Expert: Richard D. James - 1/4/2005

Question
hello
im new to the electronic scene but i want to get into it. i have some stuff, mostly house. People like Paul Oakenfold, Paul Van Dyk, Astrix, and a few others. Anyway i was wondering if you could recomend some things to further me in my electronic music experience.

Answer
Well my core area of interest would come under the unbrella of 'electronica' of which Aphex Twin is associated with.  I'm not totally sure where your tastes lye, but I would suggest using the internet to search for sites dedicated to specific genres.  A good way of finding good music is to research the roots of a particular genre or sound.  I'm not that hot on house music but someone like Marshall Jefferson, part of the original Chicago house scene, would be a good place to start.

A quite compelling site I found is 'Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music' which can be found at http://www.di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html respectively.  It provides a historical tree of developments within dance music over the years with examples for you to listen to.  It is a somewhat biased and limited perspective, but well worth a look.

If it's electronica you're after then there are three record labels you should find out about:
Warp Records (www.warprecords.com)
Rephlex Records (www.rephlex.com)
Skam Records (www.skam.co.uk)

Hope that helps & don't be afraid to let me know what you find out.

:)