My #7 Album

in 2011

Released

in 2010 on

DeepLife Records

This page was first posted July 1, 2012

This is the first in a series of sampler albums from Christian Dance Music.net, a fairly new website that is gathering Christian dance music artists from all over the world and posting their songs for download.

Disco music made dancing hugely popular in the 1970s, the decade when contemporary Christian music was born.  When disco died at the end of 1979, dance music continued on in other forms…but still was not to be found in Christian music.  This situation did not change until the early 1990s when a famous DJ, Scott Blackwell, became a Christian, and he started up a Christian dance music industry pretty much single-handedly.

The Christian dance music scene flourished throughout the 1990s, with N'Soul Records being the main label keeping it going.  But in the early 2000s, suddenly all the Christian dance music inexplicably dried up.   What, did everyone suddenly quit liking the music?  That didn't seem likely.

During the '00s, at the lead of Apple Inc. and with the growth of artists on MySpace, the music industry shifted from CD to digital downloads.  As the decade went on, Christian music of ANY kind increasingly became more and more difficult to find on CD.  But even as a digital download, there wasn't much out there in the way of Christian music.

Then (I don't know WHEN "then" is, but sometime in recent years), ChristianDanceMusic.Net appeared.  I discovered it in 2011 (I don't remember how), and bought my first music from the site when it was featuring a special.  DJ Rodimus, who runs the site, noticed that my address was in his general vicinity (about 25 miles away), so he invited me to join the local Facebook group.  Awesome!

So, Christian dance music is coming back again!  Great!  The trouble is, it's all digital downloads.  One good thing about this particular site, though (ChristianDanceMusic.Net) is that the downloads are higher quality than what is found at iTunes.  iTunes provides 256K downloads; ChristianDanceMusic.Net provides them at 360!  At least it's better, though still a long way from the 1000 average of a full fidelity download.

I say all this before even talking about this album because this album is integral to all of that.  This album, Future Sound Of Worship, Vol. 1, is a sampling of music from the ChristianDanceMusic.Net site.  It is a symbol to me of the rebirth of the too-long-dead Christian dance music scene.  I am so glad to see it being revived again.  This album was the first album I purchased from the site.  I expect there to be many more in the months ahead!

This album of 12 songs is DJ-mixed so that you can dance straight through the whole thing.  There are a variety of dance styles on here -- trance (yes!), tech house, progressive, electro, house, drum'n'bass, and chillout.  Of course, musically the trance tracks are my favorite!  My next favorite styles are progressive and electro.

This album is titled Future Sounds Of Worship, but actually there really isn't much in the way of worship on this album.  The lyrics of most of these songs are explicitly Christian in theme, but not what I would call worship.  The album opens with "2Day4Ever," a trance track whose main lyrics are, "This is My word, My word that does not change -- yesterday, today, forever."  The next song, "Heaven's Gates," has only these words: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."  The third track is about the unexpected coming of Christ.   The fifth track, a beautiful progressive piece, is an instrumental called "In Heaven With You."  The seventh track, "Intimacy," is a vocal trance song with more lyrics than any of the previous songs -- it actually has verses and a chorus!  This is also the only one on the album that I would call worship:  "To the heart of my father I want to go; in the arms of my Christ I want to be; the voice of my God I want to hear -- intimacy, intimacy."

I like the music of all the songs on the album except for the house track, of course (I have always disliked house music!), but what has kept this album from being higher on my list of 2011 favorites is not the music, but the words.  Most of the songs' lyrics, few though the words are, revolve around ideas that are very much part of the evangelical branch of the church, a subculture that I don't particularly care for.  The most annoying to me is from the song, "Listen Up," which is very preachy:  "What are you listening to?  What does it do for you?  Does it build you up or does it just ..[etc]" -- typical of evangelical busy-body nosiness, or what is euphemistically called "accountability."  The song "Leviticus 14" is a sample from a preacher about the way the anointing oil starts on the head and runs down the beard and then the garment.  That in itself seems like a weird thing to feature in a song, but where it gets into evangelical turn-off territory for me is where it goes the next step: "The head is the authority or headship, the leadership."  I have seen churches that push this authority bit and I find it really offensive and an abuse of Scripture.  With no more context to the song, I don't know what they're getting at and this is what it all brings to my mind.  "The Sound" brags that, "They see in us something that they don't see anyplace else -- we are a light shining in the darkness."

You see, this is really the stuff evangelicals love, but not something I can relate to.  So in that way, this album was disappointing.  I want to listen to Christian music to commune with God (worship albums) or think about life with him (other Christian albums).  But this album as a whole has a lyrical focus that focuses on the things that I think evangelicals over-emphasize, giving a distorted picture of Christianity. For that reason, this album didn't do for me what it could have done if the lyrics weren't so brazenly evangelical.

Still, there were enough songs on here that I liked that I listened to this quite a bit and enjoyed it, though more as various tracks than as a whole.  The music is good, though I wish the recording were better quality -- it's a little dull for my tastes.  And despite my bellyaching about the lyrics, as I talked about at the beginning of this review, I'm really glad to see that someone has picked up the baton and has worked to bring back Christian dance music.  I'll have to look through what's out there to find the stuff I like, but at least now there is something to look through!

<<- Click the Play button  to hear “Intimacy,” the most worshipful song for me on the album and my favorite musically also.

Alejandro Cesar, whose song “Leviticus 14” appears on this album

A rendering of Science Drop, who has 3 songs on this album.

Here’s some background on two major people behind ChristianDanceMusic.net and the resurgence of Christian dance music.  I am so grateful for the work they do.  My ears and emotions would be bereft of satisfaction if there were no more Christian dance music in the world.

Note: This album is NOT available as a CD unless you are at a God’s DJs event.  I like CDs so much that even though I had already purchased this album and Volume 2 via download, when I discovered the CD versions at an event, I bought both albums AGAIN.  Yes, that’s how much I like CDs more than downloads.

A YouTube video of one of the songs from this album, which has the lyrics, “I can feel Your spirit moving through my body.”

* Note: Nate Marialke does NOT make dance music.  Ziggybeats took Marialke’s non-dance song and remixed it into the beautiful trance piece you can listen to above.