Housekeeping have made their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud accounts invisible. The sweeping change to their online presence appears to have followed an article in The Quietus on the London DJ collective.
What at first reads like a scathing, Pitchfork-esque review of the group’s May EP, Faces, segues into muckraking journalism that poses social commentary on commercial dance music. Among other things, it illuminates Housekeeping member Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe’s ties to royalty and Taylor McWilliams’ controversial practices as a property developer.
Cleaning House
The Quietus touched on a point of discussion with which longtime electronic music fans are all too familiar.
House music famously emerged from Chicago’s gay and black communities, and Selector has recently gone over techno’s protest music roots. As long ago as the late ’80s, however, groups like Underground Resistance have openly condemned the whitewashing of dance music as it grew from an obscure subculture to a worldwide phenomenon.
The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a renewed focus on the class issues surrounding dance culture. Earlier in May Carl Cox, Nicole Moudaber and other globetrotting DJs launched a fundraiser for their tour managers that drew criticism from fans and members of the industry who considered it tone deaf.
A spokesperson on behalf of Housekeeping did not immediately respond to Selector‘s request for comment.
