Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor

by Lina Abascal

Whether you called it electro, indie dance, or were too busy scouring the internet for MP3s to care about a genre name, NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor connects the disparate parts of an under-documented era in the first book focused on the musical and cultural phenomenon called bloghouse.

For a brief period in the mid-2000s, a network of independent music bloggers and fans merged the digital and physical worlds in a never-before-seen way. Their punk-inspired DIY ethos elevated noname DJs, music producers, and parties to a level of international success that was quickly eclipsed by corporatized EDM and the music festival boom. But before that, for a moment, there was bloghouse.

NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor chronicles the rise of the DJ-slash-It Girl, roaming party photography, illegal Mp3 file sharing, canonical scene reports of bloghouse capitals Los Angeles and Paris, the overlooked impact of suburban Latino communities on nightlife, Kanye West’s contribution to the movement, and the slow death of the blog itself.

With a foreword from DJ/producer A-Trak, the highly anticipated new book features over 50 original interviews with DJs, cultural icons, and industry insiders, including A-TRAK, Acid Girls, Bag Raiders, The Cobrasnake, The Bloody Beetroots, The Cool Kids, Chromeo, Crookers, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Flosstradamus, Franki Chan, Girl Talk, The Hood Internet, The Hype Machine, The Knocks, Myspace Music, MSTRKRFT, Nick Catchdubs, Paul Devro, The Presets, The Rapture, Simian Mobile Disco, Spank Rock, Steve Aoki, Van She Tech, and many more.

"This book is essential" - A-Trak, DJ/Producer

“This writing and these stories don't ache for the past as much as they contextualize how the present is still being made by what was left behind by recent horizons that still echo.” - Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times Bestselling Author

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Cultural, Audiobook

161 pages, Paperback

Published November 23, 2021

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me so nostalgic for an era I missed, and sent me down so many fucked up rabbit holes - the bloghouse It Girl who dated Joaquin Phoenix, the Dolly Parton cameo, Kanye's fascination w the scene, the alt lit connection (Jordan Castro, Tao Lin etc), le roots of le Megsuperstarprincess-speak, and the eventual death of the democratic blogosphere at the hands of corporate EDM. Fills the years between Moby and LMFAO with so many enviable parties and now I can't stop watching 240p camcorder footage of the 2006 Daft Punk Coachella set.

[Vincent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ever since I heard that this book was in the works I was looking forward to reading it and checked the kickstarted regularly for updates as I was a huge fan of bloghouse ever since I stumbled upon Moulinex - Break Chops on the Discodust blog. I finished it in two days and I sadly feel that this was, unfortunately, a missed opportunity.
This book tries to portray the short-lived bloghouse scene but unfortunately, for me, has two major flaws: it is way too short and very americentric (and by americentric I mean mostly LA).

Things I liked: +some cool interview-bits with Frankichan and the hollertronix board, +nice bits about i.e. the way being photographed and appearing on a website, +a lot of

things I missed: The biggest flaw of the book is the short length, at 130 pages and generous spacing definitely not a long read, -I missed something like a list of important or iconic songs (the Bloghouse Menu pairings was a fun idea but 5 songs is not enough), -what I also missed was a look on the label side of things (How did labels operate, did they make money even though they gave away lots of mp3s to blogs for free? Which labels specifically stopped physical releases because of poor sales?) and also a list of labels (beyond Ed Banger of course, something like Boys Noize Rec, Institubes, Turbo...), -I would have loved for a bloggers perspective to be included (What was it like to run a blog, to race with other blogs to release a song by The Proxy as the first one, how shortlived were some songs, what bloggers could make a living off bloghouse?), -also not included and sometimes overlooked: the importance of some youtube channels (i.e. BigElectro, the one with the air force ones and the rotating smiley face) in shaping the sound and popularity of the genre, as youtube was brand new at the time, -what could've been nice: short interviews with djs that were big in the bloghouse days and what they are doing now (think Brodinski, Surkin...) -There definitely could have been more attention to parties outside of the US, especially Europe and Asia (while I get that the author is from LA, chapter 6 lists 13 famous parties, 6 are from LA and only 2 are outside the US (London's Trash and Australia's Bang Gang).

things that left me confused: the bloghouse horoscope (...okay?)

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just perfect - fun and well researched with lots of insightful voices. I wish this was 5x as long, I could happily read party anecdotes from this period forever.

[Remi X · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this book! As a huge bloghouse fan, I’m thrilled that someone finally wrote a real academic text about this fascinating and super fun time period in music history. Lina Abascal did a bang up job and really captured the spirit, and tells the story how I remember it happening. Plus I learned a lot that I missed out on at the time. The interviews and anecdotes are great! I do wish it was longer, but hopefully this is just the start and we’ll get more bloghouse scholarship in the future.

[Mindy Burroughs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently attempting to survive this massive dose of nostalgia. Highly recommend, especially if you were a certain kind of house party weirdo in the early 2000s.

[Shaunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminisces

[Noortje Knol · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was exactly what i hoped it would be!

this book is a time capsule enclosing a scene, an era, and a nostalgia for a musical landscape that seems far away yet closer than ever. through countless interviews and what seems like insane wayback machine research, abascal paints a picture of bloghouse as internet culture, remixed and mash-uped - ultimately growing into live performance in (now) iconic club settings.

“never be alone again” weaves seamlessly the connections between bloghouse’s french touch electropop origins, its scratching vinyl (canadian?!) hiphop dj representatives, to punk shows and paris hilton & her it-girl contemporaries. Might seem far-fetched in this sentence but truly they’re way closer than you may think.

i couldnt put this book down, the writing style is engaging, fun, and keeps you wanting more- the 128 pages could have definitely been doubled if you asked me, though in its short form it definitely draws a full overview of the era.

im too young to have experienced this era back in 2007, but its music, flash photos and it girls have inspired and followed me around nonetheless.

monoculture vs subculture- is bloghouse what ultimately united the two, as the “genre” made way for and developed into EDM?

im really curious as to how the current musical landscape draws parallels to the bloghouse sphere- overnight tiktok successes, where music and sound seems more important than being a big name, fanbase & community based rather than industry-driven. or is it truly a bygone era that could never be replicated in this late capitalistic time?

thank you lina abascal for writing this overview of a bygone era:) will be looking out for what you’ll be writing in the future!

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is with love because it’s admirable that Lina Abascal is to my knowledge one of the only people to have written this extensively about bloghouse!!

This book suffers from a lack of scope - Abascal is very LA centric and I was left wondering at times if I was getting an accurate picture of bloghouse as a truly global genre. After all it is the authors contention that what set bloghouse apart was its existence as an online entity - which is why locating so much of its process in one place felt a bit strange. I appreciate this is probably just due to resourcing but if that’s the case then reduce the scope of the book!

The second thing is something common to a lot of music history books which is that they end up reading like a very long wikipedia entry. I think this is just a gripe I often have with history books though, just because once you read enough you’re familiar with the facts at play.

Anyway what I really hope is someone can give Lina a million billion dollars and she can expand this into the length it deserves because she is a very good writer <3

[Jodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Omg the nostalgia. This was my early 20's life to a t. I even found an old blog of my own the other day that is incredibly cringe, a relic from the bloghouse days. Although at the time we called it electro, and forever my music taste will lie in the years of 2006-2010.

It's short, even though it cost $40 or something, but lots of insights from musicians and information about bloghouse in the States. So happy to have been a part of this scene and for the amount of Australian artists mentioned in this book!

Electro/bloghaus for life

[Presish Bhattachan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful exploration of a really cool genre of music and general zeitgeist at the time. This was early high school for me, so I guess I only felt the remnants of it and more of introduction of edm, which I felt so high above for some reason.

A lot of members of the blog house genre blame the commercialization of dance music as the downfall of this music, and honestly I see it. But as trends are, things come back around and you are seeing much more “indie sleaze” nights these days. Hell i say Justice last year!!! I think it’s a pattern of going against the norm, and by the time it reaches the mainstream, something else that was popular in the past comes back. I hate that people grab onto trends rather than uniquely finding their own style / culture / etc. but what am I so say.

I could go on forever, but I liked this book :)

[Kaitie Reh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely incredible. Lina's prose is always fascinating and engaging, like you're listening to a friend tell a story rather than reading a book. As a Bloghouse veteran myself, I appreciated all the work that went into this from the clearly well-researched facts & timeline to the interviews with some of the best and brightest of that era. Lina talks the talk and walks the walk in this book, and if you're an electronic music fan, a Lina fan, or have any interest in Indie Sleaze culture, this is the book for you.

[tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

i miss the old internet

[K8 · Rating 2 out of 5]

AS SOMEONE WHO WAS NOT SENTIENT IN THE AGE OF MYSPACE~~~

the bad bits:
-this book would be 100% unenjoyable if you have no frame of reference. luckily, i was already familiar with a clump of the artists referred to throughout the book, but with no understanding of who these people were beyond the few sentences they get at the very beginning of the book, it wouldve be a serious haul. i read two of the last pages to a friend, & her reaction was basically “goddamn thats dry” via literally falling asleep instantly.
-it was tailored for navel gazing millennial nostalgia and for no one else that would want to learn about bloghouse from an outsiders perspective. which is a shame, because as lina writes throughout the book, this phenomenon could get lost to the annals of time without secondary documentation later on. kids these days have a lot to learn from this grass roots, punk influenced era, so it was unfortunate how much of the descriptions were chalked up to “if you know, you know.” (made me wanna slam my head into a wall…if u want to be a history keeper of a movement, you gotta throw away the cooler-than-thou gatekeeping)
-we get it! you think this era of music was more wholesome and people driven than the music of today. but this opinion was so overbearing that a lot of that sentiment was dripping in condescension a-la fuck people that like dubstep, fuck people selling out to labels, fuck streaming platforms for ruining music, etc….like ya, things aren’t this organic anymore, but independent artists are still everywhere and there are still djs that spin vinyl and host house shows and dont only listen to algorithm-recommended music. jeez! we get it! nooooobody dances anymore & nooobody listens to music for fun & everyone sucks except the OG bloghouse generation :,,(((
-whats up with dissing techno….if theres an electronic movement that somewhat mirrors the wild west of the punk and unmastered energy thats focused on the music moreso than the spectacle, i feel techno is a good example of that right now.
-when you take out the overly myopic & near constant sentences of “this artist remixed this artist who worked with this artist who party planned with this artist….” the overarching points this book tried to make could’ve been condensed into the length of an essay.
-ended up only focusing on LA. if that was the
focus of the book, i woulda preferred if it just stayed there the whole time. but because she talked so much about france, italy, new york, etc, i was left wanting to know about bloghouse’s nightlife there too.


the good bits:
-the more macro-level trends the book focused on taught me a decent amount about the origins of internet-age electronic music before giving way to the more sanitized sounds of streaming platform ready dubstep
-some good laughs & smiles, & overall inspiring for the future of music too
-had me going down a lot of rabbit holes that were enjoyable n laughable (sweaty lindsay lohan djing w steve aoki, kelly osbournes dj career, etc). i was legitimately laughing out loud reading about the “glamor” of the scene and then finding pics of sweaty, tank-topped, gummy-braceleted white kids fist pumping. like…..ok, i guess i did have to be there

my favorite quotes:
“it was a time for curiosity, connection, destruction; for dancing all night to the stupidest remixes ever, blurring the line between good and bad taste until the distinction became totally meaningless”

“sometimes the rampant amateurism resulted in accidental brilliance, and sometimes the tracks were garbage”

“but if part of bloghouse’s legacy is a crash course in how quickly cultural tides can turn, especially when they’re accelerated by the internet, then it’s only right that the movement began to outgrow itself, steadily splintering and in a dozen directions and warping into something else entirely”

the take away:
djing / remixing was once predominately based on community investment & musical tinkering for the love of the vibes. with “the corporate rave fraternity” of platform-based music discovery, well polished money making spectacles became the new fixation, & the punk energy that bloghouse gifted the world was taken out of *mainstream* dance music (not all dance music, lina!)
oh, and daft punk’s 2006 coachella set

[Carly Lamphere · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely perfect and articulated so many thoughts I've had as I get older and think about larger culture and trend shifts of my youth. I would give it ten stars if I could.

Baby hipster Carly moved back home to LA after college from the subculture desert that was Santa Barbara in 2006. Unable to find a "big girl" job, I ended up working retail at the first H&M store in southern California which employed everyone who wasn't able to get a job at american apparel. Thus my journey into the LA hipster bloghouse scene began-hitting up the clubs like cinespace and moscow and maxing out my credit card at American Apparel with all my H&M buddies.

This book articulates the nostalgia I always feel when I think about my "glory days" where life was one party after another and also scoring the hot photos from said party to post on myspace. My first boyfriend and I would go out dancing at almost every club night (kinda sad they didn't mention the hear gallery parties, those were some of the most epic nights in history-saw andy rourke DJ once at a shitty little house turned art gallery in echo park) and I would spend hours combing hypemachine for the latest dance!y tracks at my boring 9-5 (i graduated from retail to mindless office work at some point during this era). I knew something was different but could never put my finger on it-I just chalked it up to being young and free and having the time of my life. Now I realize that something truly special was happening-I was witnessing the dawn and death of one of the last era's of the old internet, and sub culture. Side note: I literally could have witnessed the dawn as I attended Coachella 2006 but chose to watch some other indie rock band instead of Daft Punk's legendary set. This is one of my greatest life regrets. Luckily, I made it to Justice's set next year, which kind of makes up for it?

Besides the strong nostalgic pull this book has for me personally, Abascal captures a brief period of time in recent history that is integral to understand the commodification and homogenization of the internet and the culture at large. I've witnessed this shift firsthand; working on a college campus in the present day, I've noticed how young people consume media and connect with each other- for example cataloging "aesthetics" of these subcultures in an online wiki (most of them existing before they were born) and trying them on and off at will, yet never going to a show or making friends at a sweaty all ages nightclub. I never had a name for this era of my life beyond "hipster shit" until I stumbled across the "indie sleaze" wiki and had a huge laugh. The present day certainly is a different time-one rife with a lot of problems and challenges that make it almost impossible for these young people to just dance themselves sweaty in a basement, work a shitty job, and not worry as the world fall down around them.

I always equated 2012 with the year I decided to grow up and everything changed. I moved to NYC to go to grad school, ended my first real adult relationship, and start to cut down on partying. Thanks to Absacal, I now know that coincidentally, 2012 was the tail end of the bloghouse era and when the great corporate internet takeover occurred as well. We are your Friends gives a name and official chapter in the book of subculture that I can reference to remember what it felt like being young and tragically cool, in a time before everything was memorialized, scandalized, and moralized on the internet. It truly was an era where you literally "had to be there"-half of the bangers that pop into my head randomly during my workday from parties aren't available on spotfiy or tidal. Maybe I can pull them up on youtube if I search really hard. I am so thankful that someone got their shit together to write about all it, thank you Lina!

I mean, I still also have my 70's style booty shorts from American Apparel and Hypemachine account as well, whenever I want to stroll down memory lane, but this book is a much better option.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this book! First of all, I loved how Lina Abascal was so funny and self-aware of the tackiness and messiness of bloghouse culture. That made for a really fun and light read.
Like other reviewers have mentioned, this book also sent me down some nostalgic rabbit holes.
In between reads, I found myself thinking about and referring to this book a lot. Even if they were the most surface level bloghouse moments, I loved going through the Cobrasnake slideshows, reading about Carles and HipsterRunoff, etc. etc. I was really young when the bloghouse moment was happening, but I remember the fashion and loved some of the music. It was really fun to have some more context for that, and I say this with all honesty, this book is a solid resource for early Internet history.
Prior to reading, I was unfamiliar with "bloghouse", but Lina Abascal does such a great job at presenting a collage of facts, aesthetics, music, and general vibes to an undefinable genre and culture that by the end of the book, it's hard not to consider yourself a bloghouse fan. Or at least appreciate it for what it was, mostly because it's such a loosely defined genre and there's something in there for everyone. Beyond that, I like how this book offered some much needed context as to where EDM and other frat-bro corporate music of the 2010s emerged from, right up to what we are facing now, a musical predicament Steve Reidell dubs "playlist house." This book is one of the only accounts of the specific endearing and fleeting moment in the early 2000s and the Internet's history when people were actually connecting, online and IRL, purely through love of music.

[Uttara · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If recent nostalgia for the era of Blogspot domains and Mediafire links is any indication, the instant gratification that’s restructured our digital existence isn’t necessarily an improvement. A force fed algorithm generated playlist will never feel as satisfying as finding your new favourite songs on the Seventeenth page of Too Many Sebastian’s”

This book resonates - it puts words to an era of music that hadn’t been described properly, and painted a vivid scene. I remember the days of hipster runoff, hypebeast and the blog spaces. Montreal had its own bubbling raw party dance scene in 2006-9 and there was just something truly casual, experimental and fun. In hindsight it’s cool (and sad) to reflect on a time where you could just remix anything, and ask for forgiveness. When clubs had distorted tracks that were burned off a media link - and that was okay. Where DJs were still party first and spectacle second.

This book painted a picture the DJs that brought this scene to life, the Hispanic kids in LA that made up most of the parties first, the taste for the parties themselves and how celeb culture and rave culture mixed.

As I finish it - I have about a page of tracks that I want to download now, probably the best accolade I can give.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've found myself picking up this book again after feeling exasperated with the feeling the current state of the music industry gives me.

I think perhaps to some people, reading this book might just feel like a documentation of a limited era of just club music, but what it actually recalls is the free spirit of electronic music without boundaries, of authentic and excitable clubbing culture and the incredible consequence of art thriving above all else, well before the music industry had time to put on its pants and ruin it. Clubbing culture and genuine eclecticism peaked in this era and I assure you, having been a club kid for the last 17 years, it was all downhill from here*

My glowing review isn't just because there aren't any books on the topic of this era of music - it's a phenomenal read. Linda Abascal has a punchy tone of voice - funny, yet laser focussed. She's also not afraid to call out Diplo for his lack of participation in the book (he also peaked in 2009 too), all of these factors result in a perfect 5 for me.

* opinion not fact

[Josh Clement · Rating 4 out of 5]

* cue Hustlin' - Rick Ross mashed with Heartbeats - The Knife

This was a lot of fun. Although it's very short and heavy focus on LA scene, Lina covers most relevant clubs, blogs, record labels, djs and songs of that time. I started exploring this genre of music while I was in high school in Australia. I was a very long way from a queue outside a trendy Parisian nightclub, but there was definitely something exciting in the air from about 2004 - 2008. The internet then was small, wild and highly creative. It's easy to make fun of the music, but looking back I realize the music was a side effect of the giant technology and culture shifts that were taking place (mobile devices, social media etc). I don't think this was fully understood at the time. Once it all sunk in (and the MDMA wore off) the pendulum had started to swing towards streaming, EDM and Facebook. :)

[Jordan Iannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! A bit biased because this covers such a formative part of my adolescence, but the thing I really appreciated about this book that I feel is rare and that I don’t get elsewhere is that it really nails the interplay between Internet discourse and IRL communities. Very often I get annoyed at writers that depict that them parallel but separate momentums and not two facets of the same thing, which they often are, and very much were in this case. This book is a rare paper encapsulation of being a digital native who leaves the house.

[Matt Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, nostalgic look at what was probably the most fun period of time I’ve ever had with music (Bomp and Get Cryphy in Minneapolis!). Once in a while it read a little too much like a reading for a college course, but gets mixed in with great stories and anecdotes (who knew that Diplo was originally a substitute teacher?) as well as some really great thoughts regarding music’s place on the Internet.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both a nostalgic, beautifully written ode to the wonderful nuances of the bloghouse era and an extremely comprehensive education informed by interviews with some of its defining artists. This book left me queueing all the remixes that shaped my teenage partying years, gave me fomo for club nights I was too young to attend and a whole new appreciation for this era which shaped my musical identity so much more than I had ever considered before reading.

[Vovka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful account of the brief period of music pre-algo when blogs helped us find what was cool. Music discovery no longer works like this, so it's fun to compare how we learn of music now vs. how we learned of it in the days before digital streaming services took over. There are business lessons, culture lessons, and lots of great case studies of how specific songs "went viral" through the work of the music blogosphere (RIP). These were the good old days -- they lasted may be a decade.

[Gianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lina Abascal digs deep and evokes all the hype I felt in this golden era. Interviews with all the influential icons of the moment. The excitement of being able to access true ingenuity before algorithms and filtered feeds. Have reread several times feeling all the nostalgic bliss. This is a must read for music and internet lovers alike.

[Meg Zukin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny yet reverant! An absolute education and schooling on the bloghouse era. Brought me back to my treasure island music fest days. Features interviews from the GREATS. For any internet heaux or music head

[Ben Scobie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uh-maze-zing. Who knew the most censored chapter of my life needed to be turned into a full blown book. I am so lucky to have lived through this and glad it has been documented in a fun and detailed way. Ultimately just pure nostalgic indulgence though ☺️

[Kayleigh Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kind of wish I read this instead of listening to the audiobook bc the narrator sounded AI generated… so incredibly monotone and couldn’t even prononce the artists’ name BUT the content was fab! I wish I was going out before cell phones 💔💔💔

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

can't imagine anyone more qualified than Lina to write this amazing chronicle of the post emo, pre edm myspace/bloghouse/hype machine era

[Justin Lehmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really fun trip down memory lane.

[Peter Jostrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun but light.

[grim_mall_gorth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great look into one of my favourite periods of my life. Lina really captures a moment of time I'll always look back on fondly. I'm glad this book exists.