A Load Off
Being the resident electronic music genre encyclopedia amongst my friends and associates can be tiring: coming up with witty two-sentence descriptions of a particular sound, rattling off a few artist names or associated labels or regions of origin, describing what other genres its connected to – it’s hard work. Thank god Ishkur has taken a load off my back with his Guide to Electronic Music. This thing has nearly every genre you’d ever need to know about and more categorized by core sound and linked in an elegant timeline complete with essential samples.
He’s snarky and opinionated, but he’s right (that is, he matches my opinions) nearly all the time:
- Chemical/West Coast Breaks were fucking awesome and why aren’t people still making them?
- Speed Garage sucks. 2-step can be really goddamn boring unadulterated.
- Ghetto Tech is God’s music.
- Neurofunk/futurestep is the best thing to happen to Jungle in about five or six years, and Jump-Up was/is the worst.
- IDM and its glitch/experimental genre relatives belong near Jungle in the grand scheme of electronic music, and they can be either really cool or really elitist and boring,
- Ditto on the potential elitism and boredom for Minimal Techno. I think he misfiled Sutekh and Safety Scissors as Minimal Techno, however; I’d call them Clicks n’ Cuts, as with much else of the Force, Inc. label stable. But I see where he’s coming from.
- It would be great if there were such a thing as Booty Trance. Then I wouldn’t categorically deny myself as a Trance fan.
- He gets the definition of Illbient right, but song selections from U.N.K.L.E. are pushing it, and Boards of Canada is just flat out wrong: file the first squarely under Trip-Hop and the latter as Blazingly Obviously Genre-Defining IDM. Other samples are okay, though.
- Terrorcore Gabba is fun.
- His Noizecore is my Breakcore. His Breakcore, he acknowledges, is now more widely and accurately called Oldskool Hardcore or just Rave, being the signature sounds of raves long since gone by.
Props for taking the time and having a nasty, tongue-in-cheek attitude about the whole thing. Now I’ll just point people here when they inevitably ask me, “al3x, what’s Progressive 2-Step UK Freeform Dark Funkycore Minimal Hard Euro Disco House?”
Ishkur knows.