Ishkurs Guide to Electronic Music

Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music is a guide to electronic music by Kenneth John Taylor. Started in 2000, it has gone through several different incarnations, including a notable stay at Newgrounds, before ending up at Digitally Imported.

The guide begins with a brief overview of some of the equipment used in making music, and then turns into a massive web of genres and samples. One can lose hours just listening to everything. The genre descriptions themselves are extremely opinionated, and have a stated priority of entertainment over information. Also notable is the amount of hair-splitting involved, even as he criticizes promoters and artists for coming up with a plethora of genre names.

Partial list of artists featured:

 * Aphex Twin
 * Aqua
 * A Tribe Called Quest
 * The Beatles
 * Black Eyed Peas
 * Bjork
 * George Clinton
 * Cypress Hill
 * Daft Punk
 * Donna Summer
 * Eazy-E
 * Eurythmics
 * Herbie Hancock
 * Megumi Hayashibara
 * Ice Cube
 * Ice T
 * KMFDM
 * Kraftwerk
 * Lil Jon
 * LL Cool J
 * Mary J Blige
 * Massive Attack
 * Milli Vanilli
 * Ministry
 * Nine Inch Nails
 * Pet Shop Boys
 * Pink Floyd
 * Public Enemy
 * The Prodigy
 * Sir Mix a Lot
 * Wesley Willis
 * Wu-Tang Clan

Tropes common to the genre descriptions include:

 * Accentuate the Negative
 * Caustic Critic
 * Complaining About Music You Don't Like
 * Darker and Edgier: Discussed.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: Funky House.
 * Apparently, Gabber House is cheesy.
 * Fan Hater
 * Gushing About Music You Like
 * Jerkass
 * Lighter and Softer: Discussed. Also one his berserk buttons.
 * National Stereotypes: According to Ishkur:
 * French House (think Daft Punk) is "the only reason why the world does not sack France."
 * Britain is to blame for the dullness of certain genres, like Trip Hop.
 * American culture (at least, in American Hardcore) needs to show how "manly" it is all the time, but every time it does, it looks even more stupid.
 * Sarcasm Mode: "Rap music was invented by Blondie."
 * Schedule Slip: The current version, 2.5, is from 2005. 3.0 has been promised for a while, and has yet to materialize. He's still working on it, don't you worry...
 * Is the vaporware thing for real?
 * Widget Series: If something has any tangential connection to Japan, little girls with robots will be mentioned.
 * Ishkur also compares Japan to Toontown due to its weirdness.