Like metal, jazz, and really any genre of music with a diehard fanbase, the jungle of electronic music subgenres and specific categorizations has grown extremely dense and multi-faceted over the past many decades. For internet-dwelling electronic music fans, one document—Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music—has provided a beautifully engaging way to explore the music's many categories, in an interactive map of stylistic lineages and influences with sound samples and descriptions sewn in.
Thing is, the guide stopped in the early 2000s, and needless to say, electronic music has continued to progress and further subdivide in various directions since then. This week, after nearly 15 years of dormancy, a newly updated version 3 of the legendary interactive site has been released.
In the About section of the new site, the mysterious Ishkur describes the timeline of the new guide:
"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."
You can read further into Ishkur's about and FAQ section for the full breakdown of how this all came together, along with some gripes about misinformation surrounding electronic music at large.
As always with these sorts of resources, there are sure to be areas of disagreement and debate, and that's really part of the fun. Take a look at the full guide here and let us know in the comments if you see any categorizations, connections, or omissions that you find especially bothersome.