In light of the growing literature on DJ culture, this article explores how technological change is having a significant impact on specific areas of music production and distribution within contemporary electronic dance music culture. An ethnographic methodology is employed, based around research conducted in the Sydney dance music scene between 2002 and 2007. The aim of the article is to reveal some of the discourses and reactions in DJ practice that result from shifts in technology. With the increasing use of CDs, mp3s and computer programs such as Ableton Live, the notion that vinyl and turntables represent the authentic technology of DJ culture seems somewhat redundant. The physical movement required to mix vinyl records has meant that the associated skills of DJing have become bound up in notions of physical and visible manipulation of technology, and so the use of technology that does not require and afford such physical expression has raised questions around the fundamental skills of DJing. As such, it would seem that there needs to be a redefinition of the concept of DJing, and a reframing of the skills and abilities seen as being essential to DJ practice.

The development of contemporary, post-disco dance music and its associated culture, as representative of a (supposedly) underground, radical subculture, has been given extensive consideration within popular music studies. Significantly less attention has been given to the commercial, mainstream manifestations of this music. Therefore, this article examines the contemporary commercial dance music scene in Sydney, Australia, incorporating an analytical framework that revolves mainly around the work of DJs and the commercial scene they operate within. The ideas, opinions and interpretations of a selection of local DJs and other music industry practitioners who work in Sydney are central to the article's analysis of DJ culture within the city and of, more specifically, DJ self-understandings with respect to choices of records and in relation to the twin imperatives of entertainment and education.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of electronic dance music festivals in Sydney. This has served to shift the clubbing landscape in the city from night to daytime, taking dance music out of clubs and into parks and other public spaces. With its roots in imported versions and local interpretations of overseas dance culture, the dance scene in the city has always been heavily dependent on international sounds and fashions. With the dominance of these festivals, such as Field Day, Parklife, Harbourlife, Future Music, Creamfields, Good Vibrations and Stereosonic, this dependence is further emphasised through the high billing of international DJs in promotional material. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research and participant-observation in the commercial electronic dance music scene in Sydney, this article explores how this festival fever is changing the shape of DJ and dance music culture in the city.

The acid, a museme, is the unstable element in acid house. It is arguably both the spiritual and hedonistic apex of psychedelic music, enabling a shift in perception. In electronic dance music, the journey of the acid museme seems to have developed from Phuture's "Acid tracks" during the mid-1980s in Chicago club the Muzic Box. The new sound of acid house, as well as acid's implicit reference to the psychedelic drug LSD, inspired a moral panic in the UK during the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, acid house further influenced the development of trance music in Germany and elsewhere. Yet, a similar musical figure can be recognised in earlier electronic acid rock experiments of Tangerine Dream. The discussion first maps out the development of this museme by placing key-moments geographically. However, this paper concludes that musical memory seems to operate rhizomically, in a deterritorialised 2 (displaced) manner.

The development of contemporary, post-disco dance music and its associated culture, as representative of a (supposedly) underground, radical subculture, has been given extensive consideration within popular music studies. Significantly less attention has been given to the commercial, mainstream manifestations of this music. Furthermore, demonstrating the influence of subculture theory, existing studies of dance culture focus largely on youth-based audience participation, and as such, those who engage with dance music on a professional level have been somewhat overlooked. In an attempt to rectify these imbalances, this paper examines the contemporary commercial dance music scene in Sydney, Australia, incorporating an analytical framework that revolves mainly around the work of DJs and the commercial scene they operate within. Given the increasingly global and corporate nature of the dance music scene, there is a sense that the music and culture are becoming less 'local' and more 'international', with this global movement affecting the identity and development of local scenes, the understandings and practices of those who are involved with these scenes, and the very definition of a 'scene' itself. The ideas, opinions and interpretations of a selection of local DJs and other music industry practitioners who work in Sydney are central to the paper's analysis of DJ culture within the city. It is my intention to place the local scene in Sydney into some sort of wider cultural and global context, but at the same time to highlight what aspects of the scene give it a unique local identity. Being a scene that relies quite heavily on overseas dance culture, and indeed places a certain emphasis on the cultural value of overseas music and international DJs, it can be somewhat difficult for local DJs and producers to establish themselves, and thus a certain tension exists between the local and the global.