Ishkur’s Guide To Electronic Music v2.5

Someday when I have a kid, the young squirt will sit upon my knee and ask:

Daddy. What’s the difference between Progressive House and Progressive Trance? What does Dub sound like and how did it influence Chicago House? And where the hell does Speed Bass fit in all this?

Ha ha whoa there little one. One at a time please. Clean your room and all will be revealed.

Well now, I have just the site to show the little one. Ishkur’s Guide To Electronic Music v2.5. This flash site provides an exploratory interface to discover the various genres and sub-genres of electronic music. Starting at the top level with House, Trance, Techno, Breakbeat, Jungle, Hardcore, and Downtempo, the site graphs the various predecessor genres leading up to the genre and then shows how the genre splits into sub-genres. The graphs place the genesis of these various genres in their proper time context. It’s really quite nice.

For example, click on BreakBeat and you can see that the roots of BreakBeat are in Hip Hop. Plenty of musical samples are provided to help you gain understanding.

The best part is the author’s irreverent descriptions. For example, in describing Happy House the author states:

The official music genre of Dance Dance Revolution, this is by far the most syrupy, saccharine music known to mankind. I bet they play this kind of stuff to calm lunatics at insane asylums locked in padded room with pink walls.

And he goes on and on. In any case, have fun exploring the various genres. And I highly recommend turning up your stereo volume as loud as possible and check out SpeedCore. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Comments

11 responses

Dimitri Glazkov • September 18th, 2004
So, where does Front 242 fit in this?

jayson knight • September 20th, 2004
London hardcore should have been included in the Jungle family tree (ala Moonshine's Speed Limit series back in the early-mid 90's), though it later broke off to become "Happy Hardcore", which sounded absolutely horrid. Good link though.

jayson knight • September 20th, 2004
man, it's amazing how much of this stuff i have on CD...sheeesh...don't know whether to be proud or ashamed.

Haacked • September 21st, 2004
You've paid too much money to the music industry. ;) Sounds like you have a good collection.

Coox • June 8th, 2005
Where Does broken beat fit here?

teamPAHL • July 13th, 2008
dub-step... again read mostly about how the community takes one piece of a style and rapes it, and now, the music that gives you a back rub in the car.

RaverNuked • March 14th, 2009
So is it controversial who invented rap? Originally I thought it was some Jamaican in NY who mixed two records together in the late 70's, early 80's. You say it was Blondie and I've also googled it and others have said when Sugarhill Gang released "Rapper's Delight" in 1979, it was the first rap song.

Audio • August 4th, 2011
That is one curious little boy! lol I would agree that the roots of BreakBeat is Hip Hop for sure. As for who invented rap, I have read the same thing, which is that "Rapper's Delight" was the first rap song ever released. As for a majority of the music talked about on this post, I'm with Phil in saying "turn up the volume"!!!

DJ Dr Pepa • December 7th, 2011
What music does dj rankin make?

DJ Dr Pepa • February 25th, 2012
What About Donk Music

Edward Sanchez • August 26th, 2014
Its gone D: *they took it off-line...