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Electronic Music 101?
Otter asks: "iTunes comes with a sampler of MP3s selected to appeal to the Apple demographic. The one that really caught my attention was a track by Sasha and John Digweed, which has inspired me to learn a bit about electronic music. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who likes that stuff and my local Tower Records only has Moby (didn't like it),Paul Oakenfold (not bad) and 11,000 'Best of Ibiza' sets. What are the must-haves I should start with? What are the best online communities and places to learn about new artists? Feel free to define 'electronic' as broadly as seems appropriate." I used to shop at Homebass, but they just went out of business, which is sad, as they had one of the most comprehensive selection of electronica that I have ever seen, and most of their tracks had MP3 previews. If you were going to try and turn a friend on to Electronica, what artists, songs, or even specific mixed sets would you suggest? What online sources of electronica are still around.
Implying that not knowing electronica means you can't listen to electronica is the same reason dumbfuck Linux elitists have kept Linux from being as popular as it might be.
The only way someone can get into a subject matter is to (surprise surprise) get into the subject matter... I'm going to take a guess and say you were not, in fact, *born* knowing about electronica, what bands are 'cool', where to get their music, and why others shouldn't be allowed to listen to it. At some point you did, in fact, have to *start* listening to it, conceivably without much knowledge about the subject.
If you want to actively ruin someone else's experience with a genre, then go ahead. But don't be a jerk about it.
"no offense" my left foot. You were tyring to politely exlude the questioner, eh?
Trillian
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There's a difference between seminal/influential/whatever and *really good* recent stuff. So I'll differentiate between the two, and hopefully you can sort stuff out.
...i care because you do, Orb - Ultraworld, Orbital - The Middle of Nowhere -or- In Sides, Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children, Autechre - Tri Repetae++,
:)
Some of the most important albums - to me at least - include the following:
Big beat/breaks/whatever: The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole, The Crystal Method - Vegas, Fluke - Risotto
Trance: BT - ESCM, Paul Oakenfold - Global Underground New York, Sasha - Global Underground Ibiza (by far the best of the GU series, imho)
DNB: LTJ Bukem - Logical Progression (the first volume is my favorite), Roni Size Reprazent - New Forms
Turntablism: DJ Shadow - Entroducing, UNKLE - Psyence Fiction
Acid House: 808 State - Newbuild
Downtempo: Anything by Fila Brazilia, Coldcut, DJ Food, etc. Also, DJ Cam - Mad Blunted Jazz.
IDM: Aphex Twin -
Newer stuff:
Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives is a wonderful experimental hip-hop/glitchy album, if you're into that sort of thing.
Dntel - Life is Full of Possiblities is the most utterly beautiful downtempo/IDM album I have heard in the past several years. It gets my highest recommendation.
Fennesz - Endless Summer if you're into very static-laden, glitchy, abrasive noise with a kinda eerily nice melody to it at times.
Just got into bands like Akufen, an experimental house group fraught with these amazing breakdowns; and Phonecia, a weird IDM-style rhythmic... thing. It's good too.
Matmos is worth checking out if you're into the stuff way out in left field. They did the production for Bjork's most recent album. Squeaky sound effects abound.
I also saw Telefon Tel Aviv, an indie band on the Hefty label, open at a recent show, and they were amazing. Check out their album too.
Finally, The Avalanches - Since I Left You is, in my opinion, the most stunning turntablism album of the past five years or so. 900+ records all sampled, with minimal scratching, into this completely amazing mix that has reaffirmed what you can do with a bunch of seemingly unrelated vinyl.
Most of this stuff isn't specific *dance* music, but IMHO the best of electronica isn't stuff you want to shake your booty to. This might be a little bit scatterbrained, but if you start picking up albums that seem to float your boat genre-wise you shouldn't have any big disappointments. If you want more recommendations that are more specific to what genres you'd like (trust me, I have *lots*), please feel totally free to email me.
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
Instead of sipping from the cup of lukewarm techno that is most modern electronica, I'd suggest diving into the 16-bit wonderland that was and is the MODscene.
.S3M, .XM, *.ULT, *.IT., and the more powerful the tracking software became, the more people were drawn to the scene. It was the online equivalent of jazz clubs in the '30s. I think it's one of the great secret stories of the web.
Back before there were MP3s or computers fast enough to play them, there were MODs -- 4 channel music files that began on the Amiga, and contained their own samples. MODs encouraged experimentation in electronic music on a level never seen before -- you could download a MOD, load it up in your tracker, and start coding a new song using the samples already there.
MODs branched out from their 4 channel beginnings into multiple channels and a variety of new extensions like
Then RealAudio hit. And after that, MP3. Online music aficionados began to follow a different path, and MODs, like BBS culture, slowly died. The MOD culture is still around, eclipsed but not forgotten. I'd suggest starting with The Kosmic Free Music Foundation, arguably the most prolific and influencial modgroup of that era. You could also check out the Hornet archive or the Modarchive. Either Winamp or XMMS should play them.
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