the textures in dance music are very well done and potentially very moody if given a respectable environment (AKA emotional music that requires an audience's listening attention).

I should mention, while searching for music, the dance-rhythm-music that I liked most was from (get ready, it may make many of you laugh and able to easily criticize me) Nine Inch Nails (who don't solely make such music, but when they do, it isn't bad to me).  Trent Reznor can be repetitive with his lyrics at times almost ruining a song, but it is the closest that I have come to really liking a song with a strict dance rhythm.  He expresses emotion in his not-so-great lyrics along with a hint of intellect at times, intertwined with animalistic emotions, like anger and/or lust possibly trying to implicitly deliver a certain message of transcendence, or maybe I'm analyzing it too much...

Regarding Salsa, etc., I live in an area where this type of music is always heard, and I frankly do not enjoy it.  Yes, it often has a lot of talent being put into the music than others, but as I have said before, dance music seems to be annoyingly reptitive or too predictable; Salsa (etc.) is full of predictable rhythms (etc.) (with a few minor changes) so people can dance to it, as such music all have their respective dance patterns (which is why they all sound the same to others).  One can say we are over-intellectualizing music, but as I have mentioned before, I'm taking a risk and doing something that is regarded as taboo by the majority of people: analyzing dance music.  Why is it so wrong to use the intellect given to us?  What I have come to believe is that dance music is liked when one's brain relates it to a sexual encounter of some type without thinking about that.  I think this is the reason why dance music, with it's annoying nature to many people's intellectual side, has become madly popular.  But, if we actually think about why we like such music, we will usually turn it off and put on some music to listen and relate to...  All of this is simply my little and insigificant opinion, though...  (As for Spanish music in general that is danceable at times, I do quite enjoy many of Santana's tunes and a couple Ozomatli songs...)

Well, I don't mean to come off as some disgruntled old man, but I still am not a fan of dance music in general.  Call me soulless, over-intellectual (..?!?...), or anything else others can come up with...[edited out rant]....As for IDM and a few others out there who are truly experimental, that music is in a rough spot: it's not danceable but is, leading to a difficult fan-base to build up (like NIN who have a very unstable, in number, fan-base that can get huge or rather small).  It can be appreciated, though, and it seems to be gaining many listeners despite it being in such a rough position.    I'm going to probably go on a search for others like those mentioned above, NIN, and Chroma Key (if a lot of the IDM songs are "dance" songs, Chroma Key can be too! )... 

Well, thank you for enlightening me about some dance music that is quite listenable (and intellectual)!  I should mention...honestly, I can't blantantly attack "dance music" anymore, since I like some, if even only a small amount, now. 

  I agree, goose!  Dance music was the last genre that I attacked; I used to always attack Rap (well, I still aggressively attack most of mainstream nonsense-Rap), but there is some very interesting music going on in the "underground scene," so...