This is version 3.0 of Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music.

There is a bit of history to this. The first two versions of the Guide were Flash monstrosities released in 2000 and 2003. They may still be online somewhere if you look hard enough. Version 2.5 was maintained and updated for two years and was abandoned in 2005.

A Flash v3 of the Guide was planned in 2006 but never got past the pre-dev stage. After three design reboots, the abandonment of Flash, and several personal, artistic and technical decisions later, the Guide you are looking at right now was pre-dev’d in 2010. The map and music categorizing was mostly finalized around 2014 (but in some instances still isn’t done), programming in 2016, and content, art and functionality in 2017. Compatibility for all devices and formats as well as additional research and extras were added in 2018 and 2019.

Most of the research is offline — magazines, books, documentaries, record collections, and personal experience. For online resources I loosely followed three laws:

   1) Lord Discogs knows all, except when I know more.

   2) Wikipedia knows some, but never as much as me.

   3) Social media knows absolutely nothing. About anything. Never get your education from YouTube comments or Facebook memes. Your friends are morons.

This guide favors authenticity over accuracy, and it aims to entertain before it informs. It is only as accurate as it feels it needs to be. It is constantly changing and it is infinitely mutable, so the map, the music, and my self-righteous opinions are all subject to change as I discover, investigate, and incorporate new knowledge and more music. Nothing is definitive.

This is an educational resource, not a music sharing service. There are no complete songs here. All tracks are low quality sub-2 minute samples. If you want the music, do the artists a solid and buy it from them through legitimate channels.

How to Use

Scroll out to explore scenes. Scroll in to explore genres. Scroll in even more to explore individual years.

Select a button to listen to all the music in that genre.

Select any individual year to listen to the music of the genre released in that specific year.

Years are highlighted by quantity so brighter years have more music.

The music panel loads when you select a button that has music (which is just about everything).

It behaves like any music player, with a Play/Pause button, a progress bar, volume control for desktop (mobile users can use their side buttons), a Next Track button, a playlist to look through all the music queued, and an Info Panel that explains stuff about the genre. The Info Panel pops up automatically when you select a genre button, but not for years.

The music panel information and buttons may be in a different arrangement depending on your device but they’re all there and they all work the same.

At the top of the screen is a dynamic timeline that follows you where you go and keeps you informed of which era you are in.

Suggested usage: Ignore scenes and genres. Instead, pick a single year and move through the guide vertically, listening to different music released in that year.

Go exploring. Listen and learn about music you don’t know anything about. You’re not here to have your personal taste in music validated or discredited.

Music playback is randomized to spread the wealth around.

You can check it out here. https://music.ishkur.com/ all credits toIshkur