So I was looking back at some of my earlier posts, and noticed that other than a few brief mentions of Daft Punk, I've almost completely ignored electronic music. That's not exactly earth shattering, I've ignored a lot a of different genres (I'm as aware as anyone that I've made a glaring omission of Mongolian throat singing, and I fully intend to rectify that at some point), but I do tend to listen to a lot of electronic music, and so I wanted to spend some time this week and talk about this stuff, because it interests me.
One reason that I haven't spent a lot of time talking about this stuff is that electronic is just... just a freaking huge subject, you guys. It's a genre like "oldies" is a genre, but somehow even more vaguely defined. ...HOW. I mean, I know I complained about how genres tend to be very vaguely defined in my post on New Wave, but 'electronic music' is one of the single worst offenders, because all that word means is that it's made using electronic tools. So, technically at this point a hefty majority of music that's professionally produced, not to mention almost all pop music since the mid 90's has, at the very least, electronic elements even if it would not be considered electronic per se. It's a mess.
Conveniently, however, there are a ton of sub-genres (and sub-sub genres, yea, even unto the seventh generations), so if you like this kind of thing you can get a fairly solid grasp on the electronic scene with relative ease.
-FAIR WARNING- I both find this stuff really interesting, and have only a moderate grasp of the underlying principles, so the next paragraph or so may be excessively obtuse for many readers, and might also be wildly inaccurate for all readers. You know the risks.
What I'm mostly going to be talking about in this post is the stuff that's referred to overall as "Electronic Dance Music", or EDM. This is, again, a pretty catch all term, but it refers to stuff that most people think of a electronic: entirely synthetic instrumentation, big, repetitive, driving bass and drum loops, and typically not a lot of vocalizing, if any. EDM breaks down into a lot of other things, but I'm going to ignore most of them and focus in on the two types of electronic that I tend to listen to most often: house and dubstep. Both of these are frequently reviled, and there's a very good reason for that; namely a lot of the music produced under those umbrellas sucks hard.
I personally believe that's one of the reasons why stuff like dubstep is so constantly and ferociously reviled; it's not just because only a small segment of humanity finds that kind of music at all appealing (although that's definitely a factor), but also because bad EDM composes a huge quantity of EDM as a whole, even more so than you'll see in most genres, and crappy EDM is even more annoying than crappy music in general. When you hear a crappy pop song, it's typically boring, asinine, and/or forgettable (generally: and). When you hear a crappy EDM song, it tends to be all of those, but also horrendously unpleasant, and a lot of the time they're also ferocious earworms that get stuck in your head and are impossible to dislodge. I won't be linking to any examples, for reasons that should be obvious. You are all welcome.
Anyway, I have a lot more to say about this, but if I let myself get really truly started on the topic I may never get around to actually mentioning specific song, so I'm going to save that frankly enormous tangent for an addendum post that I will eventually write whether or not people care, because this stuff's fun to talk about. So without further ado, let's start off with some deadmaus! This is pretty much classic house, which is to say it's a 4/4 beat at right around 140 bpm, with a structure that starts out relatively simplistic but builds with increasing complexity throughout the song until tapering off and fading out on the drum loop. I promised myself I wouldn't talk about the mechanical aspects of this stuff but it turns out I'm bad at it.
In case that description of house music was as incoherent as I suspect it may have been, tough. I don't have have the technical understanding to describe it in a more user friendly way, so here's a Wikipedia article on it, and best of luck to those who are interesting in finding out more regarding the mechanics. For any remaining readers, here's another house song. Like most of the house I like, I know basically nothing about the music or musician, and found it by the recommendation of a friend. If you feel dubious about the genre, just listen until you at least hit the 45 second mark, because it has a fantastic break.
And on the subject of fantastic breaks, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to segue into dubstep. Yes, I like dubstep; haters to the left. I feel like I have to spend just a little bit more time talking about the musical protocols of dubstep, because it seems like most people have no idea what dubstep is, including those who make it. It's a rather contested genre; different people want to describe it in different ways, but as a general rule dubstep has about the same beats per minute range as house and most types of EDM (135-142 BPM, generally speaking), but is distinguished by not having the drums hit on every measure, which creates the very hollow, nervous feeling that makes dubstep so distinctive. I'm not sure how to properly explain this idea, so let me give an example: Gizmo by the artist Datsik. This is actually just as fast as both the house songs I linked to earlier, but the drums don't hit on every beat and it has much more distorted bass, which makes a very visceral effect on the listener. Listening to dubstep makes you want to flail violently and headbutt things. In case that description didn't make it obvious, it also tends to be very polarizing. People either love it or hate it, but they rarely feel ambivalent.
Frankly, I'll be a bit surprised if many of the people reading this ending liking a lot of the music that I recommend today, as it has a considerably narrower appeal than most of the stuff I talk about, but I like it and want to share some of this stuff with people who would generally skip it, even if I don't end up converting anyone to it. Therefore, let me share just a couple more songs.
Obviously I have to mention Skrillex, if only because he's the only dubstep artist that many people have heard of. I personally like quite a lot of his stuff, but I've found that he tends to be rather hit-or-miss. When I like his stuff I like it a lot, but when I don't it's just incredibly annoying. That being said, my favorite tracks by him are definitely Slats Slats Slats, Reptile's Theme, and Scatta. His stuff is much more melodic and in some ways more easily listenable than a lot of 'classic' dubstep, which means he gets a lot of hate, but honestly the songs are good. They're fun and silly, and would be good to headbang to, except trying to headbang to these songs is a great way to get whiplash really fast. Keeping time with breaks is not conducive to vertebral health.
And lastly, here are two of my all time favorite electronic songs: first, Winter Winds by Fytch, who's some random guy in the Netherlands who makes music that I really like. This is my favorite song of his, mostly because it's awesome. Second, this one is technically more of a mashup than a song, and also it's a seven 1/2 minute dance routine. WATCH IT. WATCH ALL OF IT. I promise it is well worth the time spent. The song(s) is(are?) fantastic, and the choreography and execution are both perfect. You will not regret it, unless possibly you have brain problems.
And most lastly of all, here's a bonus song. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I have a very soft spot in my heart for classic surf rock, and by far my favorite surf group is the Ventures, because they were great and had fantastic steel guitar riffs. Walk Don't Run has been a favorite of mine for as long as I can remember (literally. I learned about them because my dad had one of the records and he played it constantly when I was growing up).
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