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.

GET THESE FIRST

[metalhed77]

IMO the best of electronica (not cliched, not trendy, everyone will ask you whot hat great band is)

Plaid
Tortoise
Stereolab
Squarepusher

Might I Suggest

[Myriad]

Of course all music is subjective, even within a particlar classification, being a huge electronica/industrial fan may I recommend the following:

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...

Re:Orbital

[WasterDave]

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

Re:Two Words

[troc]

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

Re:On explaining electronic dance genres

[dietz]

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 [skylab.org], 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.

Re:Essential Dance Music

[Tet]

During the day it plays very mainstream material, but at nights a load of specialist shows come on including a lot of dance music.

Yep, and including virtually NO rock. In days gone by, Radio 1 used to play a good cross-section of music -- mainstream chart stuff during the day, and then a wide spectrum of everything else in the specialist shows at night. These days, however, it plays a wide spectrum of specalist dance oriented shows. There's no rock, no metal, no goth, no industrial, in fact, none of the music I like :-( I'm not expecting a lot. but at the moment, the Radio One rock show consists of a single 2 hour show after midnight on a week day, and even that only really plays mainstream "nu-metal" type rock...

Re:Trance != electronic music

[Izeickl]

Trance IS electronic music, just because you may not like it doesnt throw it out of the genre. While I like Drum & Bass also, the technical difficulty is far less, if you listen closely to tunes from each type, you can hear that -good- Trance has far more to it than -good- Drum & Bass.

Recommendations are as follows:

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, always listen before you buy. Electronic artists are constantly fighting against sounding exactly what they've released before, so how much you like one album won't be indicative of how much you like the artist.

But you should start with...
1) Oribtal. Specifically, the "Insides" album with bonus CD.
2) Juno Reactor. "Beyond the Infinite" is more techno-Japanese; "Shango" is more techno-African; "Bible of Dreams" is really good. And "Pistolero" [track 1, Shango] is a must-hear, regardless of whether you like the album of not. ;-)
3) Earlier Delerium albums such as "Semantic Spaces" might interest you. Go back too far and you'll wind up listening to Front Line Assembly, get their latest ("Poem") and you'll be listening to normal songs.
4) The Enigma "LSD Remixes" collection is surprisingly good. Make sure it's the remixes, not the original.
5) Information Society, "Don't Be Afriad". Like NiN, but with talent and a knife-sharpener.
6) New Order, "The Rest of New Order" remixes, only has one bad track on it.
7) And even though you said you didn't like Moby, you should listen to his "Songs [1992-1998]" album to make sure. He's changed and not entirely for the better.

the electronic music everyone forgets

[thexdane]

everyone always lists and discusses mindless and well in my opinion crappy electronic music and that's what they always consider that the whole electronic genre. however paul oakenfold and the like aren't the only nor the best form of electronic music out there. so here's some good AND NON-riaa labels, well mostly.

vnv nation - one of the hotest ebm bands out there right now, good beats HIGHLY intellegent lyrics with a lot of meaning and feeling. piro from megatokyo loves them.
covenant- sweedish based band with big bouncy beats and great lyrics.
icon of coil- trancier band on their new album really hard hitting on their original one but still a very high energy band.
apoptygma berzerk- trancy type sythpop from norway, pretty good and rather dancy.
haujobb- drum and bass influnced music that is very catchy and relaxing. side projects are cleen/cleener and a couple others
funkervogt- harsher beat and sampled music that deals a lot with war and uses distorted vocals
fictional- a better version of funkervogt
ravenous- same as fictional
cevin key- from the legendary band skinnny puppy with many side projects including plateau, hilt, download and a couple others.
and one- the kings of synthpop, really catchy and fun lyrics, songs are both good and funny.
phil western- formly part of download, but a great minimalist techno artist who's website is colourspeaks [colourspeaks.com]
:wumpscut:- harsh sample oriented dance music influenced by skinny puppy.
wolfshiem- great synthpop band that's depeche mode influenced.
das ich- great german electronic band that sings entirely in german
decoded feedback- very good and dancy sample based band with great lyrics and no they aren't using distortion, tho it sounds like it.
most of these bands can be found at metropolis rrecords [metropolis-records.com]

i have however left a couple bands for the last cause they practically started the whole genre and they are also on some riaa labels due to popularity and such

skinny puppy- one of the most influencial bands in the electronic field today and their canadian to boot
front 242- the band that started the whole ebm, electronic body music, about 20 years ago now and still going strong, with music that is even revolutionary now.
frontline assembly and delerium yes these guys are the SAME people, well person now since it's just bill leeb. frontline is a beat, synth and sample oriented music where delerium is more ambient in earlier incarnations and more dancy and female based lyrics in their later releases

as for buying these bands there are several good websites
metropolis-records mail order [industrial-music.com]
isolation tank [isotank.com]
storming the base of the alien foe [stormingthebase.com] a friend's record mail order service

i hope this helps you out

Some Great Bands...

[NiTr|c]

...for electronica, or EBM (electronic body music) are from Germany mostly. I'm an avid fan of this type of music and some of my favorite bands for the sound are:
VNV Nation
Apoptygma Berzerk
Funker Vogt
Wumpscut (one guy but extremely talented)
L'Ame Immortelle
Pzycho Bitch
Pandique (local german band, extremely hard to find)
Neurotic Fish
Beborn Beton
Front 242 (old but also extremely talented)
Icon of Coil
State Of The Union

I'm unsure if all of these bands fall into what you're looking for but I am sure they all use electronic means to produce their music. My favorite of the bunch, VNV Nation, used (mostly) nothing but a PC to produce their entire recent CD entitled Futureperfect. They even provided a list of software/hardware they had at their disposal.

If you're looking for a place you can order the music online, I suggest Darkland Music [darklandmusic.com], or the record label Metropolis Records [metropolis-records.com]. Also, under Metropolis's website, they have a list of bands that are signed under them, all of which are electronica/EBM. I hope this helps you out.

Yet another list from yet another random /.er

[raygundan]

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.

Unbelievable...

[Quanza]

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.