Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
music.ishkur.comOtherstoryHigh profile
excitedpositive
Debate
40/100
Electronic MusicMusic HistoryOnline Resources
Key topics
Electronic Music
Music History
Online Resources
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music is a comprehensive online resource that has been updated and remains popular, sparking nostalgia and discussion among users about its content, accuracy, and user interface.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
4h
Peak period
78
Day 1
Avg / period
13.6
Comment distribution95 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 95 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 27, 2025 at 6:38 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 27, 2025 at 10:23 AM EDT
4h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
78 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 6, 2025 at 5:21 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45394642Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 6:27:41 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
edit: it's a nice website though.
Half of top ten Techno Beatport tracks, site where EDM djs buy music, sounds like Phuture - Acid Tracks from 1987.
It was made with a 303 and a 808, maybe a 606?
Original, clones, emulations, or samples, that does not matter.
> music == inane "genre" classifications
Sorry, this can't be fixed. You'll just have to deal with the enshittification of the world.
A ported version got made over at: https://ishkur.kenxaj.cyou/
Appears to have all the music files and descriptions from a cursory inspection, although missing Tools, Samples, and Sounds.
Gives credit to Ishkur, recommends checking v3, and was made using: https://github.com/igorbrigadir/ishkurs-guide-dataset/
Thanks for the other link.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071118083704/http://techno.org...
Truly one of the best artifacts of "the old internet". This gives me nostalgia. So many late nights as a teenager learning about the music I loved that seemed so inaccessible where I grew up. Thank you, Ishkur.
A random walk through something like this can be more helpful these days: https://www.music-map.com/ (found on HN last year)
But I still cannot just take someone else project and put my things on top if it ain't open source and it isn't and there seems no indication of wanting collaboration. So I could contact him if I ever made anything, but I cannot just make and release it.
Even within techno (my favorite genre), which is already a quite narrow genre in terms of sounds, the variety of novel sounds birthing new techno sub-genres over the last 10-15 years has been wild.
To give a recent "mainstream" example, Odd Mob has created a certain sound that blew up in popularity despite not fitting neatly in any of the existing boxes we had (tracks like Get Busy, Losing Control, Palm Of My Hands), other producers copied it and by now you have anonymous shitposters on social media complaining that most new songs sound like they were made by him.
https://rateyourmusic.com/genres/
...but why?
Some people will care about this.
Plus the one 15 hour mix across genres: https://www.mixcloud.com/Ishkur/the-longplay-15/
https://web.archive.org/web/20240226032906/http://ishkur.com...
He talked so much shit in his guide that I was really looking forward to listening to the 15 hour mix to make fun of his taste but... it's hard! Dude's got decent taste!
Wow, it's still growing. That's amazing!
I'm on some of the oink/what successors and honestly, it's so hard to build ratio that it makes me not really like them at all.
You might have some success remaking rips others have made using the same settings for the rips and encodes, and then letting your torrent client recheck the existing torrent against your version of the files. I’ve also had success contacting filesharing-friendly artists and getting new and unreleased albums and tracks and building ratio more directly that way.
Many private trackers also have a higher ratio multiplier for dead or nearly dead torrents to promote seeding of those torrents specifically. I’ve also seen quota-free days and torrents that can be downloaded without a quota impact, uploads of which will help your quota get back in the black.
anyways, rutracker or many of the other private trackers
If you want to discover electronic subgenres then I'd recommend to listen the weekly Essential Mix https://www.mixesdb.com/w/Category:Essential_Mix
If you want some personal recommendation my current top 5 (changes all the time)
Daft Punk (1997) https://www.mixesdb.com/w/1997-03-02_-_Daft_Punk_-_Essential...
Justice (2007) https://www.mixesdb.com/w/2007-06-10_-_Justice_-_Essential_M...
Sharam (2009) https://www.mixesdb.com/w/2009-08-29_-_Sharam_-_Essential_Mi...
Skrillex (2013) https://www.mixesdb.com/w/2013-06-15_-_Skrillex_-_Essential_...
Ben Böhmer (2021) https://www.mixesdb.com/w/2021-10-09_-_Ben_B%C3%B6hmer_-_Ess...
>Electronic music is anything but niche
Electronic music is a huge genre. There's a ton of popular artists but there's also so much great stuff you'll never hear at concerts/festivals.
I also spend like 300 to 500 EUR a year on Bandcamp so I don't feel bad about this. Plus a lot of stuff there is just hard to find elsewhere. In times where we keep losing agency through cloud-enshitification, AI-inscrutability and technofeudalism, Soulseek and its community brings me hope.
My process is to find or invent a ludicrous sounding genre name, search for it, click on any promising-looking covers and then if I like the music I’ll look through their label, any hashtags and the profiles of people who purchased it to see what else I can find. Discovered a vast amount of excellent or at least interesting music this way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45395396 (ctrl + f, "Velvet Underground" to find relevant posts)
Yeah this is a seriously a great resource especially in how it goes back to the early days. I didn't immediately find an, "entry" for Delia Derbyshire but Daphne Oram is there. I remember spending hours on Wikipedia as a kid doing research trying to develop an involved understanding of what drove innovation in electronic music. This will put a future, "me" that much further along. Great work.
"Pump your loins children."
The Velvets were an excellent band and there have been many amazing bands since. While new bands aren’t charting on Billboard, nobody cares about Billboard anyways. This quality hits many different genres and subgenres and makes me happy to be a music fan.
Sometimes, we’ve got to get on with it and support the kids.
Hey... H E Y!
That has been my favorite line from this for decades (at least that’s how I remember it going).
https://music.ishkur.com/?query=Krautrock
* Album 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_%26_Collectors_(album)
* Album 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fireman%27s_Curse
* Album 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaws_of_Life_(Hunters_%26_...
Albums 2 & 3 were co-produced by Konrad Plank in Neunkirchen and Weilerswist, Germany following his liking of the first album and tracks such as Talking to a Stranger, Run Run Run, leading to his work on tracks such as Judas Sheep, Tow Truck, and Betty's Worry or The Slab.
Not the Krautrock known to many via Kraftwerk but certainly tangentially adjacent in some odd way.
It's a list/timeline of electronic genres and subgenres with samples and descriptions (informative + humor). The UI is also great.
[1] https://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=/MUSICIANS/H/Hubbard_Rob
Edit: it seems you need to click on the rectangles rather than circles to choose the year.
There's too many websites trying to be neutral and respectful, which is great, but humanity also needs subjective, opinionated rants about music. After all, music wouldn't even exist without the emotions that it inspires, an that includes negative emotions from boredom to mockery. Also, that's what makes this website fun to read in the first place.
> All this animosity culminated in the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Chicago's Comisky Park in July, 1979 -- a radio promotion held between the games of a baseball double header that caused so much damage the second game was forfeit.
LMAO and TIL
And then there's Ron Hardy at Chicago's Warehouse who played both.
2 more comments available on Hacker News