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Genres – some love them, some hate them, and everyone uses them regardless. But while the phrase “house” is thrown around the dance music world like categorising confetti, where did the phrase actually come from? Well, that’s something San Francisco’s Kaskade could enlighten us on during promotions for his new album – Bring The Night.

What’s happening in dance music in San Francisco at the moment? What are the trends?
Oh, man … I wish I could speak better about that, but I’ve been traveling so much in the last few years I feel, actually, a bit out-of-touch with San Francisco, and what’s been going on here. But I mean, San Francisco’s a musical city, and the underground is always strong here. So what’s going on here? A lot of the wonky house stuff has been happening, you know? Justin Martin and these guys have been making a bit of a splash lately.

What’s “wonky house”? You’ll have to educate me a little bit.
Ah, it’s kind of funky, electro-tinged house. It’s Claude VonStroke and Justin Martin – these guys kind of coined that phrase, I think.

Do you know where the term “house music” came from? To me, it reminds me of something like “house wine” or “house bread”.
[Laughs] I like that! That’s good. No, I don’t know. A lot of the old Chicago guys actually argue about where it came from … No-one’s actually been able to define [it] – a few guys argue over it. And back in, like, I think it was ’82 or ’83, Frankie Knuckles had a club in Chicago called The Warehouse, and a lot of people kind of argue that that’s kind of where it stemmed from – “The Warehouse Music”, you know?

OK. How do you feel about Bring The Night? What’s your feeling about the CD these days – because it must have been a while since you actually finished it, yeah?
Yeah, it’s been a couple of weeks – it’s been out for a couple of weeks in the States. But nah … with mix CDs, you don’t need as long of a lead time. With an artist album, I finish it six/seven months before it’s actually out. But with the mix CD, in order to keep the track selection fresh … I finish it, and they’re manufacturing it like a week later. So yeah – I didn’t mix it too long, so it’s still really fresh. I don’t know – it’s typical mix-CD stuff. I think that I like to try and do these things every once in a while, just to give the people a feel for what I’m playing in the clubs, and what I’m up to as a DJ.

I’m finding that DJs are diversifying more now, as opposed to being known as a “house DJ” or a “breaks DJ” or a “drum-n-bass DJ”, and yet I understand that you’re still known as a “house DJ”. How do you feel about that whole movement, and your own sort of nomenclature as a house DJ?
Yeah, it’s cool. I have a lot of respect for the word, because I was born and raised in Chicago, and [have] respect for the genre. So, I mean, it’s cool to be categorised as that still. I like that. But, for me, I always thought it was weird that people in dance music … they want to hyper-categorise everything, and I never understood that. Breaks … house … drum-n-bass – to me it was all just dance music … Basically “house” was just another word for dance music – electronic music. So I didn’t understand that. I think it’s cool that people are mixing it up a bit more. I mean, really that’s what it was when it all came about in the 80s … “post-disco”, “new wave” …

“Post acid-house” …
Yeah. Lots of weird, freaky dance records … that were really just dance records, and then they got classified as house records later on, I think. So I think that’s really … going full-circle, because it was much more of a mixed-bag. You could play an industrial record next to some weird Kraftwerk electro record, and it was all house back then. You know, it was all just dance music. Now, people would be like, “Oh, that’s Kraftwerk – that’s an early electro record …” “Ministry … that group Ministry, that’s an industrial record.” People really want to classify this stuff. It’s cool that it’s getting a bit mixed-up now – I like that.

Bring The Night is out now.

Listen to an MP3 of the full interview Below