Luuk Van Dijk appeared onstage at one a.m., having just arrived from a house festival in East London. That must have been where his most loyal crowd was, because in Brighton, he was more laid back and was not looking to impress us. This gaggle of decidedly un-edgy twenty-year-olds was not his base, and he might even have had slight contempt for us.
The people I spoke to in the smoking area were not hardcore fans of Van Dijk; they knew him through his hits such as ‘Good 4 U’ and ‘Disco Tetris’, which both have a few million plays on Spotify. One girl with bright eyeliner and rhinestones dotted around her eyes claimed she sat next to him on a train ride in the Netherlands and that he had convinced her to come down from Sheffield for his show. I pictured an intimidating and charming guy, one of those DJs who lets girls onstage with him and has them feed him vodka. Instead, a meek and unassuming Dutchman appeared, with blonde hair and a faint smile. The crowd was identical to other student nightclubs: men dressed in polo shirts and women in short skirts and heels. They were mostly of university age and, as my friend noted, almost exclusively white.
Despite belonging to the demographic of house-lovers, I’ve never understood its appeal. So I was curious to see why people connect with the genre and the club scene that comes with it – what is in the anatomy of a house song that makes it so captivating?
Van Dijk’s music didn’t feel like anything special to me; it was the familiar house music pattern of great songs by Michael Jackson and Britney Spears progressively deformed into a rapid beat. But my friend looked at me wide-eyed during each transition, shouting, “That was so smooth!” or “Duuuuude.” How could she see through the cacophony and distinguish which transitions were cleaner or cooler? Did she speak a secret musical language that I didn’t understand?
House and techno tracks are built on the repetition of four or eight-bar loops. A loop is typically repeated two or four times before a new sound is layered onto it. This has a hypnotic effect. Our minds begin to wrap around the loop, and our bodies move without us needing to think.
Moreover, like disco and blues, electronic dance music follows a ‘four-on-the-floor’ rhythm. It’s an extremely effective way to get people dancing as the bass drum hits every quarter note. This constant bass sound is the pulse that permeates our skin and makes our body move automatically. It’s often so strong in clubs that it makes us vibrate.
House songs don’t rely on complex vocals, and when they do have them, they tend to be abstract and repetitive. The genre is very clear that if you’re looking for melodic and wordy songs, look elsewhere. House and techno music want to elicit a knee-jerk reaction rather than an emotional one. And by flooding our senses with a quick, constant beat, house music elicits the opposite of emoting: it forces us out of ourselves. As a techno clubber explained to the French newspaper Le Monde, “Your brain switches off, your body follows the rhythm.”
The disconnected nature of house and techno music is also what allows clubgoers to forget themselves. Indeed, as music computer technology became more sophisticated, house tracks became increasingly disconnected from real-life instruments. This also democratized music production, which is the reason why so many twenty-five-year-old men own a DJ set.
In short, people are attracted to house and techno because they want to feel like part of a single, pulsing organism. For non-believers, a rave can be a place for transcendence and community. The combination of hypnotic loops, light shows, and sweaty crowds can create a sensational feeling, albeit sometimes aided by drugs.
On the dance floor at Patterns, I was acutely aware of elbows knocking into me and of the people disturbing the dance floor by filming long and fuzzy Snapchat videos with the flash on. But I forgot my grievances when the strobe lights came on. Suddenly, we were dancing together in a beautiful and harmonious mass. My movements were jagged yet smooth, and I felt nothing else. Behind his mixing board, Van Dijk had no magnetism. He was content with encouraging the dance floor with a raised arm and smiling occasionally. But as the set progressed, this stopped mattering as people became entranced by the beat. Cheers and videos resumed briefly when he played his 2024 hit ‘Disco Tetris’, but for the most part, people seemed to forget about themselves and their phones.
House music can feel repetitive and even unbearable when you’re sober, but with the right combination of lights, crowds, and faith, it can bring you into a new dimension, and the people there are beautiful.
Another article you may enjoy: https://thebadgeronline.com/2025/08/album-review-the-clearing-by-wolf-alice/
