Electronic traces the sound of the music and the tools behind it: drum machines, samplers, synthesizers and studio technique, alongside the histories of house, techno, garage, trance and bass. Records are described by texture and arrangement. For listeners, producers and DJs who care how a track was actually built.
House, techno, bass, trance and their offshoots traced through the machines that made them: drum machines, samplers, synth presets, studio habits.
House runs at 120-130 BPM around a four-to-the-floor kick and swung grooves, tech house marries house's shuffle to techno's lean toolkit, and techno strips the shuffle out entirely — three lineages with distinct cities and tempos.
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Hard techno is techno pushed past 150 BPM with distorted kicks and rave-revival visuals — the sound that owned European floors by the mid-2020s.
Electro is hip-hop's robotic child from Detroit and Miami; breaks is Britain's big-beat explosion — two breakbeat lineages back from the edge.
Afro house is South Africa's percussive, soul-deep house strain — and by the mid-2020s it is one of clubland's biggest exports.
IDM is the laptop-era art school of electronic music — braindance, home-listening electronica and the records that made software an instrument.
A working tempo map of electronic music — what runs at 120, what runs at 174, and how to use BPM when you mix or browse crates.
UK garage is London's swinging, soulful 2-step sound — the genre that raised dubstep, grime and half of modern pop's drum language.
Gabber, the Rotterdam-born hardcore strain that runs past 180 BPM, is dance music at its most physical — and it is booming again.
Trance is dance music's cathedral sound — long builds, melodic payoffs and 138 BPM — and it never actually went away.