Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music was essential reading for me as an EDM fan back in the early aughts. It did a wonderful job breaking down the many genres of EDM with wonderful and often biting criticism. For some 12 or so years the next version has been teased, delayed, and teased again. I thought it was vaporware until I’m a surprise drop v3.0 was finally released last week.
Unlike the old Flash monstrosity, this site actually kinda sorta works on mobile devices.
On Synthwave:
Synthwave is the fetishization of a 1980s that didn’t really exist, where everything is neon and wireframe, you’re wearing Ray-Ban Wayfarers and a Member’s Only jacket, and you’re cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in a red Ferrari Mondial Cabriolet while Morgan Fairchild (or Heather Locklear, or Christy Brinkly, or Heather Thomas) is sitting in the passenger seat wearing a spandex bodysuit, headband, and leg warmers.
Synthwave is more retrofuturist than nostalgic, like Steampunk or Wakanda. It remembers the best elements of the 80s: 8-bit video games, dystopian movies, cyberpunk literature, bad chromakey effects, and pastel-colored sports jackets, while conveniently forgetting that the 80s also had chlorofluorocarbons, acid rain, Reagonomics, AIDS, mullets and ginormous perms, rolled jeans, ninjas, overalls, killer bees, shoulder pads, Mr. T, sweatbands, Dick Clark, stirrups, fanny packs, jheri curls, and
insidiously manipulative corporate brainwashing of the nation’s youth into mindless consumersSaturday morning cartoons.
Really surprised I missed that post. It must have got buried really quickly.
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