Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music(music.ishkur.com) |
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music(music.ishkur.com) |
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.
[0] https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/jeff-ks-user...
"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. "
"Today what most people think is House music is actually Garage. And what most people think is Garage is some dodgy nonsense the British sharted into their trousers. Someone should really try and set the record straight about that. Like make a guide or something."
I love a bit of UK Garage but laughed out loud when I read that line about trousers. This Ishkur guy is a beast.
Provided link: http://ishkur.com/oldmixtapes/Jeffro%20-%20Five%20In%20Da%20...
I know what I'm doing this Sunday morning.
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.
I've also sent a mail to the webmaster of Listology to see if there is any possibility to get the community back online (I've also offered my time for helping).
Be sure to check out his 15-hour, 3.5 decade-spanning mix https://mobile.twitter.com/Ishkur23/status/11632947429494456...
Actual link for easier save-as: http://ishkur.com/mixes/Ishkur_-_The_Longplay.mp3
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.
Here's an example I found
Oh god. Not the soundcloud tag you want to be in.
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!!!
It'd be nice to chip something in for the work + streaming to the entire internet right now.
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.
Love it!
Also, I'm surprised by the lack of newer genres.
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.
The genre is actually evolving constantly and there's a fair amount of interesting material and new artists. But it's back to being a niche much like jungle is nowadays.
Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts all of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.
If you start to place positivity above expressiveness in art criticism, you get puff pieces that don't teach anyone anything. People love this guide not because they want to feel good about being a snob but because they actually learn about music.
For example, in the guide for New Jack Swing he makes the argument that Thriller aged better than Dangerous or Bad because of the drum sounds, I might or might not share his assessment, but the point he made about the tinniness of the drums was well-taken.
Ishkur's guides have always had this tone. It is part of the fun. Even when he is trashing your preferred genres, you are laughing. Or I am.
However, it's rather clear from the update timing that he's not getting younger, and you can't really follow all the micro-scenes these days unless it's a full-time job, so I won't be surprised if the guide's spirit is not the same.
Spent so much time browsing an older version, so happy to see it again, so sad that Casiocore apparently did not make it into the current incarnation. "Just push 'samba' on that thing and away you go."
These "genres" mostly fit very comfortably into their parent category. Even to the point that if you treat it as a strict history of the music, the majority of the subgenres are unnecessary.
It's poorly presented in this regard. It doesn't do a good job of delineating the music and the cultural history.
What is being taken as genre bashing is really tribalism and the subcultural awareness of the author. In contrast to it's failings as a strict musical history, it presents extremely well the cultural history around the music.
> The future is a hellish dystopia where everyone's needs are taken care of and they all live in the clouds and listen to Progressive Breaks.
[edit]
oh there's more :D
> Progressive Breaks is still around today because being a Breaks version of essentially another scene ensures it indefinite survival, like a domesticated animal that will never go extinct because man depends on it too much as a ready source of food. That's what Progressive Breaks is: The chicken of electronic music.
> The peak period for any popular genre is 3-5 years, and then everyone wants to move on to the big thing
> Q: Why did you make this?
> A: Because educating others and fighting ignorance is one of the noblest activities that anyone can ever engage in. Also, jokes.
Part of the fun the is genre bashing. But don't take the genres too seriously.
> Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.
Dance Music Manual (http://www.dancemusicproduction.com) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.
Melodics (http://www.melodics.com) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.
Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)
It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!
If you don't know how to use the tools, that's a whole world. There's a bunch of different camps, but if you're trying to do EDM, then Ableton Live or FL Studio are pretty popular. There's open source stuff too, but I don't know much about it. Some people prefer to use hardware instead. Then there's those weird modular synth nerds. It really depends what you want to do and how much you want to spend. A commercial package like FL Studio will come with a bunch of standard plugins that would get you pretty far before venturing into the world of virtual instruments.
There's a few books on the subject (Dance Music Manual comes to mind), but honestly I don't think they're very helpful. You can get extremely far without knowing any music theory, and it's hard to describe audio stuff in a book, so you'll probably get more out of youtube searches about whatever you're trying to do.
Aside from those, get a demo version of Ableton and start playing around. Your efforts will suck. Accept it and enjoy the process :) Once you've reached a certain level of competence it's worth asking more experienced producers how to improve, ideally in person, quite possibly via paying for a lesson or two.
Also, listen to a lot of music. OP will be a great starting point!
Just bear in mind that writing music with DAWs requires the same level of commitment (time, effort and financial) as learning a traditional instrument.
edit: just seen the sibling comment, so as I suspected there are plenty of resources available! :)
[Hard Normal Daddy is generally considered one of Squarepusher's best albums and it's drill n bass.]
A balanced music review that's good to read is rare. You have things you think are good, and you have things you think are bad, and the meh ones in-between: who cares? Not you. Validation that what you like/dislike - good. Putting into words what you thought all along - good. Part of the reason the site is so loved is because of the kickings doled out to genres (which a vague enough containers disowned by those put in them at the best of times) vs. the things he clearly loves, and, shit, that's what you want from reviewers, not an anodyne history lesson. Music is deeply, deeply tribal, it isn't neutral
Like Squarepusher. "My Red Hot Cock" is really good. But bar that, he's good at playing that stupid six-string bass and making generally-undanceable dance music that people like to stroke their chins to. Saying Hard Normal Daddy is considered one of his best albums -- well that's a pretty shallow pool! Considered by whom? Not by me. Hard Plastic is miles better by dint of the fact it has actual tunes. And the music I like is the best music, and the music I dislike is crap. Weirdly enough the music you like is also the best music and the music you dislike is the worst but anyway, Squarepusher is like one of the jazz acts on The Fast Show, or something John Peel would put on when he was having a mild breakdown. (nb I do actually really like Squarepusher, I'm just arguing against his music because it is frankly unlistenable to most people)