Josh passes along Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music, an electronic music family tree. In this Flash-driven app, Ishkur illustrates the origins and derivations of what appears to be every electronic music sub-genre.
Looking over the genres — which could make for an amusing afternoon in itself — I was surprised to find genres that I didn’t even knew existed (“Psytekk”, anyone?). And, likewise, I wasn’t aware that Eurodance and Eurobeat were separate genres (the former is the parent genre of the latter).
One of the more amusing entries is for the catch-all genre “Not Trance”:
Let it be said that electronic music NEVER learns how to “leave the audience wanting more”. Instead, like a spoiled, immature little child, it shamelessly and greedily exploits any whiff of success it sees, to cartoonish extremes. Somehow, a mutant form of trance evolved from Epic evolved from Anthem drenched itself in the “should’ve been put to rest years ago” one-trick breakdown-build-anthem formula and senselessly driven it to new, insane levels of asinine. […]
when it comes to music, it really shouldn’t surprise one that there are “genres” that one doesn’t know. Music critics and other such geeks tend to over-sub-genreize. Do I know what screamo-emo is? yes. Do I need to know what it is? no. The distinction really doesn’t matter in a lot of cases. Distinguishing straight indie rock from post rock, on the other hand, does hold some value.
(Oh yeah, all my examples relate to indie because that’s what I know)