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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.
IMO the best of electronica (not cliched, not trendy, everyone will ask you whot hat great band is)
Plaid
Tortoise
Stereolab
Squarepusher
Photos.
VNV Nation: particularly "Standing", "Savior (Vox)" and "Rubicon" - very club/dance but with an edge
Covenant: examples include "Figurehead", "Dead Stars", and "Go Film" - generally a little darker than VNV, but still will an up beat.
Cyber Tec or C-Tec: a Front 242 spinoff, good tunes include "She Left", "The Lost" (a personal fav)
Claire Voyant: "Majesty", "Love the Giver" (which has a GREAT remix by Eskil Simonsson's)
----The rest are just group names, I can add song titles if anyone wants...
Beborn Benton
Evil Toys (aka TOY)
Wolfsheim
SPOCK (well Back on Mars anyway)
Elegant Machinery
And One
Apoptygma Bezerk (older stuff preferably)
Project Pitchform (industrial sound) X Marks the Pedwalk
Cobolt 60
Delerium
Funker Vogt (not one of my favs, but they have some good tunes.)
Haujobb
Mentallo & the Fixer
Nitzer Ebb
ReWork
Velvet Acid Christ (good!!)
Wumpscut
None of these are in any particular order, but are a good overview of groups that I like. As always YMMV. If anyone wants some song titles lemme know...
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Noooo! Don't start with Middle, it's wank. The official shit Orbital album. Brown, definately. Insides, definately. Snivilisation, very definately. Then maybe The Altogether (get "The Altogether 5.1" on DVD, it kicks arse), Green, the Orange one with remixes whose name I can't remember and it's at my mate's house. Then the Middle of Nowhere. In that order :)
K&D are cool. Check out "Suzuki" by Tosca (The D in K&D), and G-Stoned by K&D.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
The KLF
Orb
The Grid
L garnier
JM Jarre (no really)
Transglobal Underground
Members of Mayday
*shrug*
Problem is, what kind of "electronica" do you want?
Just dancy stuff (Carl Cox), Weird ambient stuff (Orb, KLF, Sven Vath), old fashioned stuff (Kraftwerk, JM Jarre), Trancy stuff (anything Goa-esque) or even stuff like Depeche Mode or the synth bands of the eighties (New Order etc etc)
hohum
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Inteligent - Supposedly "smarter" than the genre's norm, tracks adhereing to an Inteligent sub-genre attemt to be more creative than the typical anthem, often times succeeding.
It should be noted, while we're talking about it, that the oft-used "Intelligent Dance Music" moniker was actually created by none other than Brian Behlendorf, head of the Apache project, in 1993.
He named the mailing list "IDM" after Warp's "Artifical Intelligence" compilations.
After I read that, I don't feel so bad using the term anymore. It was (as far as I can tell) never intended to be as pompous as it sounds.
My favorites:
Hardfloor
check their classic TB Resuscitation, as well as the rest of their phenomenal 303-driven works (Respect, Funalogue, Homerun, etc...)
Vapourspace
Themes from Vapourspace remains my all-time favorite album ever, period. The whole thing rocks. Some good tracks on Sweep, too.
Plastikman (Richie Hawtin)
The king of minimalism. I would be remiss if I didn't recommend Spastik, a fantastic track. Check out all of his stuff.
Surgeon
It sounds like you're underwater, but it's bang-up good shit.
Steve Stoll
Hyperrealism is an excellent track
Josh Wink
Find the Tweakin' remix of Higher State of Conciousness-- fantastic breakbeatish house.
Joey Beltram
Classic.
Dieselboy
Drum and bass fun.
DJ Zinc's Super Sharp Shooter is a classic D&B track.
There's a million more, but that's what strikes me as favorites off the top of my head from my dusty record bin. Happy hunting, and thanks for posting this article-- I'm sure I'll find some sweet stuff I've never heard digging through everybody else's recommendations.
What I cannot believe in all this discussion is the pure lack of academic insight. Having spent quite some time studying the roots -- and I mean ROOTS -- of electronic music, i'm sad to see so many associate electronic music with just variants of dance/beats, or something loud. Yes, these are genres, but what you list are not "main" genres.
Why has nobody mentioned the core composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer, or even Max Mathews? What about concepts such as "music concrete", used by well known musicians as The Beatles, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd (maybe even The Who)? These are the real pioneers of electronic music, the real influencers of today's electronic musicians.
Do yourself a favor and search some of those names in Google. You'll be glad you did.
-Q