Electronic Music

I am a complete ignorant on this subject, I guess the closest thing to electronic music I had heard until now was Mike Olfield's "Foreign Affair" or Neil Young's "Transformer Man", and I am sure that wouldn't qualify as anything close to electronic, this just shows how clueless I am on this.

Anyway, the other day listening to the "indie" radio station in last.fm I ran into Broken Social Scene's "Alive in 85" and really liked it.

Can anyone give me any suggestion on similar music?

Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Radiohead's Kid A.

Those are some good places to start.

this is a pretty decent site with a timeline.
you might want to check out the wikipedia entry too. Also, look for a video doc online called "Pathways to Music." A bit outdated, but it serves its purpose.

Ellipsis Arts recently put out a reissue of the OHM: The Gurus of Electronic Music 3cd set which serves as a overview of some of the most significant works over the past century. The reissue also comes with a dvd which makes it a very worthwhile purchase, imo.

There's also the Sonic Circuits festival next month which you shouldn't miss if you're curiosity is at all peaked. The lineup this year is incredible.

Kraftwerk, Derrick May, Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Juan Atkins, Richie Hawtin/Plastikman, are all worth checking. IMHO you can pretty much avoid anything called Trance or Progressive.

Originally posted by Barcelona:
I am a complete ignorant on this subject, I guess the closest thing to electronic music I had heard until now was Mike Olfield's "Foreign Affair" or Neil Young's "Transformer Man", and I am sure that wouldn't qualify as anything close to electronic, this just shows how clueless I am on this.

Anyway, the other day listening to the "indie" radio station in last.fm I ran into Broken Social Scene's "Alive in 85" and really liked it.

Can anyone give me any suggestion on similar music?

Go see Massive Attack next Thursday. There's some good electronic music.

For Aphex Twin (because he's so complex) I would start out with "Selected Ambient Works Volume 1", then move on to stuff like "Classics" and the "Richard D. James" LP. He also releases stuff under the name AFX and Polygon Window. AFX's "Chosen Lords" is mindblowing. Great stuff.

for the more ambient side check out yellow 6

some of my favourite electronica…


Daft Punk
M83
Aphex Twin
Four Tet
Orbital
DJ Shadow
Leftfield
and the chemical brothers, but they get a little more dancey (so does daft punk for that matter)

and yes, dance music to me is different than electronic music.

Hey, weren't Thievery Corporation the ambient darlings of this board? Wha'happen?
For me ambient is too monotonous… prefer crazier stuff like Cornelius

I would hardly call Thievery Corp Ambient… They fall in more in the Dub, Acid Jazz, Trip Hop subgenres of Electronic Music. They also have broaden their sound with more vocalists wich Ambient tends to shy away from. Eno and Aphex Twin are examples of Ambient.

Electronica became the catch all genre for modern Electronic music, which added Big Beat (i.e. Chem Bros, Fatboy Slim), Trance, etc etc etc

Like all subgrene's there good and bad artists. There are thousands of artists calling themselves Techno however I only prefer the early innovators from Detroit like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and Jaun Atkins.

House music is just as diverse but no specific favorite artists spring to mine.

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:

House music is just as diverse but no specific favorite artists spring to mine.

just go to Chicago for that.

Derrick Carter
DJ Sneak
Paul Johnson
Mark Farina

also, Armand Van Helden and Todd Terry from NYC.

and Kosmo, dont forget Richie Hawtin!!!!

see above for Richie…

If one is looking to hear some quality house music checkout some of the Everything But The Girl remixes Todd Terry's remix of "Missing" is legendary.

dj? acucrack

www.cracknation.com

Tangerine Dream

orbital

check out the "orbital 2" LP and specifically the "halcyon + on and on" track … really revelatory stuff

Thanks for these recommendations, lots of things to try. Quick question, of the bands recommended, which would be the ones that include in their songs more instruments such as guitars, drums… and I guess less computer stuff. I don't like techno or house, which I consider to be extemely repetitive.

Panic at the disco use both guitars and synths.

Some that haven't been mentioned yet:

squarepusher
Prefuse 73
Bluetech
Bonobo
Caribou
Flanger
Jamie Lidell
Beta Band (not purely electronic but they definitely fall into the trip hop genre at times)
Shit Robot
DFA (James Murphy/Tim Goldsworthy)
The Juan Maclean
Booka Shade
Perry Farrell (I really like his "song yet to be sung" album (only electronic one?)
Nightmares on Wax
The Egg
The Knife

Oh and speaking of four tet, he put out 2 interesting albums with Steve Reid recently.

is that a serious recommendation as so do The Killers…

Most of the artists listed here use only synths, drum machines, sequencers, etc…. Radiohead is a band, some bring in outside musicians and singers like the Thievery Corporation, Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers. My favorite Electronica acts whatever tend to approach tracks as songwriters and arrangers vs just sitting down creating loops.

Also checkout David Holmes who did much of background music for Oceans 11. Dimitri From Paris and Ursala 1000 bring a bit of 60s kitsch to thier productions.

ESL Music is Thievery Corporations Label and a good place to start…
http://www.eslmusic.com/