Dance Punk (Or, The Faint Show)

Back in late April, our friends in The Faint came through Madison for their first concert in the city in nearly a decade (long before The Way Out DJs Diana and Andrew landed here). Andrew first interviewed The Faint for Skyscraper in 2000 - shortly after the release of the Blank-Wave Arcade album - and the Omaha new wave punks were a fairly regular fixture in the magazine until it went on hiatus around 2010. The Faint just delivered their first new album in six years, Doom Abuse, and it was great to take in their live show again, which has only grown more elaborate and enthralling over the years.

The Faint's return got us to thinking about the so-called "dance punk" scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Though bands like The Faint stood out for combining aspects of new wave and synth-pop into the indie/post-punk/post-hardcore sounds of 1990s underground rock, the dance punk genre was quite diverse, encompassing a wide range of artists who also experimented with elements of funk, disco, dancehall, soul and R&B, hip-hop, and 1950s-80s rock'n'roll and dance-pop. The playlist here is only a loosely thrown together cross-section of some of our favorite artists from the genre, anchored by a mix of new and old music from The Faint.

Here's the playlist for our Thursday, April 24, 2014, broadcast:

The Chinese Stars - "Cheap City Halo"
The Faint - "Worked Up So Sexual"
Liars - "Mr. Your On Fire Mr."
Radio 4 - "Dance to the Underground"
LCD Soundsystem - "Give It Up"
The Rapture - "Heaven"
Q and Not U - "Collect the Diamonds"
Les Savy Fav - "I.C. Timer"
Girls Against Boys - "Exorcisto"
Digital Leather - "Decoys"
The Faint - "Evil Voices"
Watchers - "My Cube"
The Eternals - "War's Blazing Disciples"
!!! - "All My Heroes Are Weirdos"
Gogogo Airheart - "So Good"
The Faint - "Your Retro Career Melted"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

P.S. - The in-studio Faint performance that we plugged in the broadcast never happened. Too bad.

Bookmark the permalink. RSS feed for this post.

About The Way Out

The Way Out is a weekly radio show hosted by Andrew and Diana Bottomley on WSUM 91.7 FM in Madison, Wisconsin. We feature a wide range of punk, post-punk, indie rock, garage rock, psychedelica, no wave, noise rock, and other rock’n’roll esoterica. We're drawn to anything that's adventurous, different, and "out there." We've even been known to throw in a set of modern classical, prog, or country from time to time. Mostly, we play “classic” material from the 1960s through the 1990s, though we also mix in some newer music here and there. Following a "no hits, all the time" philosophy, we emphasize overlooked and otherwise unheard of artists, or lesser-known songs from more popular artists.

About WSUM

WSUM, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensed student radio station, is an award-winning station with over 200 members. Following a handful of different incarnations that operated between 1952 and 1993, WSUM officially began broadcasting on February 22, 2002, from Vilas Hall and has been going strong ever since. The station can now be found at 333 East Campus Mall, Suite 4100, in the new Student Activities Center. WSUM is a proud and active member of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and College Broadcasters, Inc., and has won myriad statewide and national awards for its dynamic music and talk programming, live sports broadcasts, and news coverage.

The Way Out