Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music
The link
What it is
“Ishkur’s
Guide to Electronic Music” is all-encompassing guide to electronic music, its subgenres, and its history. It contains a massive amount of samples, as well as
rather adult language.
The
original guide was written by Kenneth John Taylor (“Ishkur”), and hosted on
ishkur.com (which currently only displays a “new version
coming soon, really” comic). The linked version of the guide is “version 2.5”
hosted on techno.org, and dates from the early 2000’s.
The tone of
Ishkur’s guide is best described as irreverent. Ishkur’s biting sarcasm will
enlighten you as to why your favorite genre sucks, and you will somehow thank
him for it.
What it means to me
Some of my
favorite memories from my college days involve sitting behind a computer with
Ishkur’s guide in one window and a file sharing program in the other, and finding so much new music. The guide
covers over a hundred subgenres, with four to twelve carefully looped samples
each.
Ishkur’s
guide maps out the development of electronic music from the “musique concrete”
of the fifties, via the “let’s of weird things with synthesizers” period of the
sixties into the 70’s and 80’s, when electronic music in various forms became
mainstream (the exact 'when' depends on whether you count Disco, honestly). It
touches on essential tools like the 303 drum machine, the SL 1200 turntable
(“it has an average lifespan of 10 DJ careers”), and yes, the Amen Break.
Beyond
being a sample
database with funny comments, Ishkur’s guide to Electronic Music is also a
surprisingly personal history of one man's experience with the genre, and includes 'front lines' commentary on the dance explosion of the 90’s and its subsequent commercialization. Ishkur is not afraid to let his own biases
show (and acknowledge them), even if that means admitting his obsession with Italo
Disco. The writing style is a mix of authoritative and personal, and is all the better for it: any serious attempt to write a definitive electronic music guide would probably die in committee. Music originating in the party scene needs a certain amount of lightheartedness.
Read
Ishkur’s guide for the history, the snark, or just to nod along and say “Yep,
that’s it”. Don’t forget to open YouTube or your streaming service of choice.
This blog post was hard enough to write, as I kept being distracted by samples;
I’m going to stop writing now and set up some playlists.
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