Ultra-conservative British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph has published a well-intentioned but somewhat insulting article dubbing modern electronic music as “pretentious”. Columnist Edmund Conway argues that after years of carrying a negative “sweaty nightclub” reputation and existing in “something of a cultural vacuum,” electronica has finally found an acceptable place in the world of music.

Conway uses hybrid songs that fuse electronic sound with more “establishment” forms of music to argue dance’s adoption of a “pretentious” persona. Carl Craig’s melding of techno and classical in his remix of Ravel Bolero is named as an example, as well as Radiohead’s affinity with folk and electronica (to form the genre “folk-tronica”). Also identified, Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon compilation The Grandfather Paradox. “The dividing line between electronic and dance music and the establishment has broken down,” says Conway.

He concludes that today’s dance music is “sophisticated,” comparing it to American composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. Conway event goes so far as to claim that Dutch producer Joris Voorn’s critically acclaimed Balance 014 mix is reminiscent of the T.S. Elliot poem The Wasteland. Admittedly, dance music fans don’t share the same point of view. “We all have our favorites to be sure,” commented one Beatportal reader. “But it’s such a pity that some easily dismiss the beauty of cross pollinations like those of Carl Craig as ‘pretentious’ when in fact they are evidence of the workings of a truely [sic] creative mind.”

Although Conway may have raised the ire of some dance fans, The Daily Telegraph columnist also goes some way towards smoothing things over when he reveals his own love of the genre. “Some of the most challenging, melodic, sophisticated, playful, crafted and sheer enjoyable music I have heard in the past five years or so has derived not from the worlds of rock, folk, indie or classical music (which I love and follow) but from electronica” Conway gushes.