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Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

by 1f97 on 8/20/19, 7:27 AM with 71 comments

• by lukey_q on 8/20/19, 7:52 AM

  Oh my gosh, I clicked expecting to see the classic old version... this is an updated one!! It looks like this one even shows the progression of the sound of a genre or subgenre over time, not just the other genres that came from it.

  Forgive my excitement but damn, the original guide was an absolute treasure of the early (at least for me) internet, and as a teenager getting into electronic music but with no real local scene or context for any of this stuff to say it was eye-opening is an understatement. Find a song or genre you liked (for me it was early French Touch/filter house) and you could see similar genres, plus what inspired it and what it inspired. And back then if you weren't familiar with this stuff everything with electronic drums or synths was lumped into "techno" (remember Eminem's infamous line about that) so it was great to figure out the actual names of the genres and subgenres I was into so I could dig deeper. Shout out to Ishkur, I'm obviously thrilled to see this today.

• by bigiain on 8/20/19, 8:29 AM

  Some of these genre descriptions are _awesome!_ - th9s is from the LiquidFunk subgenre of Drum n Bass:

  "Just before the turn of the millenium is when a sufficient number of white people were attending Jungle parties to the point where music writers and magazines stopped calling it Jungle and rebranded it Drum n Bass, although the partykids retained the label "junglists" and they're still called that today (probably because "drumnbassists" isn't as catchy).

  Not coincidentally this is also the point where the two-step drum kick takes over everything, ushering in an age of mediocrity for a scene that was once specifically noted for its unique and inventive drum programming. You might as well call this Disco n Bass.

  As if things couldn't get any worse for Disco n Bass, the lucrative opportunity of mad festival money in the 2010s compelled it to whore itself into a subgenre depository of shitty pop remixes heretofore known as Dancefloor. If you hear a Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift or even Adele remix with a powerful Pendulum two-step drum kick, it's technically Dancefloor: The end game of pop music trendwhore oblivion. "

• by dukeofharen on 8/20/19, 8:44 AM

  Yes, finally! Ishkur's original guide and Listology's Darktremor's top 400 trance list and Dazzamack's top 1000 EDM lists are what really got me into electronic music!

  I'm kinda bummed out right now that listology.com doesn't exist anymore :(

  EDIT: For anyone interested, at the time, I downloaded both Darktremor's and Dazzamack's lists. You can find them here:

  https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/48450ec07254f82c7a9b5d77...

  https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/fff467f6fc7574864358f997...

  I've downloaded a few other lists from Listology as well (progressive trance, classic trance, best albums etc.). If anyone is interested, I could add these to Github Gist as well.

• by DanAtC on 8/20/19, 7:37 AM

  Wow. 20 years in the making.

  Be sure to check out his 15-hour, 3.5 decade-spanning mix https://mobile.twitter.com/Ishkur23/status/11632947429494456...

• by easymodex on 8/20/19, 11:32 AM

  From the comments I was expecting a really cool site with a lot of knowledge, but so far all I've seen is genre bashing. Since this is supposedly a general guide on all electronic music, it's really unfortunate they need to convey their negative opinions on everything that isn't their genre of choice. Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.

• by creatonez on 8/20/19, 11:38 AM

  This is missing all of the post-2011 dubstep subgenre stuff.

  If you search "melodic dubstep" or "chillstep" there's lots of relatively popular post-2011 stuff that's way more tasteful for a mass audience than skrillex.

  But that's just one branch. The other major branch is called "freeform bass" or sometimes "spacebass". Certain bass music (post-2016?) no longer has a clear genre definition, so we've literally adopted the term "freeform bass". A lot of it is pretty good. But some of it overlaps with brostep/riddim.

• by unixhero on 8/20/19, 9:19 AM

  Whoa version 3?!?!?!?!?!?

  Secretary; Cancel all my calls for today.

  I have been waiting for this since what, 2003? He said it would cost him an arm and a leg, by the time elapsed since that statement, I guess it did! I assumed he had lost interest in this project, but no. Thanks Ishkur!!!

• by ethbro on 8/20/19, 1:40 PM

  Does anyone have a donation link?

  It'd be nice to chip something in for the work + streaming to the entire internet right now.

• by noelwelsh on 8/20/19, 11:21 AM

  Does the author actually like any music? So far every description I've read tells me that the music is either pretentious or a sell-out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  Although this looks like a lot of work, a more positive guide would be vastly more useful. Help me find the best of a genre, rather than telling me it all devolved in trash. My metric so far is that if it's labelled pretentious I'll probably like it.

• by EdwardDiego on 8/20/19, 10:45 AM

  > Cybergoths: What happens when you take the stock Rivethead look and add Steampunk, mecha anime, and The Predator.

  Love it!

• by proverbialbunny on 8/20/19, 10:35 AM

  Pretty neat, but it's missing some important genres. eg, lounge music is quite possibly the first popular electronic music genre from the 40s and 50s, yet it's not mentioned.

  Also, I'm surprised by the lack of newer genres.

• by pgt on 8/20/19, 10:40 AM

  This Electro Tech Tree is greatly welcomed only 5 days after I lamented the lack of electronic music on the Psytrance Guide[^1] :).

  Where is progressive melodic techno, though? E.g. Atlas (Adriatique Remix) by Romboy & Bodzin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4NSDcbmsI

  I wish the text was searchable using my in-browser search.

  - [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695334

• by wyclif on 8/20/19, 8:31 AM

  The Brostep entry alone is worth visiting the site to read.

• by unicornporn on 8/20/19, 7:57 AM

  I remember using this in the very early 2000. I made electronic music myself, and it functioned as a sort of mashup between Wikipedia and the recommendations at Spotify. I remember browsing the genres, getting some recommendation and searching for the files on Soulseek. When I found the files I could browse all the files of the user that shared them and often find similar acts. Lovely times. Still have the files, btw. :-)

• by MrsPeaches on 8/20/19, 12:08 PM

  Definitely worth checking out the chiptune entry, goes into a fair bit of detail on making music using early sound generation chips used in NES etc.

• by AAM2RF on 8/20/19, 9:43 AM

  Wow, just when I thought this wouldn't release, because of The Longplay. This guide is amazingly detailed, Ishkur outdid himself

• by JulianMorrison on 8/20/19, 2:37 PM

  Why so little after 2000? Too close to see what's going to matter? Or has musical creativity stalled?

• by bartread on 8/20/19, 9:48 AM

  I first discovered this in 2009 when it still needed Flash (for obvious reasons). A fantastic resource, and really pleased to see it updated for the modern web. Great work (again!), Ishkur!

• by mankeysee on 8/22/19, 11:42 AM

  Fucking modern web dev piece of shit where you can't even ctrl+F among the big list to find what you were seeking. Guess at least it covers a decent breadth of styles.

• by justaj on 8/20/19, 2:40 PM

  I really don't like the way the expanded info alters my scrolling behavior.

• by RantyDave on 8/20/19, 10:31 AM

  Whoa, great upgrade.

• by gingabriska on 8/20/19, 8:21 AM

  I am interested in producing music but is there any book which can you teach you from scratch.

• by marble-drink on 8/20/19, 7:44 PM

  Wow... I've been waiting for this for over 10 years now. The previous version was an example of a loss when Flash started to die. Since I don't install Flash any more I've been unable to use it. So glad to see it back.