From the comments I was expecting a really cool site with a lot of knowledge, but so far all I've seen is genre bashing. Since this is supposedly a general guide on all electronic music, it's really unfortunate they need to convey their negative opinions on everything that isn't their genre of choice. Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.
The "path of Ishkur" for most people is to arrive at the site, marvel at the artistic layout and amount of info presented, then immediately drill down to one's favorite genre to find... that Ishkur roasts it like an old episode of SNL, mildly offending the casual visitor who feels their taste has been somehow called out.
Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts all of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.
People like what they like and they don't like what they don't like, there's an art to conveying what you don't like about particular art, this art is called criticism. When criticizing art, the only sin you can commit is not being expressive enough.
If you start to place positivity above expressiveness in art criticism, you get puff pieces that don't teach anyone anything. People love this guide not because they want to feel good about being a snob but because they actually learn about music.
For example, in the guide for New Jack Swing he makes the argument that Thriller aged better than Dangerous or Bad because of the drum sounds, I might or might not share his assessment, but the point he made about the tinniness of the drums was well-taken.
I think this is unfair. Only someone with a deep love of music would put in this colossal and ongoing effort. A mere curmudgeon would have quit years ago. And in any case, the music itself is provided, so you can just listen for yourself.
Haven't read the update yet, but with the olde version Ishkur's tongue was pretty much piercing his cheeks. His knowledge of the old scene still was good and valuable.
However, it's rather clear from the update timing that he's not getting younger, and you can't really follow all the micro-scenes these days unless it's a full-time job, so I won't be surprised if the guide's spirit is not the same.
The universal genre bashing is a required element. Nothing good can come from talking about musical genres without constant reminders of not taking yourself too seriously.
Spent so much time browsing an older version, so happy to see it again, so sad that Casiocore apparently did not make it into the current incarnation. "Just push 'samba' on that thing and away you go."
These "genres" mostly fit very comfortably into their parent category. Even to the point that if you treat it as a strict history of the music, the majority of the subgenres are unnecessary.
It's poorly presented in this regard. It doesn't do a good job of delineating the music and the cultural history.
What is being taken as genre bashing is really tribalism and the subcultural awareness of the author. In contrast to it's failings as a strict musical history, it presents extremely well the cultural history around the music.
I mean, he has clear deep love for dance music and the history of the genre which shines through in everything he writes and the examples he picks. And that's chimed with people for the last 20 years, it's a bible of a site. Maybe you just have crap taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
