- House and Techno are shown as having independent roots, however they are deeply intertwined.
- There is a big important relationship between Rap and Funk and R&B, and even Disco. missing here.
- Why does Pendulum (a band) get a node on here? There is no such genre as Pendulum.
- Missing genres that are fairly important (Halftime D&B, Jungle (not just Ragga Jungle))
- Lots of questionable genres on here (Freeland breaks? really? As in Adam Freeland?.. Come on no one ever talked about Freeland breaks as a distinct genre)
Anyways this is pretty much an impossible task given the multidimensional relationships between all the genres, and an endless variety of perspectives and nomenclatures. So, great job Ishkur keep it up!
Ishkur’s site was originally a parody - it was meant to make fun of the scene, the scenesters and the people who take genres really seriously. I DJ’ed (very badly) and threw raves in the 1990s and completely understood it in the context of that time. And he was from Vancouver - Vancouver had a very interesting scene. That’s the nicest possible way to put it.
For example, there was the drill and bass DJ who spoke of Freeland basslines in reverential terms (before stealing and pawning off about $5k worth of a friend’s synthesizers). I still hate that dude. Or the drug dealers who dressed like happy hardcore fans but maintained that hard house was the one true genre. Or there was the great PLUR debate of 1994 when peace, love, unity and respect fell out of favour. It was replaced by Hakim Bey-esque temporary autonomous zones.
(I wish I was making that part about TAZ up. In our defense, we were all high and kind of felt like we were changing the world like our parents did in the 1960s.)
25 years later, the scenesters are all in their late 40s or 50s and the satire seems lost. But those of old folks who were around back in the day remember all the arguments and love how this site parodies them.
> Or there was the great PLUR debate of 1994 when peace, love, unity and respect fell out of favour.
Maybe this is deeply familiar to people who were adjacent to it, but how did this happen, and what replaced them? Were these things a kind of motto of some scene or community, and then did other people challenge that status?
And were the proponents of these things called "PLURalists"?
Second, this is going back a long time and I was pretty full of myself back in the day so some of what I’m about to say is kind of embarrassing. I’ll try to give a modern interpretation of it as well.
My biggest and most enduring memory was when rave had its own September that never ended. Scenes used to be small and tight. It was primarily because promoters didn’t have the money for advertising AND traditional venues refused to host parties. When scenes were small they were very loving and open. It was a place where everyone who didn’t fit in, fit in. Society at large was very homophobic and conservative. But none of that mattered - if you were there, you were cool and we all loved you exactly how you were. Now I get lost here because MDMA was involved. Was it PLUR or the fact that a lot of people were on the same drug? I don’t know the answer. But I do know that I was completely straight edge in the beginning but got deeper involved as soon as I started taking MDMA. I’m leaning more towards believing it was just the drugs.
But then things changed all of a sudden and turnouts started to double or triple. Then there was serious money to be made and the early scene was diluted by people who wanted to make money. That brought in drug dealers, more business minded promoters and eventually sponsorships.
Drugs started to change. Alcohol went from club nights to every single party. When alcohol hit, we had to start hiring the kind of security that would work as bouncers in bars. Some had great attitudes. Others just wanted to beat the shit out of kids.
Cocaine was always a small part of the scene and that was an issue but methamphetamine got much more popular. Meth and alcohol are a bad combination and when security is violent everyone is violent. So fights started getting more common. And as word got out that there were drug dealers with a lot of cash at events, a new element started coming to rob them. Then the weapons came.
Around this time, promoters started putting the words “no thugs, no drugs, no weapons” and “ROAR” (right of admission refused) on flyers. The first actually attracted more of the wrong kinds of people. And the second pissed off the right kinds of people.
DJ’s also started getting ripped off by promoters. In the early days, they kind of filled the role of shaman. A lot of those early DJs who loved the music and the scene stopped playing records. It was just too expensive to be professional and want to throw a good show if there was a 40% chance you would get paid. Everyone was a DJ so the problem didn’t seem acute. But in retrospect, losing a lot of those really early DJs hurt the scene more than we knew. Those DJs used to play for free for new promoters, help them get their feet wet and introduce them to all their DJ friends. They were the on ramp to professionalism.
Looking back, a big problem was that we didn’t believe in anything. Philosophically, we saw ourselves as the 1990s version of flower children. But in the 1960s they had civil rights and the Vietnam war. We had hedonism. In the beginning, we kind of had gay rights but when the September that never ended hit we brought a lot of people in at once. Really deep homophobia came into the scene. In 1992, I could go to parties and see gay men openly and comfortably celebrating being in love. By 1996, there was a high probability of gay bashing at parties. By 1998, the scene was as toxic as high schools.
Basically, parties were neither peaceful nor loving. There was no unity and at $5 for a bottle of water, promoters weren’t even demonstrating respect for their guests. PLUR just didn’t exist and it was kind of like believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
But here’s where I get lost in being full of myself. We stopped throwing parties in 2002. I was burned out and didn’t care anymore. Did any of that actually happen or was I just so self absorbed that I couldn’t see through my burn out and depression?? I believe it happened and all my friends from that time agree. But they were part of the crew and we threw parties together so they were maybe just as burned out, tired and depressed as me??
I love your question and wish I would have thought of that back in the day. Right now, I’m envisioning a costume party where the theme was ‘stereotypical ravers.’ It would have great to throw that party with you and we could have had so much fun.
The most common plural form (at least in my city) was “positive party people”. “Rave” quickly became a very bad swear word.
Isn't that Drumstep? If not, I'd love some examples because that sounds very much up my alley.
> Why does Pendulum (a band) get a node on here? There is no such genre as Pendulum.
The guide actually explains that if you click on the dot:
"Pendulum is not the name of this genre. It's technically called Nu Jumpup or Nu Skool Jumpup but I call it Pendulum because Pendulum is more than just an artist or a genre.
It is an event.
It is one of those events that is so monumental that when people talk about history, they unconsciously draw a line between stuff that happened before the event and stuff that happened after (ie: "we are living in a post X world", where X is something earth-shattering like the atomic bomb or 9/11). We are witness to one of these life-changing events in Drum n Bass. Welcome to the Pendulum Age."
In my experience drumstep tends to just be a cross between dubstep and DnB, whereas half-time is usually just DnB but at half the tempo. Some of it almost could be considered hip hop instrumentals but with the sound design of DnB. The two groups in that scene that come to mind are Ivy Lab and SHADES, though lots of DnB and IDM artists have half-time tracks (voljum, Noisia, Chee, Kursa, Seppa, and so on).
This is how I see it too - drumstep was basically dub/brostep sped up to d&b tempo, and with a few d&b stylings, whereas halftime is really doing d&b at half-time, often falling into dancehall and hiphop rhythms. They end up having some things in common, but coming at it from different angles.
I'm a big fan of a lot of stuff from Fixate, Fracture, Dr. Jeep, Ivy Lab, dBridge, Dub Phizix. None of these artists are exclusively in the genre, but they all have some great examples of this kind of music.
-> House and Techno
They are related and close in proximity (Detroit and Chicago), but you will see a lot of the older DJ and Producers from the era tell the story has Techno being inspired by the sounds of automobile industry in Detroit and House being a descendant of Disco with influences from New York.
- Moombahton is shown as derived from Miami Bass, however it's a hybrid of Reggaeton and Dutch House. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moombahton
- Reggaeton is shown as being derived from R&B. It's much more of an offshoot of Dancehall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dembow
- House and Techno are shown as having independent roots, however they are deeply intertwined.
- There is a big important relationship between Rap and Funk and R&B, and even Disco. missing here.
- Why does Pendulum (a band) get a node on here? There is no such genre as Pendulum.
- Missing genres that are fairly important (Halftime D&B, Jungle (not just Ragga Jungle))
- Lots of questionable genres on here (Freeland breaks? really? As in Adam Freeland?.. Come on no one ever talked about Freeland breaks as a distinct genre)
Anyways this is pretty much an impossible task given the multidimensional relationships between all the genres, and an endless variety of perspectives and nomenclatures. So, great job Ishkur keep it up!