Recommendations for Electronica Newbie

Hello there. My interest has been recently piqued regarding electronica (after a midnight-to-dawn forest revelry) and I would love to delve deeper into the music, but don't know where to start. So far I like Zero 7, Squarepusher, Twink, Green Velvet is catchy though not as interesting as some others. I really love innovation...any suggestions? Any SGers make their own beats?

Suggestion:

Buy a sledgehammer

Smash plastic keyboard into tiny pieces

Buy a guitar or bass or some drums

Don't take any of that ecstasy shit - eat some acid

Rock out



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Hmm...I haven't heard of any of those artists! lol.

It depends on what you like. This is what I recommend for the following genres:

Something mainstream: Chemical Brothers or Basement Jaxx

Hard house: I recommend any Lisa Lashes compilation from "Tidy Trax," a record label based in the UK. Or maybe try DJ Irene

Hard trance: JFK is nice...so is my local SF DJ friend Uphonic.

Techno: Go for The Crystal Method

Funky house: Cassius or Alex Copher

Finally, as the ultimate resource, check out the record label "Astralwerks." They have basically all the mainstream electronica names and you should be able to find something you like there. Hope it helped you out a little!

I make my own beats, but I don't think I have the bandwidth to post anything up here, at the moment.

Electronica, for me at least, has a pretty broad definition.

My recommendations (for the beginner), would be:

Massive Attack
Lunatic Calm
Dj Shadow (I know, I know, he's supposed to be hip-hop)
Lo-Fidelity All Stars
St, Germain
Howie B.
Morcheeba
Portishead

and if you're feeling adventurous,
kid606

Oh yeah, there is a DJ called Rob Gee that mixes punk with really hard, fast beats, his genre is "Hardcore" DO NOT confuse this with HAPPY HARDCORE as Happy Hardcore will give you seizures and profuse amounts of nausea.

I have some friends that do that stuff an would like to hear what people think of them. I don't get it at all, but they seem to have a pretty good following. Has anyone heard of Freaky Chakra and Single Cell Orchestra?

Rob Gee is hilarious.

But after about five minutes I have to shut him off. Most of the time I need a bit more subtlety to my music (not all the time, though).

bassment jaxx, crystal method, prodigy, and fatboyslim and anyone like that is imho opinion extremely mainstream and crap.

massive attack, portishead, the orb, and other trip hop acts mentioned here are a good place to start for underground electronica.

for pure underground techno you have to look into djs that produce. richie hawtin, jeff mills, surgeon, ben sims, samuel l session, mhonolink, marco carola, rino cerrone, misstress barbara, and adam beyer. labels to check out; user, tresor, utility plastics, m-nus, underground resistance, sls, cycle, plus 8, zync, dynamic tension, counterbalence, axis, zenit, purpose maker, and relentless.

i can't really speak on who is good in other subgenres of electronic music, but you will find your own personal niche. jungle is tight, house is a staple, happy hardcore is universally excepted by all as crap, and ambient is for k heads. of course i'm making sweeping generaliztions, and to each their own.

i produce as well as dj. i would be happy to send you off my newest mix cd to get you on the right path. drop me a line with your address.

I am not the authority on this subject at all, but I was gonna suggest squarepusher as he is one of the peopel in the genre that I appreciate. other than that I agree to try starting with some mainstreamers, and then get suggestions from other fans of those bands. like aphex twin. the richard d james album is one that I like, evne though I dont liek that much electronica, and tortoise may or may not qualify for this classification, but hte guy who turned me onto aphextwin and squarepusher also got me trying mouse on mars and tortoise. all pretty easilly accessible bands.
-beep bop boop bop

fuckin' hippie!!

but, really- just go listen to some disco. that's where all house/techno/electronica comes from anyway.

and this is from someone who LIKES electronica! a lot!

thanks for all the input so far - I have quite a list to take to my local record stores (i use the term 'record' only as a happy colloquialism).

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

i've heard of them.

i've never HEARD them, but i've heard of them.

and oh, my god- massive attack, portishead, and the orb are 'underground'??? since when????

and i guess i'm mainstream and crap b/c i like fatboy slim and basement jaxx, and anything like like that

but really, though- i just like to dance. i don't put much thought or analyzation (is that even a word? it looks weird to me) into any kind of electronic music, except i personally prefer to have as little singing as possible- it distracts from my dancing

You can't go wrong with Autechre. Prodigy (especially the OG stuff), Gescom (pre-Autechre) or Orbital in general.

I know some of these have already been mentioned, but check out Cinematic Orchestra, Amon Tobin, Richie Hawtin as Plastikman, Air Liquide, Aphex Twin, and Mixmaster Morris (aka The Irresistable Force).

There was a brilliant set of compilations in the early 90's called Trance Europe Express and Wasted by the same company I believe? Artificial Intelligence is another great compilation.

Let's see, for jungle, check out just about anything on Ram Records, Virus Recordings, No U-Turn Records, Metaformal, especially anything by Pieter K.

there is no musical god greater than the detroit grand poobahs.

*tee hee hee*

oh and bionicfemme, hardcore & happy hardcore were originally the same thing. they just branched off at one point and went in two different directions. if you listen to the undlerlying beats you can hear it.

PRUDENCE said:
and oh, my god- massive attack, portishead, and the orb are 'underground'??? since when????
MINIMALISM said: Well I'm trying to recall the last time I saw a Massive Attack video in regular rotaton on MTV, hmm... I can't say I ever have. I mean c'mon Dirty Vegas and Moby are on fricken' VH1. How sad is that?

PRUDENCE said:
and i guess i'm mainstream and crap b/c i like fatboy slim and basement jaxx, and anything like like that
MINIMALISM said:
If you elect to take what I said personally that is your choice. I said it was my opinion that the bands were crap. I don't know you, nor have I formed any opinions about you. To me saying these bands are underground at all is like saying Avril Levign and Pink are Punk. But, I also said 'to each their own' in my post. If it moves you more power to it. It's obviously harder in some places in the US to run down to the local 'record,' and I do mean 12" vinyl record shop, and find good underground electronic music.

well, i didn't really take offense. that's why i put that silly tongue sticking out face on there. fatboy slim and basement jaxx ARE mainstream as far as electronica goes. but, that doesn't stop me from liking them. i likes what i likes.

and, i don't watch mtv or vh1, so i never use that as a guide as to which artists are mainstream and which are underground. i work at a 'bottom of the dial' radio station, and i live in an area where the 'underground' is pretty much the mainstream. so, my own interpretation of which music is underground goes WAY beyond what gets shown on mtv. that's just me, though. i sometimes forget that for the average person a lot of stuff that i consider mainstream and played-out ARE underground.

well, that and the orb was used in a volkswagen commerciala few years ago.

one of the best electronic songs is the theme song from the 80's show 'knight rider.' i'm serious!

i also called googuse a fucking hippie, and i KNOW he knows i wasn't serious about that! he and i actually have more in common with our musical tastes than most people here.

Quick list of stuff I'd put in the "Can't go wrong" category:

Aphex Twin
BT
Future Sound Of London
Fluke
DJ Shado
Photek
Lords Of Acid
Any of the Global Underground compilations

Fuck, how could I forget?

Chemical Brothers
The Crystal Method
Portishead

and the "w" in DJ Shadow

'boards of canada' rock my world on a very frequent basis.

as if a recommendation from a strange monkey isn't enough, the have the 2nd best website in the world....

boards of canada dot net

edit: ooooops, wrong url :]

[Edited on Sep 08, 2002 by partiallyblind]

Orbital - Orbital 2, Snivilization ( a politically charged electronic album ), and In Sides are all gems
Underworld - dubnobasswithmyheadman is a great album, Moby wishes he did this
Amon Tobin - anything he does is gold. he mixes everything from jazz to drum and bass to brazilian percussion to hip hop, and puts his own twist of freshness on it.
Aphex Twin - we all know and love Richard James
Autechre - someone else mentioned this, a good pick
Wagon Christ/Luke Vibert - a weird comical mix of hip hop/drum n bass. this guy has ADD or something.
www.tokyodawn.com (select the tokyo dawn records logo) - this has a lot of great electronic stuff for free download; make sure you have an Ogg Vorbis plugin for your winamp. Check out Looza especially.

That's all I can think of right away. Have fun.