How did you get into electronic music?

undead

Greenlighter
Joined
Sep 23, 2001
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So, I know this a very general question. And it may have very well been asked before as a new thread, but if so, I suck at searching (and if so, by all means, merge it with an existing thread).

How did you get into electronic music. The majority of people I've ever known have referred to all electronic as "techno" and nowadays, everything that isn't made with live instruments gets lumped in together as "EDM." I've always been frustrated by those generalizations because as everyone who loves electronic music knows... there's a plethora of genres and subgenres. it's never ending. So with that being said, what was your introductory to electronic music. Genre, artist, whatever.

Mine was Daft Punk, circa 1995. I was on vacation with a friend and his family and watching MTV (which at the time, the town I lived in didn't offer MTV on their cable package) and I saw the video for Da Funk, by Daft Punk. After that, I found out a friend of mine was into Daft Punk. He let me have a cd of his, which was the Around The World single (with other versions on it). From there I found other friends who were into similar things and found out about Aphex Twin, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy (the stuff they put out before Fat Of The Land), and a few other artists. I started looking through the album sleeves and found a few artists through the "Thank You" section. While I still loved Daft Punk, my taste started gravitating toward artists like Squarepusher, Venetian Snares, Autechre, and other glitchier types.

I ended up subscribing to URB magazine and searching through each edition (which I still have every one of them) and finding new songs and artists. Suddenly, I found myself fully immersed in electronic music. From trance to IDM to DnB. I picked up Dieselboy's A Soldier's Story. Where I started to learn of drum and bass artists like Tech Itch, Decoder, Kosheen, etc. From there, I was hooked on glitchy IDM and darker dnb. The two kind of combined when Evol Intent came around. Then Ewun, Exile, etc. the darker and glitchier, the better.

Now here I am, all these years later and I'm still seeking dark, glitchy, and well produced electronic music. Squarepusher is still always a great artist. The Flashbulb is constantly putting out new music that I can't tear myself away from. I love electronic music just as much now as I did when I first found out about it, but the production quality has gotten better. It's a love that'll never die, I have no doubts.
 
This got me thinking about what videos they showed on Dan Gallagher's CBC music video show Video Hits when I was 12 or so.

Maybe Snap! - The Power ?

Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It came later I think.

I remember listening to Further Down the Spiral and At the Heart of It All and wanting to listen to more of his stuff. I think I bought I Care Because You Do a bit later.
FOTL I actually went into a record store and bought the CD.

I'm pretty sure I saw The Prodigy - Out Of Space on TV at some point around that time.

Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam

Does Push It, Wild Thing or Bust A Move count (80s Dance)?
 
There is an older thread on this topic.

I could merge this with it, if there is some interest.

I was sold on Herbie Hancock's - Rockit via MTV. I was young then, and Cable Television was still relatively commercial free.
 
There is an older thread on this topic.

I could merge this with it, if there is some interest.

I was sold on Herbie Hancock's - Rockit via MTV. I was young then, and Cable Television was still relatively commercial free.

Damn! I knew there had to be. :D

I haven't been on here nearly as much in such a long time. I'm basically a neo-custie. :D

But yeah, do whatever you need to do. If you feel this would be best merged with the older thread, by all means. :)
 
Growing up in Detroit in the late nineties and early 2000's sneaking out of the house to party all night at underground parties! But the 1st electronic music I got into was plastikman musik, chemical brothers , and Detroit booty mixes like Dj assault.. seen Nigel richards, Frankie bones and Dj assault on Nye at the works in Detroit shit was crazy, it warmed my party kid heartstrings!
 


My favorite dance track for the one remembering the early days. I was too young to go clubbing in 1990 but this track rocks.
 
I know its not what they are saying but sounds like lots of weed, lots of weed, lots of coke, lots of weed. Lulz.
 


High School Party, first time on mdma. All the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up at 3:17
 
For me I was always the kind of guy to hate and not willing to accept and appreciate different kinds of music that are generally popular, electronic music was one of these as a noob i was only aware of techno and house music, along with dubstep which was just then at the time developing and spreading into every teenagers playlist that i knew at the time.
i only enjoyed listening to heavy and almost always negative metal bands if different genres. This basically all changed when I finally decided i would give into the pressure of joining my friends as well as strangers in dropping a variety of pressed e pills and having fun. All of a sudden I enjoyed electronic music, very much, even songs i have already heard and previously hated. I didnt just enjoy it, i actualy opened up and listened to the lyrics or the emotions that the electronic grooves was providing all along, i was just too stubborn and ignorant before to notice and actualy hear it.
my first experience im pretty positive was after dropping for my first time with very close friends and even family in a safe and secluded house with no supervision. Someone put on Skrillex (i know most of the experienced edm community doesn't enjoy but w.e) which started off with the typical slow intro which leads to the drop, i thought it was weird and dainty but certainly not bad, but then it dropped and the large bass speakers delivered a powerful musical orgasm into my ears where i was blown away.
If you surf these forums often and enjiy electronic music then i probably dont have to tell you that electronic heavy bass music while rolling wicked hard and for your first time is nothing short of magic and pleasure. I was hooked, on both using hard drugs recreationally and blasting dubstep, preferably together. We used to dance for hours or days at a time, hugging, loving, listening and getting blasted so hard with bass, beats and vocals from many remixed songs ive heard before and hated on their own. It caused me to open my mind, be more accepting and curious, to listen with my soul and consciousness rather than just my ears and personality, it caused me to not care so dam much about personal ego and acting 'normal and mature'. My heart grew 8 sizes that night, and unexpectedly turned me from a cynical and nihilistic teenage exclusively dressed in black metal junkie who always did things by the rules and tried to distance
myself from the playful young child we all have inside us into an outgoing, accepting and almost overly caring and friendly kind of new age hippy who threw the rule book on societys norms and expectations in the garbage, i wanted to experience as much as life had to offer and to figure out for myself what lifes about and what's realistically and truthfully right and wrong. I began wearing colours instead of only black, i began grooving to music id hear on the radio or anywhere if it had even a slightly soulful message or danceable beats, I stopped judging everyone so dam hard who weren't exactly like me or seemed 'too happy', I began making friends outside of my similar interested group of friends, Essentially I opened up my heart and was finally given a shot of energy and the ability to loose all inhibitions and just enjoy myself and have fun.

this music has seriously changed my life for the better and made me a better person.
 
My Brother's 'Prodigy Experience' album.
Hit The Decks 3 compilation.
Then one day I found a tape in my Brother's draw labelled 'DJ Slipmatt @ The Eclipse'. I lay down on my bed and put the tape in my Sony Walkman, pressed play, and the rest, as they say, is history. The year was 1992, I was 13 years old, and this was the first tune played on that very DJ Slipmatt tape - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrXnzJ0Mn0E
 
mantronix

a 2nd cousin or some shit gave me a bunch of old records and there was mantronix music madness in it which came out early 80s. when I heard that break with the vocoder track, "got two turn tables and a microphone.." I was hooked. listen to the basssss,

then I started listening to other 80s stuff then I got the AMP cd mtv put out in like 95, had like josh wink, chemical brothers block rockin beats (yea, that old lol) prodigy, photek, goldie (how I got into dnb) Atari teenage riot and that awesome fluke track atom bomb which I was listening to the other day.

ive played guitar for 24 years and at the time when I was getting into all this I told my guitar instructor who was like kirk hamits doppleganger that I wanted to get a synthesizer, I think he cried a little lol..
 
Thinking on this a bit more, I was also seduced by John Carpenter's movie scores from the 70s and 80s.

Example A:

 
post your work, i'm curious to hear how adderall lead you to edm and what it sounds like!

One of the projects on my list is to share some music with you all on here. I still need to mix everything down, then figure out how to transfer it onto my laptop and convert it into a form that I can attach and share (I'm a bit behind the times when it comes to sound files. Everything is still on memory cards.)

Thanks for the interest!
 
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