Fidget House

By Ben Liew  •  03 Mar 2009 in Knowledge

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Is your CD covered in ketchup? Or is that your CD player acting up? Just why is your music jumping all over the joint? That would be the latest house craze. This month we get glitchy with Fidget House…

What is Fidget House?
Fidget House is a new micro-genre of House music that has bits of Rave, Breakbeat and UK Garage thrown in the works. Wikipedia defines it as “a 4/4 beat and a cut-up, glitch style which contrasts other dance genres such as progressive house and trance.” Without getting too technical, Fidget House is really all about the element of surprise. If other dance styles strive to be smooth, Fidget wants to be blotchy. It often disregards the solo drum beat intro cutting straight to the fun with a more choppy mix. Vocal samples going wild and skipping are common while pitch-bending basslines give it an almost cartoonish feel.

Where do we begin?
With an emphasis on rhythm and bassline instead of harmony and melody, the roots of Fidget House lie in early Chicago House. Starting out as a joke by DJ/producers Jesse Rose and Switch, the term Fidget House has since been used to describe this cut-up style of House music. Artists of the genre have been enjoying their own little scene on the island resorts of Malia in Crete and Ayia Napa in Cyprus. Late last year, the buzz in Crete was created by Italian House duo Crookers who did a Fidget remix of Kid Cudi’s ‘Day and Night’. Naturally, honeymooners and other sun worshipping Europeans made requests for the track when they returned to their respective homes thus sending the single straight up the charts.

FIDGET HOUSE PLAYAZ
Trevor Loveys
Herve
Fake Blood
Jack Beats
Defunct!
Maurice Fulton
Subjekt
John Tejarda
Leko

FATHER OF FIDGET
Switch is recognised as the first producer to begin making Fidget House and his Dubsided label has been releasing the scene’s music with regularity.

HAVE A FIDGET TO
Kid Cudi – Day ‘N’ Night (Crookers Remix)
Jesse Rose ft. Hot Chip – ‘Forget My Name’
Mekon ft. Roxanne Shante – ‘Yes Yes Y’all’ (Sinden Baile Funk Remix)
Walter Meego – ‘Through A Keyhole’ (Solid Groove & Sinden Remix)
Aquasky ft. Acafool – ‘Have A Good Time’ (The Count Of Monte Cristal & Sinden Remix)
Chad Lewis – ‘Raw Kemistry’ (Micky Slim’s Peak Time Punch)

RELATED GENRES
Wonky House The quirkier end of techno. Comes with comedic elements like animal noises, kazoos, bells, whistles … while maintaining the deeper and funkier grooves of house.
Bassline With its origins in speed garage, Bassline shares Grime and Dubstep’s emphasis on bass
UK Garage aka UKG is an umbrella term that refers to varieties of modern electronic dance music. Generally connected to the evolution of house in UK from the early to mid-1990s.

FIDGET HOUSE MATH
DJ + booze + zoo = Wonky House
Grooving bassline + broken CD player + sun soaked vacation = Fidget House
Kid Cudi + fire alarm + pizza = Crookers