Ishkur's 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...
- 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.