Always looking for new avenues of music to explore and although I have ripped off the "Introduce me to the Smiths" thread I think an entire genre should take a lot more time to get into and explain. So... educate me.

Well, I can make you a CD to begin with! (Pots makes a good mix too, on the chilled side of things).

To begin with however, 'Electronica' is an awkward term, disliked by many artists. But rather than get into that debate, here are some recommendations encompassing many of electronic dance music's (often shortened to EDM) sub-genres, of which there are many.

Legends:

Kraftwerk: Trans Europe Express, Computerworld.
Tangerine Dream: Rubycon, Tangram
Brian Eno: music for airports

Classics:

Orbital: Brown, Snivilsation, In Sides
Underworld: Second toughest in the infants
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient works 1 & 2
Global Communications: 76:14
Future Sound of London: Lifeforms
Biosphere: Substrata

Contemporaries:

Plaid: Rest Proof Clockwork, Not for Threes
Ulrich Schnauss: Far Away Trains Passing by
Autechre: (Can't think right now!)

There are SOOOO many people I have missed out, and entire sub-genres too, but if you investigate any of the above, they will inevitably lead you to other artists and sounds. Let me know if you'd like a disc putting together! That's probably the best way to go about discovering what you like...

I knew I could count on you Adam, I'll pm you about a CD if that's ok.

Fila Brazillia - crackin stuff

No probs Dave.

Here are some more essential albums anyway:

The Orb: Adventures beyong the ultraverse
Hybrid: Wide Angle
Leftfield: Leftism
The Prodigy: The Prodigy Experience (yes, it's still the best)
The Chemical Brothers: Exit Planet Dust

And more names - Squarepusher, Banco de Gaia, Eat Static, Talvin Singh, Bent, The Egg, Lemon Jelly,

autechre, chicks on speed, venetian snares, four tet, coldcut, hexstatic, kid koala and amon tobin are all good 'uns.

generally, check the Ninja Tune and warp records web pages for hot stuff

A good starting point could be compilations such as Orbital's 'Work' or the Chemical Bruvvers single collection.

Would people consider the likes of Depeche Mode & Human League to be electronica - the League Unlimited Orchestra version of Dare still sounds brilliant today.


Certainly is.

Certainly some musical food for thought, and with a jessop CD promised, all I can say is thankyou.

My favourite album title ever.



Eeeee! I cannot wait for the Big Chill - Hexstatic are confirmed to be there again. Coldcut and Four Tet were awesome last year.

you see i think 'electronica' is different to 'electronic' music or dance music.

i see bands like prodigy, chemical brothers, leftfield etc as being electronic music or dance music but electronica ( with the 'a' ) means slightly more leftfield or 'odd' - stuff that you listen to nodding your head rather than dancing.

so for me electronica is stuff like eno, four tet, autechre, aphex twin plus newer guys like dntel, album leaf, sybarite, blah de blah.

i don't know if thats what you meant, ingram, but thats how i see it.

and if you want i would be happy to burn you a copy of 'everything your heart desires, the electronica introductory extravaganza' featuring artists such as dntel, sybarite, ulrich schnauss, erland oye, four tet, can, album leaf, mum, arthur russell and howard jones. actually, i haven't got any howard jones but if i did i would stick it on there.

Hmmm....I'm 100% shite at classifying music. I just know what I like.

Exactly what I meant pots.

ah! tres bon

i knew being really anal about music would come in handy one day.

Interesting although I wouldn't categorise Eno as Electronica (whatever it is) he belongs in to the minimalist school having more in common with Eric Satie, Claude Debussy and John Cage
A few other suggestions - Boards Of Canada "Music Has The Right To Children" is pretty much an essential purchase (more than say Plaid or Orbital),
DJ Shadow "Entroducing",
Terry Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved Air",
The Bladerunner Soundtrack
and the genre defining album "Chill Out" by the KLF.

I'm very confused! What is Electronica? Never understood the term and with all the names mentioned so far it seems its just music thats "electronic" based - I've seen everything from Republica to Moby to Add N To X in Electronica sections in shops, but I wouldn't normally put them in the same group. When I used to buy my old Aphex Twin singles they were always in the Ambient/Techno section!

Would John Carpenter and early Simple Minds be considered Electronica? Death In Vegas? Lo Fidelity Allstars? Meat Beat Manifesto?(if so that's a few recommendations)

Please help. I am drowning in a sea of genre confusion.

Electronica is the broad-spectrum genre comprising works that are mainly based on electronic sounds or instruments - ambient, techno, house, etc being subsets to define more specifically the type of electronic sound produced by a certain group of artists...


Or something.

Thanks...I think that clarifies it. Which means I have a huge Electronica collection and didn't know it..I think

65 Days Of Static
the most recent Unkle album
the new Four Tet album
any Aphex Twin
Prefuse 79
Battles

ooh, ill play a lot of electronica in my radio show tomorrow night, if you want. ill be pimping it to the max, (as per usual) just before it starts at 7.30, so be on the lookout on these boards then!

That is probably the nearest intended meaning of 'electronica', but I just know that many artists hate the term, so personally I would call the head-nodding bands leftfield electronic music, but even that is awful! I prefer the umbrella term 'EDM', and within that, you have Techno, Ambient Techno, Trance, Ambient blah blah blah. Orbital for example are fairly accurately described within these definitions as 'ambient techno'. There's an excellent animated website which features all these definitions, with music clips of genres, which I'll try to find...



Hmm, obviously, personal favourites had some influence in my recommendations there philt. It could never be an entirely comprehensive list, which is why it's good there are people with tastes in electronic music different to mine here...

As for BoC being more essential than any Orbital - that's just bollocks!!

Woo-hoo!

I found the website. Check this out for anal and pretty damn comprehensive definitions! May I suggest everyone look under 'Downtempo' at the definition of 'electronica'.

Electronic Music Guide

Features some excellent samples from each sub-genre.

Electronica is a lumpy term innit. I agree with most said (though my knowledge of the genre is much diminished in recent years). On behalf of my mate, I'd like to put forward Yello as the german purveyors of artsy nut music did some good stuff under that banner.

Hooray for the Prodigy. Experience was the juicy peach and I drove myself mental on them for years. I do like Jilted Generation though.

what a great site jessop - cheers ( and it's got that jean-jacques perrey tune everyone was trying to remember in the french pop section )

so i was talking with my friend on saturday night about music. he puts on a few nights and he was telling me about this japanese guy he had playing at one club. there is a scene in japan where they write and perform music on gameboys ( don't ask me how ) so this guy was playing screaming white-noise techno off his gameboy, shouting abuse and swearing and throwing scotch eggs at the audience.

give it six months and everyone will be doing it.

I think he used to hang around Budgens in Harlesden a few years ago...

hi I'm new *waves*

but I came straight to the music section and felt the need to lose my cherry here.
I would reccomend radiohead's KID A for some nice all round sounding electonica but indeed radiohead are a guitar band of course but KID A is still one of my personal faves (especially 'idioteque' amazing).

otherwise BoC, anything of ninja tune, even perhaps some early new order stuff (1987 album substance) would probably be a good idea as well, can't go wrong with 'blue manday' I suppose some would say this is where it all started....

You've not met philt, have you?



Seriously though, before Phil goes all purple with rage, I think Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream etc might have something to say about that.

welcome, gunfire!

New Order is a good choice, although I wouldn't quite say that's where it all started. Most electronic dance music is traced back to during the disco and funk era, especially in the USA, when people began using repetitive beats (created by relatively new synthesiser technology) to dance to, and out of these genres came 'House' in places like Detroit and Chicago. Combine this with the experimental use of the new electronic instrumentation - Kraftwerk, Tangerine dream etc - and you spawn many sub-genres. Synthesisers like 303s, 909s and 808s created genres all on their own (Acid House, Techno and so on) just through the sound they made. And that's not to mention the more pop and rock acts which started using synths, which I would include New Order, Human League and Ultravox as some of...

im pretty sure that website was created by god.

best.website.ever

I think you could go even further back... the Doctor Who theme

pretty dang comprehensive ain't it?!

actually, due to my current sickiliness, i wont be doing my radio show till thursday now.

and the fact that ill need time to downlaod albums by like, half the the people on the list.

that concrete musique stuff is damned impressive to have come out of the 50s, but man oh man is it weird

If you're looking for in depth music databases might I also recommend:

All Music

+

Discogs

(Great site)

I love that site. Cheers. It taught me a few things:

a) I have a pretty comprehensive record collection that covers most of the sub-genres...and didn't know it

b) Electronica is a dirty word (at least to guy whose site it is)

c) I was nearly right with the Doctor Who shout

One sub-genre that was missed (or maybe I missed it) was Balaeric Beats...a great little period that had clubs playing everything from The Clash to The Cure, The Residents to Italian House.

NEW ORDER!!!!

No I think it is pretty much accepted that Kaftwerk led and the rest followed. But then the idea of repetition used and popularised by electronic dance music comes from the Minimalist school of classical music - take for example Ravel's "Bolero" which features a hypnotic repetitive tune building to a climax. Now it is overstating (and over simplifying) things to say that this the 1920's version of trance but nevertheless there are similarities. And certainly the bold Maurice influenced the minimalists who came later (Cage, Glass, Reich, Eno). Others include Claude Debussy's "Snowflakes Are Dancing" and of course Eric Satie's Trois Gymnopedies which is basically ground zero for modern ambient / dance music.

Well I think I know what electronica is, so here are some of my recommendations (excluding those already mentioned)

Simple Minds - "I Travel" & "Themes From Great Cities" (forget Don't You Forget About Me onwards...they were an amazing and very experimental band)

Pierre Henry & Michel Colombier - Psyche Rock (a lot of which was borrowed for Futurama)

Walter Carlos - A Clockwork Orange Soundtrack

Golden Claw Music - All Blue Revue (very Aphex Twin-esque CD by ex Pop Will Eat Itself member)

Meat Beat Manifesto - Satyricon

Just on the Dr Who thing - Although Ron Grainer actually wrote the tune Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop did the arrangement. There is a story that the first time he heard her arrangement of the music he actually couldn't believe he'd written it....

I couldn't have put it any better than that, sir. Well played!

The Altogether.

Particularly the David Gray track and the witless sub 1991 rave version of Dr Who which manages not only to sound worse than any of the later re-imaginings of the Dr Who theme that were perpetrated by the rump of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop but also (and astonishingly) sounds more dated that the Ron Grainer / Delia Derbyshire arranged original.

The prosecution rests.

ANYTHING from either the Warp or Leaf labels will rock your electronic world.

Infact theres a Leaf Label sample cd you can get for about £4 which has a track on it that was used in Spaced series one but isnt on the Soundtrack...

Sure, it's far from their best album, I'll admit (record company pressure resulted
in a slightly negative effect on the usual Orbital sound), but I rather like its varied
nature. It'll still get played in preference to anything by BoC.

Must admit I haven't played anything from The Altogether for a long while.

Actually, I've just had an idea...

A very good idea SFA!

"Using only a compass it is possible to draw a circle"

Is that yours Adam?

ah sorry, ingram, that was mine.

i listened to it again the other day and jessop was right - it is all very downtempo. so i was going to do you a new one, then i found a spare copy i burnt for someone else and gave you that one instead. so its all pretty much one tempo, some of the tracks are quite 'samey' but for an introduction its pretty good.

Thanks pots Im listening to it now, very nice/mellow stuff.

Edit: PM tracklist? Thanks.

sorry, lazy. have this.

Thanks. Ahh iTunes, so much love.

up to date stuff: Mylo, Eberg and LCD Sounsystem all released good albums...

It's me - long time no see peeps!!!!

If you're looking at electro but just starting out try Client - electro pop that's classy.

www.client-online.net

The lead singer used to be in dubstar

Thanks for that Kenickie. I absolutely loved Dubstar, especially Sarah's voice, so I'm off to make some purchases next week.