Electro

droid

Well-known member
Electro is a virus, common instrumentation and aesthetics but multiple scenes in multiple cities over a variety of time periods.

Kraftwerk (70s) >> New York (early 80s) >> Detroit (mid-late 80s) >> Miami (mid-80s-early 90's) >> Europe: Germany/Holland/Italy/UK (mid 90s - mid 2000s) >> ELECTROCLASH (everywhere).

Perhaps the first dance genre to do this so rapidly and pervasively, mostly under the radar too.
 

luka

Well-known member
the footage in black and white in the youtube video for Al-Naafiysh is extraordinarily beautiful
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Per droids comment above about electro evolving and permeating through music, it survived in the south and became bounce music, arguably even trap is an evolution of electro, right?

I guess that brings up the question of when electro stops being electro - certain synths? A tempo? A rhythm?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One thing I love about it is how clear and bright the sounds all are. Synths come in and they're as light as air, they float over the brittle drums. And there's all this echo (I'm thinking of drexciya here perhaps) that adds to that feeling of spaciouss.

On the opposite end of the spectrum it feels totally constricted, all the sounds artificial and airless.

And also the emotional strangeness of electro. It sounds inhuman, so even when it has human emotion it feels processed into some other zone of existence.
 

droid

Well-known member
Per droids comment above about electro evolving and permeating through music, it survived in the south and became bounce music, arguably even trap is an evolution of electro, right?

I guess that brings up the question of when electro stops being electro - certain synths? A tempo? A rhythm?

Bass, syncopation, 808s. Tempo wise the range goes from about 110 for the oldest stuff, 110-120 for the breakdance cru, 124/128 for the classic detroit/Miami sound, 132 for the Euro dancefloor stuff, and then as high as mid 150's for the likes of mat 101 and more adventurous producers. Ive mixed electro with jungle at 164.
 

droid

Well-known member
You could make a strong argument that a good chunk of postpunk synth stuff fits into the electro mode via Numan.

 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Even Chicago house (the trackier stuff - acid house too) is arguably on the electro continuum:

In this era, Chicago radio jocks The Hot Mix 5, and club DJs Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles played various styles of dance music, including older disco records, newer Italo disco and electro funk tracks, B-boy hip hop music by Man Parrish, Jellybean Benitez, Arthur Baker and John Robie as well as electronic pop music by Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

(Wiki)
 

luka

Well-known member
theres a node where edges converge. dont forget our electro soul thread. the more you expand the boundaries the more indistinct it becomes. just a shared sound pallete and shared tools
 
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