* Tech/Tribal
* Garage/House
* Trip-hop
* Ambiant-techno
* Neo/Electro
* Progressive/trance
* Experimental/dub
* drill n bass
* down tempo
* minimal techno
* Illbient
* Glitch
* Nu breaks
* Goa Trance
Tech / House
duh
Tech / Tribal
duh x 2
Garage / House
Named for what is arguably the birthplace of house music — the Paradise Garage in New York — Garage is the dance style closest in spirit and execution to the original disco music of the '70s. Favoring synthesizer runs and gospel vocals similar to house music but with even more polished and shimmering production values than house, garage has more of a soulful, organic feel. Though the style's led by producer/DJs (Todd Terry, Tony Humphries, Kerri Chandler) and production teams (Masters at Work, Blaze), vocalists who bring the soulful anthems to life (Ultra Naté, Dajae, Jocelyn Brown, and Loleatta Holloway, among many others) are much more important than in other forms of dance music.
During the early '80s, garage was originally centered in the New York metro area, mostly in Manhattan, but strong enough across state lines to later be dubbed the Jersey Sound as well. At that time, the early history of garage is practically synonomous with that of house music. It was only when Chicago house became popular around the world that New York's discofied garage emerged as a separate entity from house music in general. (Consequently, the sound that many Brits pointed to as an influence was Midwestern in origin.)
By no means forgotten, though, New York gained ascendance by the turn of the decade, with British producer Joey Negro showing garage influences through his Republic label. Spurred on by admiration from the U.K., a flock of fresh New York labels opened up during the late '80s and early '90s — Strictly Rhythm, King Street, Nervous, Perfect Pair, Freeze, Streetside. London's influential Ministry of Sound even tapped Tony Humphries for an exclusive deal to DJ for its club and produce for its accompanying label. By 1996, a British variant of garage had emerged, dubbed speed garage (and later 2-step) for its aggressive synthesis of drum'n'bass and ragga with the original garage sound.
Trip hop
Yet another in a long line of plastic placeholders to attach itself to one arm or another of the U.K. post-acid house dance scene's rapidly mutating experimental underground, Trip-Hop was coined by the English music press in an attempt to characterize a new style of downtempo, jazz-, funk-, and soul-inflected experimental breakbeat music which began to emerge around in 1993 in association with labels such as Mo'Wax, Ninja Tune, Cup of Tea, and Wall of Sound. Similar to (though largely vocal-less) American hip-hop in its use of sampled drum breaks, typically more experimental, and infused with a high index of ambient-leaning and apparently psychotropic atmospherics (hence "trip"), the term quickly caught on to describe everything from Portishead and TRICKY,TO DJ Shadow, U.N.K.L.E., COLDCUT,WAGON Christ, and Depth Charge ,much to the chagrin of many of these musicians, who saw their music largely as an extension of hip-hop proper, not a gimmicky offshoot. One of the first commercially significant hybrids of dance-based listening music to crossover to a more mainstream audience, trip-hop full-length releases routinely topped indie charts in the U.K. and, in artists such as Shadow, Tricky, Morcheeba, the Sneaker Pimps, and Massive Attack, account for a substantial portion of the first wave of "electronica" acts to reach Stateside audiences.
Ambiant Techno
A rarefied, more specific reorientation of ambient house, Ambient Techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. It distinguished artists who combined the melodic and rhythmic approaches of techno and electro — use of 808 and 909 drum machines; well-produced, thin-sounding electronics; minor-key melodies and alien-sounding samples and sounds — with the soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient. Most often associated with labels such as Apollo, GPR, Warp, and Beyond, the terminology morphed into "intelligent techno" after Warp released its Artificial Intelligence series (although the music's stylistic references remained largely unchanged).
Neo electro
For several months in 1995, British clubs were afire with the sights and sounds of robots, body-poppers, and a revival of America's early-'80s electro movement. Though much of the attention was given to the old-school masters (Afrika Bambaataa, the Egyptian Lover, Newcleus), much of the influence for the electro revival had come from more recent sounds. Detroit acts such as Drexciya, Underground Resistance, and Ectomorph had begun looking back to electro, and Drexciya's multi-volume series of 1994 EPs were much-heard on the other side of the Atlantic. In Britain, Clear Records headed the revival hot-list, with singles from Jedi Knights, Tusken Raiders, Plaid, and Gescom (almost all were aliases for more well-known dance acts including Global Communication, µ-Ziq, and Autechre). Though the electro revival didn't last long as a British club trend, good records continued to be released (especially by Clear), and other labels, such as Skam, Musik Aus Strom, and Dot, progressed beyond the sound to create intelligent new music with heavy electro influences.
Progressive trance
Though progressive house led the increasingly mainstream-sounding house from the charts back to the dance floors, the progressive wing of the trance crowd led directly to a more commercial, chart-oriented sound, since trance had never enjoyed much chart action in the first place. Emphasizing the smoother sound of Eurodance or house (and occasionally more reminiscent of Jean-Michel Jarre than Basement Jaxx), Progressive Trance became the sound of the world's dance floors by the end of the millennium. Critics ridiculed its focus on predictable breakdowns and relative lack of skill to beat-mix, but progressive trance was caned by the hottest DJs (Oakenfold, Tong, Sasha) and spotlighted in the main rooms of Britain's largest clubs (Gatecrasher, Cream, Ministry of Sound, Home). Though progressive trance producers rarely focused on much more than getting their singles on Tong's radio show or Sasha's latest mix album, a few acts (most notably, Paul Van Dyk and Hybrid) soon began translating the sound into the full-length realm. — John Bush
Experimental Dub
Thousands of miles away from sunny Jamaica, a loose collective of Berlin producers jump-started the style of music known as Experimental Dub. If the scene was centered at all, it occurred at Hard Wax Records, a record store as well as a tight distribution company that was home to several of the style's crucial labels (Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, Imbalance) and producers (Maurizio, Mark Ernestus, Porter Ricks, Pole, Monolake). Indebted to Chicago acid house and minimalist Detroit techno figures like Jeff Mills, Rob Hood, and Plastikman, experimental dub was rather easily characterized; the sound usually focused on a mix of crackling, murky atmospheres that sounded almost subaquatic, with a midtempo beat and strong, clanging percussion. The similarities to classic Jamaican dub producers King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry were indirect at best, but the term worked well for identifying the signature sound of many of Germany's best experimental producers. Other than the Basic Channel camp, experimental dub's most important figures were Mike Ink (aka Wolfgang Voigt) and Thomas Brinkmann. Ink, a longtime Berlin producer responsible for more than a half-dozen aliases and labels, did most of his important work on the Profan and Studio 1 labels. Brinkmann, a comparative newcomer to the style, earned praise for his remixes of material by Ink and Plastikman. Experimental dub, in turn, inspired several major techno figures (including Plastikman and Mills) by the late '90s, and its influence was even seen in American indie rock and post-rock.
Drill n Bass
Soon after album-based British techno producers like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher got their hands on drum'n'bass during the mid-'90s, they naturally twisted it to their own ends. The result was Drill'n'bass, a spastic form of breakbeat jungle that relied on powerful audio software and patient programming to warp old midtempo beats and breaks into a frenzied, experimental potpourri of low-attention-span electronic music. Beginning in mid-1995, three figures led the charge with pioneering EPs: Aphex Twin (Hangable Auto Bulb), Luke Vibert's Plug project (Plug 1), and Squarepusher (Conumber). The following year, drill'n'bass went overground with full-length releases by each of the above, most notably Plug's Drum'n'bass for Papa and Squarepusher's debut album Feed Me Weird Things. Soon the rush was on, and a group of artists emerged with immediately identifiable ties to drill'n'bass, including Animals on Wheels, Amon Tobin, Mung, and Plasmalamp. Drill'n'bass receded into the deep underground by 1998, an unsurprising event given the style's extreme nature.
Down Tempo
Downtempo tend to be more beat-oriented than ambience, but is not quite as earthy as trip-hop... real real rare and hard to distinct
Minimal Techno
When house and techno first came on the scene in the mid-'80s, productions were minimal out of necessity. As the art of sampling and programming developed, the music became more layered and professional sounding — a progression according to some, but an unnecessary crossover move to others. Reacting against these increasingly dense productions, Minimalist Techno figures cleared their productions of most everything except pointed drum programs and stark sequencer or synthesizer patterns. Detroit figures like Rob Hood, Jeff Mills, and Plastikman led the way, with later figures including Surgeon, Oliver Ho, and Stewart Walker also contributing to the new idiom.
Illbient
Centered in New York City (Brooklyn in particular), illbient is a distinctly and consciously urban form of electronic music, aiming to express both the cultural variety and grimy decay of its surroundings. So dubbed by DJ Spooky (the style's defining artist), Illbient's eclectic, atmospheric pastiches are rooted foremost in ambient music, but may incorporate (in particular) dub, hip-hop, and drum'n'bass, plus occasional ethnic musics that blend well with whatever is already in the musical stew pot. In keeping with the moods suggested by its environment, illbient can be eerie and a little dark, or unpredictable and cloaked in noise, but nearly always retains its deliberate pace and nocturnal vibes. Performance venues for illbient are often selected for how well they evoke the atmosphere of a city's dirty underbelly, which speaks to the music's underlying conceptual (and intellectual) nature. The Brooklyn scene is also marked by a sense of cooperation and community that leads to frequent collaborations, both on an individual and group basis, and fluidly shifting commitments. The Asphodel and WordSound record labels provide the settings for most illbient scene projects; the former is home to the excellent introductory compilation Incursions in Illbient, which features DJ Spooky, We, Byzar, and Sub Dub. Other major illbient artists include Tipsy, Spectre, Rob Swift, and Badawi.
Glitch
As computer-aided composition slowly eclipsed the traditional analog approach to crafting electronica, the palette of possible sounds soon widened immensely, resulting in the advent of the glitch style in the late '90s. No longer was the artist confined to sequenced percussion, synth, and samples, but rather any imaginable sound, including the uncanny realm of digital glitches — a possibility that was quickly exploited by a generation of youths with the means to create entire albums in their bedroom with only a computer and some software. Where early-'90s analog-toting pioneers such as Aphex Twin and Autechre had envisioned the quickly diminishing areas of electronica that had not yet been explored, and simultaneously, another insular group of pioneers led by Robert Hood and Basic Channel stripped away the elements of electronica that had ultimately become little more than ineffective cliché, a second wave of computer-armed protégés studied these aesthetics and used software to create microscopically intricate compositions harking back to these pioneers. First championed by the ideological German techno figure Achim Szepanski and his stable of record labels — Force Inc, Mille Plateaux, Force Tracks, Ritornell — this tight-knit scene of experimental artists creating cerebral hybrids of experimental techno, minimalism, digital collage, and noise glitches soon found themselves being assembled into a community. Though artists such as Oval, Pole, and Vladislav Delay, among others, had initially been singled out by critics beforehand, Mille Plateaux's epic Clicks_+_Cuts compilation first defined the underground movement, exploring not only a broad roster of artists but also a wide scope of approaches. The artists on the compilation, along with a small community of visionary artists in the software-savvy San Francisco/Silicon Valley area of California led by the Cytrax label, soon found themselves as the critically hailed leaders of yet another electronica movement. It wasn't long before the glitch aesthetic began being crossbred with existing genres, resulting in endless variations on the aesthetic, such as MRI's click-driven house and Kid 606's noise remix of N.W.A's "Straight Outta Compton."
Nu Breaks
A hard-edged dance style developed late in the '90s with the convergence of techno and drum'n'bass as well as a few elements of the earlier rave scenes, Nu Breaks was led by artists and DJs including Brits Adam Freeland, Dylan Rhymes, Beber, Freq Nasty, and Rennie Pilgrem plus a bare few Americans like BT. From drum'n'bass the style borrowed two-step breakbeats and chilling effects, from techno its smooth flow and machine percussion, and from early-'90s rave/hardcore some of the crowd-pleasing bells and whistles (figuratively as well as literally) that in some cases had not been heard for years. Freeland was probably the best-known of the nu breaks crew (especially since most producers concentrated on singles output), as rock-steady mix sets like Coastal Breaks and Tectonics earned acclaim with dance fans around the world.
Goa Trance
Named after a region on the coast of southwestern India famed as a clubbing and drugging paradise ever since the '60s, Goa Trance broke away from the Teutonic bent of European trance during the early '90s and carried the torch for trance during the rest of the decade. The presence of LSD on the Goa scene — instead of the ubiquitous club drug Ecstasy — translated the music into an appropriately psychedelic version of trance that embraced the mystical properties of Indian music and culture. Traditional Indian instruments such as the sitar and sarod (or electronic near-equivalents) often made appearances in the music, pushed along by the driving, hypnotic sequencer music that trance had always been known for. The style is considerably less turntable-oriented than other electronic dance styles, especially since vinyl tends to melt in the heat (DATs are often used instead). As a consequence, Goa had comparatively few DJs to recommend it worldwide until the late '90s. Labels like Dragonfly, Blue Room Released, Flying Rhino, Platipus, and Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto Fluoro became important sources for the sound. Oakenfold, Britain's most popular DJ, finally gave Goa trance the cache it had lacked in the past by caning it on the radio and in clubs across the country. The British sound system known as Return to the Source also brought Goa trance to the mainstream hordes, releasing three volumes in a compilation series of the best trance music on the scene.
