Waxonia
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The map — how the genres connect

Every list we publish, on one page. A solid arrow is our claim that one genre came out of another, and it carries the sentence saying what was inherited. A dashed line is not a claim at all: it means two lists reached for the same record.

90 genres · 162 lineage claims ·31 selections · 201 shared records

What follows is a diagram of 90 genres on a time line, joined by162 lineage arrows. Everything in it is written out under “The genres, oldest first” below.

Came out of — our claim, with a reasonShares a record — observed, not claimed
1967–1992, where the map is busiest — 22 of 121 lists. Pick a genre to see what it came out of. Every list, and every arrow, is written out below.

How to read it

  • An arrow is our editorial claim that one genre came out of another. It is written once, in the descendant's own file, and it always carries the sentence saying what was inherited.
  • Lineage stops at genres we publish. Trip-hop owes the jazz records it sampled as much as it owes hip-hop, and jazz is not on the map, because we have not ranked it. A missing ancestor is a gap in our coverage, never a claim that there isn't one.
  • A dashed line claims nothing. It means two lists hold the same record, which is a fact about our lists rather than about the music.
  • Curator selections sit below the timeline. A selection is one person's list, not a moment in history, so it has no date — it joins the map wherever it reaches for a record a ranking already holds.

The genres, oldest first

Delhi and the Punjab · 1300 · 6 tracks

Qawwali

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1Chhaap Tilak Sab ChheeniAmir Khusrau
  2. 2Mustt MusttNusrat Fateh Ali Khan
  3. 3Tajdar-e-HaramSabri Brothers
  4. 4Allah Hoo Allah HooNusrat Fateh Ali Khan
  5. 5Aaj Rang HaiAmir Khusrau
  6. 6Bhar Do Jholi MeriSabri Brothers

The full ranking →

Flanders, Italy and England · 1400 · 8 tracks

Renaissance

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Baroque
The counterpoint, kept, with the ground shifted underneath it. Baroque writing is Renaissance voice-leading over a continuo bass that now determines the harmony, which turns a web of equal lines into a hierarchy.
  1. 1Spem in aliumThomas Tallis
  2. 2Missa Papae MarcelliGiovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
  3. 3Ave Maria... virgo serenaJosquin des Prez
  4. 4Missa ProlationumJohannes Ockeghem
  5. 5Tenebrae ResponsoriesCarlo Gesualdo
  6. 6Flow, My TearsJohn Dowland
  7. 7Il bianco e dolce cignoJacques Arcadelt
  8. 8Now Is the Month of MayingThomas Morley

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Italy, Germany and England · 1600 · 10 tracks

Baroque

Came out of Renaissance
The counterpoint, kept, with the ground shifted underneath it. Baroque writing is Renaissance voice-leading over a continuo bass that now determines the harmony, which turns a web of equal lines into a hierarchy.
Led to Classical Period
The instruments and the harmony, with the texture inverted. Where Baroque spins a continuous line over a moving bass, the Classical style states a tune, answers it, and leaves silence — the same materials arranged for clarity rather than for momentum.
  1. 1Goldberg VariationsJohann Sebastian Bach
  2. 2Mass in B minorJohann Sebastian Bach
  3. 3Dido and AeneasHenry Purcell
  4. 4The Four SeasonsAntonio Vivaldi
  5. 5MessiahGeorge Frideric Handel
  6. 6L'OrfeoClaudio Monteverdi
  7. 7Miserere mei, DeusGregorio Allegri
  8. 8Brandenburg Concerto No. 3Johann Sebastian Bach
  9. 9Rosary SonatasHeinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
  10. 10Canon in DJohann Pachelbel

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Essaouira and Marrakech, Morocco · 1600 · 5 tracks

Gnawa

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Shares 1 record with 1976
Bouderbala
  1. 1Colours of the NightMaalem Mahmoud Guinia
  2. 2MarhabaMaalem Mahmoud Guinia with James Holden and Floating Points
  3. 3AichaMaalem Mahmoud Guinia
  4. 4Ya SidiNass El Ghiwane
  5. 5BouderbalaNass El Ghiwane–

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Ireland and Scotland · 1750 · 8 tracks

Celtic Traditional

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Bluegrass
The tunes underneath. Strip the banjo off and a great many of these are Scots-Irish reels and modal ballads, which is why an Irish fiddler can sit in on a bluegrass session and not get lost.
Led to Country
The tunes and the stories, carried by Scots-Irish settlers into Appalachia and kept there. The modal melodies, the ballad form and the fiddle are all still recognisably the ones that left Ulster.
  1. 1The BlackbirdTraditional
  2. 2Sí Beag, Sí MórTurlough O'Carolan
  3. 3Róisín DubhTraditional
  4. 4The Bothy BandThe Bothy Band
  5. 5The Chieftains 4The Chieftains–
  6. 6Raglan RoadLuke Kelly
  7. 7Hector the HeroJames Scott Skinner
  8. 8An Píobaire RuaSeamus Ennis–

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Vienna, Austria · 1750 · 9 tracks

Classical Period

Came out of Baroque
The instruments and the harmony, with the texture inverted. Where Baroque spins a continuous line over a moving bass, the Classical style states a tune, answers it, and leaves silence — the same materials arranged for clarity rather than for momentum.
Led to Romantic
The forms, inherited and then strained past their tolerances. A Romantic symphony is still the Classical four movements; it is simply three times as long, twice as loud, and no longer pretending the argument is abstract.
  1. 1Symphony No. 5 in C minorLudwig van Beethoven
  2. 2Symphony No. 40 in G minorWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  3. 3The Marriage of FigaroWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  4. 4Symphony No. 3 in E-flat "Eroica"Ludwig van Beethoven–
  5. 5Requiem in D minorWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  6. 6Piano Sonata No. 14 "Moonlight"Ludwig van Beethoven
  7. 7Clarinet Concerto in AWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  8. 8String Quartet Op. 76 No. 3 "Emperor"Joseph Haydn
  9. 9Symphony No. 94 "Surprise"Joseph Haydn

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Andalusia, Spain · 1800 · 7 tracks

Flamenco

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1Entre Dos AguasPaco de Lucía
  2. 2La Leyenda del TiempoCamarón de la Isla
  3. 3Como el AguaCamarón de la Isla
  4. 4SeguiriyasAntonio Mairena
  5. 5Bulerías de JerezLa Paquera de Jerez
  6. 6RondeñaRamón Montoya
  7. 7Volando VoyKiko Veneno

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Lisbon, Portugal · 1820 · 7 tracks

Fado

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1Barco NegroAmália Rodrigues
  2. 2Estranha Forma de VidaAmália Rodrigues
  3. 3LágrimaAmália Rodrigues
  4. 4Meu Amor É MarinheiroAlfredo Marceneiro
  5. 5CoimbraCarlos do Carmo
  6. 6Balada da DespedidaJosé Afonso
  7. 7Foi DeusMariza

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Vienna, Paris and Leipzig · 1820 · 9 tracks

Romantic

Came out of Classical Period
The forms, inherited and then strained past their tolerances. A Romantic symphony is still the Classical four movements; it is simply three times as long, twice as loud, and no longer pretending the argument is abstract.
Led to Impressionism
The palette, kept; the argument, abandoned. Debussy took the enormous Romantic orchestra and the unresolved Wagnerian harmony and removed the obligation to develop anything, which is the whole of the difference.
Led to Modernism
The chord that would not resolve, finally left unresolved. Schoenberg described his own atonality as the logical next step from Wagner and Mahler, and he was being descriptive rather than modest.
  1. 1Symphony No. 9 in D minorLudwig van Beethoven
  2. 2Tristan und IsoldeRichard Wagner
  3. 3WinterreiseFranz Schubert
  4. 4Symphonie fantastiqueHector Berlioz
  5. 5Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique"Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  6. 6Nocturnes, Op. 9Frédéric Chopin
  7. 7Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"Gustav Mahler
  8. 8Ein deutsches RequiemJohannes Brahms
  9. 9Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"Antonín Dvořák

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Colombia's Caribbean coast · 1850 · 7 tracks

Cumbia

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1La Pollera ColoráWilson Choperena and Juan Madera
  2. 2Colombia Tierra QueridaLucho Bermúdez
  3. 3Cumbia CienagueraLos Corraleros de Majagual
  4. 4La PiraguaJosé Barros
  5. 5CururaTotó la Momposina
  6. 6CariñitoLos Hijos del Sol
  7. 7MicaelaSonora Carruseles

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Buenos Aires and Montevideo · 1880 · 8 tracks

Tango

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1La CumparsitaGerardo Matos Rodríguez
  2. 2Adiós NoninoÁstor Piazzolla
  3. 3El ChocloÁngel Villoldo
  4. 4VolverCarlos Gardel
  5. 5LibertangoÁstor Piazzolla
  6. 6La YumbaOsvaldo Pugliese
  7. 7El Día Que Me QuierasCarlos Gardel
  8. 8Balada para un LocoÁstor Piazzolla

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Paris, France · 1888 · 8 tracks

Impressionism

Came out of Romantic
The palette, kept; the argument, abandoned. Debussy took the enormous Romantic orchestra and the unresolved Wagnerian harmony and removed the obligation to develop anything, which is the whole of the difference.
Led to Ambient
Named, not merely borrowed. Eno's ambient manifesto restates Satie's furniture music almost point for point — music designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting — and Eno has always said so.
Led to Minimalism
The precedent nobody claimed. Satie wrote a page and asked for it 840 times in 1893, which is the whole method sixty years early, and Cage spent a career pointing this out to anyone who would listen.
Led to Modernism
The permission to treat sound as material. Once Debussy had shown a chord could exist for its colour rather than its function, the argument about whether it had to belong to a key was already half over.
  1. 1Prélude à l'après-midi d'un fauneClaude Debussy
  2. 2Musique d'ameublementErik Satie
  3. 3VexationsErik Satie
  4. 4La MerClaude Debussy
  5. 5BoléroMaurice Ravel
  6. 6Gymnopédie No. 1Erik Satie
  7. 7Clair de luneClaude Debussy
  8. 8Pavane pour une infante défunteMaurice Ravel

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Jalisco, Mexico · 1900 · 8 tracks

Mariachi

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1Cielito LindoQuirino Mendoza y Cortés
  2. 2El ReyJosé Alfredo Jiménez
  3. 3La BikinaRubén Fuentes
  4. 4Volver, VolverVicente Fernández
  5. 5La LloronaChavela Vargas
  6. 6Son de la NegraMariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán
  7. 7Paloma NegraLola Beltrán
  8. 8EllaJosé Alfredo Jiménez

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Oriente and Havana, Cuba · 1900 · 8 tracks

Son Cubano

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Congolese Rumba
Literally the records. Congolese bands learned from Cuban 78s sold across West and Central Africa, sang nonsense Spanish before switching to Lingala, and kept the clave — so this is an African music returning from Havana.
Led to Salsa
The whole architecture, unchanged. Clave, montuno, coro-pregón and the conjunto line-up all arrive intact from Havana; what New York adds is trombones, volume and a different set of grievances.
  1. 1Chan ChanCompay Segundo
  2. 2El ManiseroRita Montaner
  3. 3GuantanameraJoseíto Fernández
  4. 4Bruca ManiguáArsenio Rodríguez
  5. 5Échale SalsitaSepteto Nacional
  6. 6Dos GardeniasIbrahim Ferrer
  7. 7Quizás, Quizás, QuizásBobby Capó
  8. 8CandelaFaustino Oramas

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Vienna, Paris and New York · 1908 · 10 tracks

Modernism

Came out of Impressionism
The permission to treat sound as material. Once Debussy had shown a chord could exist for its colour rather than its function, the argument about whether it had to belong to a key was already half over.
Came out of Romantic
The chord that would not resolve, finally left unresolved. Schoenberg described his own atonality as the logical next step from Wagner and Mahler, and he was being descriptive rather than modest.
Led to Minimalism
The thing being rejected. Riley, Reich and Glass were trained in serialism and walked away from it — minimalism is a reaction against Darmstadt that could only have been made by people who had been through Darmstadt.
Led to Musique Concrète
The argument arrived first. Russolo's noise machines and Varèse's insistence that music is organised sound had already won the case for material by 1913; Schaeffer simply had a tape machine and could act on it.
  1. 1The Rite of SpringIgor Stravinsky
  2. 2Pierrot lunaireArnold Schoenberg
  3. 34'33"John Cage
  4. 4Quatuor pour la fin du tempsOlivier Messiaen
  5. 5WozzeckAlban Berg
  6. 6Music for Strings, Percussion and CelestaBéla Bartók
  7. 7Threnody to the Victims of HiroshimaKrzysztof Penderecki
  8. 8Symphony No. 5Dmitri Shostakovich
  9. 9MetastaseisIannis Xenakis
  10. 10Risveglio di una cittàLuigi Russolo

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New Orleans, Louisiana · 1917 · 12 tracks

Jazz

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Afrobeat
The solos and the length. Fela trained at Trinity College of Music and led a band that improvises over a vamp for fifteen minutes, which is a jazz structure with a highlife rhythm section inside it.
Led to Bossa Nova
The chords. Jobim was writing altered dominants and unresolved sevenths off American records, which is what let a samba sound like Debussy and gave American players something to hold on to.
Led to Ethio-Jazz
The training and the format. Astatke studied in London and Boston and came home with a vibraphone and a soul-jazz rhythm section, then bent both to modes that do not fit a Western scale.
Led to Funk
The players and the harmony. The horn sections on these records read charts, and when a jazz musician like Herbie Hancock decides the groove is the interesting problem, the traffic is going both ways.
Led to Golden Age Hip-Hop
The crates. Once producers exhausted the obvious funk breaks they went into Blue Note and CTI records for horn stabs and upright bass, and A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr built entire aesthetics out of what they found.
Led to Rhythm and Blues
The horns and the reading musicians. Jump blues is what happened when the swing bands became too expensive to tour: the same arrangers and players, cut down to six pieces and pointed at a smaller, louder room.
Led to Salsa
The harmony and the solos. Salsa arrangers were reading big-band charts, and the horn writing on a Fania record is closer to Basie than to anything recorded in Cuba.
Led to Ska
The players. The Skatalites were Alpha Boys School-trained jazz musicians, and the horn arrangements and solos on these records are bebop-literate in a way the form did not require.
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Maiden Voyage
  1. 1West End BluesLouis Armstrong and His Hot Five
  2. 2So WhatMiles Davis
  3. 3AcknowledgementJohn Coltrane
  4. 4Ko-KoCharlie Parker
  5. 5Strange FruitBillie Holiday
  6. 6'Round MidnightThelonious Monk
  7. 7Body and SoulColeman Hawkins
  8. 8Take FiveThe Dave Brubeck Quartet
  9. 9Moanin'Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
  10. 10Maiden VoyageHerbie Hancock
  11. 11Sing, Sing, SingBenny Goodman
  12. 12Livery Stable BluesOriginal Dixieland Jass Band

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · 1917 · 8 tracks

Samba

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Baile Funk
The vocal and the occasion. The call-and-response, the local celebrity and the neighbourhood dance are carnival practices; funk carioca is what happens when the bateria is replaced by a drum machine.
Led to Bossa Nova
The rhythm, folded into one instrument. João Gilberto's right hand plays the surdo, the tamborim and the agogô at once on nylon strings, which is why bossa needs no percussion section to still be samba.
Led to Tropicália
The rhythm underneath the noise. However far the arrangements go, the percussion is Brazilian and the songs are still built to be understood by an audience that grew up on carnival.
  1. 1Aquarela do BrasilAry Barroso
  2. 2Pelo TelefoneDonga
  3. 3CarinhosoPixinguinha
  4. 4A Voz do MorroZé Kéti
  5. 5Coisa Mais LindaElizeth Cardoso
  6. 6Deixa a Vida Me LevarZeca Pagodinho
  7. 7Canto de OssanhaBaden Powell
  8. 8Trem das OnzeAdoniran Barbosa

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The Mississippi Delta · 1920 · 10 tracks

Blues

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Country
The other half, and rarely admitted at the time. Jimmie Rodgers yodels over twelve bars, Hank Williams learned from a Black street musician in Montgomery, and the bent note is not a Scottish inheritance.
Led to Gospel
Thomas Dorsey spent the twenties as the blues pianist Georgia Tom before he wrote a note of sacred music, and he brought the whole vocabulary with him. Gospel is blues technique with the subject changed, which is exactly what the churches objected to at the time.
Led to Psychedelic Rock
The material underneath the effects. Strip the phasing off most of these records and a twelve-bar structure is still holding them up, which is why the guitar solos go where they go.
Led to Rhythm and Blues
The form, moved to the city and given a band. Rhythm and blues is twelve-bar music with a rhythm section, an amplifier and a shuffle — the Delta repertoire rearranged for a room that wants to dance rather than listen.
Led to Rock and Roll
The form underneath. Almost everything here is still twelve bars and three chords; what changed was the tempo, the volume and the age of the audience.
Led to Soul
The material and the tuning of the voice. The bent third that makes a soul vocal sound like it is telling the truth is a blues inflection, applied to a song that now has a bridge.
  1. 1Cross Road BluesRobert Johnson
  2. 2Smokestack Lightnin'Howlin' Wolf
  3. 3I'm Your Hoochie Coochie ManMuddy Waters
  4. 4Crazy BluesMamie Smith
  5. 5Boogie Chillen'John Lee Hooker
  6. 6Downhearted BluesBessie Smith
  7. 7Call It Stormy MondayT-Bone Walker
  8. 83 O'Clock BluesB.B. King
  9. 9Statesboro BluesBlind Willie McTell
  10. 10I'm a ManBo Diddley

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Piraeus and Smyrna · 1922 · 7 tracks

Rebetiko

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
  1. 1FrangosyrianiMarkos Vamvakaris
  2. 2Synnefiasmeni KyriakiVassilis Tsitsanis
  3. 3MisirlouMichalis Patrinos
  4. 4To Minore Tis AvgisRita Abatzi
  5. 5Ta KavourakiaGiorgos Batis
  6. 6FtohologiaVassilis Tsitsanis
  7. 7Ah Pou Ta Niata MouSotiria Bellou

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Bristol, Tennessee · 1927 · 9 tracks

Country

Came out of Blues
The other half, and rarely admitted at the time. Jimmie Rodgers yodels over twelve bars, Hank Williams learned from a Black street musician in Montgomery, and the bent note is not a Scottish inheritance.
Came out of Celtic Traditional
The tunes and the stories, carried by Scots-Irish settlers into Appalachia and kept there. The modal melodies, the ballad form and the fiddle are all still recognisably the ones that left Ulster.
Led to Bluegrass
The repertoire and the industry. Monroe was a Grand Ole Opry act playing country radio, and bluegrass is what happened when one bandleader decided the hillbilly string band should be virtuosic and fast.
Led to Rock and Roll
The other half of rockabilly, and the half usually left out. Presley, Perkins and Lewis were hillbilly acts on hillbilly labels; Sun's whole method was a country singer doing a blues, and the guitar style comes from Nashville rather than from Chicago.
  1. 1I'm So Lonesome I Could CryHank Williams
  2. 2Ring of FireJohnny Cash
  3. 3JoleneDolly Parton
  4. 4Wildwood FlowerThe Carter Family
  5. 5Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)Jimmie Rodgers
  6. 6CrazyPatsy Cline
  7. 7He Stopped Loving Her TodayGeorge Jones
  8. 8Coal Miner's DaughterLoretta Lynn
  9. 9Pancho and LeftyTownes Van Zandt

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Ghana and coastal West Africa · 1928 · 7 tracks

Highlife

Came out of
Nothing we publish. Its ancestors are genres we have not ranked.
Led to Afrobeat
The other half of the formula, and the half Lagos already had. Fela played highlife before he played anything else, and afrobeat's horn writing and guitar figures are West African long before James Brown is involved.
Shares 2 records with 1976
Sunshine Day, Sweet Mother
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Sweet Mother
  1. 1Yaa AmponsahKwame Asare
  2. 2All For YouE.T. Mensah & The Tempos
  3. 3Sweet MotherPrince Nico Mbarga
  4. 4Ebi Te YieNana Ampadu & The African Brothers Band
  5. 5JoromiSir Victor Uwaifo
  6. 6Simigwa DoGyedu-Blay Ambolley
  7. 7Sunshine DayOsibisa

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Chicago and the American South · 1932 · 8 tracks

Gospel

Came out of Blues
Thomas Dorsey spent the twenties as the blues pianist Georgia Tom before he wrote a note of sacred music, and he brought the whole vocabulary with him. Gospel is blues technique with the subject changed, which is exactly what the churches objected to at the time.
Led to Chicago House
The voices. Robert Owens, Darryl Pandy and Jamie Principle sing house records with church phrasing and church conviction, in rooms that most congregations would not have admitted them to. That tension is the genre's emotional engine.
Led to Soul
The whole technique, secularised. Cooke, Franklin and Redding were trained in church and changed the subject and nothing else; the melisma, the call-and-response and the build to a shout all arrive fully formed.
  1. 1Move On Up a Little HigherMahalia Jackson
  2. 2Strange Things Happening Every DaySister Rosetta Tharpe
  3. 3Touch the Hem of His GarmentThe Soul Stirrers
  4. 4How I Got OverClara Ward & The Ward Singers
  5. 5Oh Happy DayThe Edwin Hawkins Singers
  6. 6Peace Be StillRev. James Cleveland
  7. 7Let's Go Out to the ProgramsThe Dixie Hummingbirds
  8. 8I'll Take You ThereThe Staple Singers

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Kentucky and Nashville · 1945 · 8 tracks

Bluegrass

Came out of Celtic Traditional
The tunes underneath. Strip the banjo off and a great many of these are Scots-Irish reels and modal ballads, which is why an Irish fiddler can sit in on a bluegrass session and not get lost.
Came out of Country
The repertoire and the industry. Monroe was a Grand Ole Opry act playing country radio, and bluegrass is what happened when one bandleader decided the hillbilly string band should be virtuosic and fast.
  1. 1Blue Moon of KentuckyBill Monroe
  2. 2Foggy Mountain BreakdownFlatt and Scruggs
  3. 3Man of Constant SorrowThe Stanley Brothers
  4. 4Uncle PenBill Monroe
  5. 5Rank StrangerThe Stanley Brothers
  6. 6Fox on the RunThe Country Gentlemen
  7. 7Steam Powered Aereo PlaneJohn Hartford
  8. 8RebeccaTony Rice

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Los Angeles and Chicago · 1945 · 9 tracks

Rhythm and Blues

Came out of Blues
The form, moved to the city and given a band. Rhythm and blues is twelve-bar music with a rhythm section, an amplifier and a shuffle — the Delta repertoire rearranged for a room that wants to dance rather than listen.
Came out of Jazz
The horns and the reading musicians. Jump blues is what happened when the swing bands became too expensive to tour: the same arrangers and players, cut down to six pieces and pointed at a smaller, louder room.
Led to Merseybeat
The records the ships brought in. Liverpool got American R&B 45s before London did, straight off the Cunard boats, and the groups were covering Barrett Strong and the Shirelles while the BBC was ignoring both.
Led to Rock and Roll
The songs, often literally the same ones. Rock and roll is jump blues with a backbeat pushed forward, a guitar promoted over the saxophone, and a marketing department that had worked out who was buying the records.
Led to Ska
The source signal, received from Miami. Jamaican sound systems ran on American jump blues records until the supply dried up, and ska began as an attempt to make more of them locally.
Led to Soul
The band behind them. Soul is jump blues with the shuffle straightened and the horn section made to serve a singer rather than a dancer, cut by the same players for the same labels.
  1. 1Rocket 88Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats
  2. 2Choo Choo Ch'BoogieLouis Jordan
  3. 3Hound DogBig Mama Thornton
  4. 4Good Rockin' TonightWynonie Harris
  5. 5Shake, Rattle and RollBig Joe Turner
  6. 6The Fat ManFats Domino
  7. 7Lawdy Miss ClawdyLloyd Price
  8. 8Money HoneyThe Drifters
  9. 9Work with Me, AnnieThe Midnighters

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Kinshasa and Brazzaville · 1948 · 7 tracks

Congolese Rumba

Came out of Son Cubano
Literally the records. Congolese bands learned from Cuban 78s sold across West and Central Africa, sang nonsense Spanish before switching to Lingala, and kept the clave — so this is an African music returning from Havana.
  1. 1Indépendance Cha ChaLe Grand Kallé et l'African Jazz
  2. 2MarioFranco and TPOK Jazz
  3. 3Ata NdeleAdou Elenga
  4. 4Mokolo NakokufaFranco and TPOK Jazz
  5. 5MazeTabu Ley Rochereau
  6. 6Sango Ya MawaPapa Wemba
  7. 7Nakei NairobiMbilia Bel

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Paris, France · 1948 · 8 tracks

Musique Concrète

Came out of Modernism
The argument arrived first. Russolo's noise machines and Varèse's insistence that music is organised sound had already won the case for material by 1913; Schaeffer simply had a tape machine and could act on it.
Led to Krautrock
The editing. Faust and Can built records out of tape splices rather than takes, and Stockhausen taught two of Can's members directly — the lineage here is a classroom, not an influence.
Led to Minimalism
The tape machine as a compositional instrument. Reich's phase pieces are literally two tape loops drifting apart — a Paris technique applied to an American obsession with process.
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Revolution 9
  1. 1Étude aux chemins de ferPierre Schaeffer
  2. 2Gesang der JünglingeKarlheinz Stockhausen
  3. 3Poème électroniqueEdgard Varèse
  4. 4Symphonie pour un homme seulPierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry
  5. 5Williams MixJohn Cage
  6. 6DripsodyHugh Le Caine
  7. 7Silver Apples of the MoonMorton Subotnick
  8. 8Revolution 9The Beatles

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Memphis and Chicago · 1954 · 9 tracks

Rock and Roll

Came out of Blues
The form underneath. Almost everything here is still twelve bars and three chords; what changed was the tempo, the volume and the age of the audience.
Came out of Country
The other half of rockabilly, and the half usually left out. Presley, Perkins and Lewis were hillbilly acts on hillbilly labels; Sun's whole method was a country singer doing a blues, and the guitar style comes from Nashville rather than from Chicago.
Came out of Rhythm and Blues
The songs, often literally the same ones. Rock and roll is jump blues with a backbeat pushed forward, a guitar promoted over the saxophone, and a marketing department that had worked out who was buying the records.
Led to Cambodian Rock
The arrival mechanism. American Forces Vietnam Network was audible across Cambodia, and Phnom Penh bands learned surf, twist and rock and roll off the radio without ever seeing anyone play it.
Led to Merseybeat
The repertoire, learned note for note. Every one of these bands started as a covers act working Hamburg clubs eight hours a night, which is where the tightness came from and why the songwriting arrived so suddenly.
Led to Psychedelic Rock
The instrumentation and the format, taken somewhere it was not designed to go. Every band here started out playing Chuck Berry covers, then discovered the studio was an instrument and the three-minute single was optional.
Led to Punk
The same three chords and the same two minutes, retrieved deliberately. Punk is a raid on 1956 conducted in order to throw out everything rock had accumulated in the twenty years since.
  1. 1Johnny B. GoodeChuck Berry
  2. 2Tutti FruttiLittle Richard
  3. 3That's All RightElvis Presley
  4. 4Bo DiddleyBo Diddley
  5. 5Great Balls of FireJerry Lee Lewis
  6. 6Summertime BluesEddie Cochran
  7. 7Be-Bop-A-LulaGene Vincent
  8. 8Peggy SueBuddy Holly
  9. 9Rock Around the ClockBill Haley & His Comets

The full ranking →

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · 1958 · 8 tracks

Bossa Nova

Came out of Jazz
The chords. Jobim was writing altered dominants and unresolved sevenths off American records, which is what let a samba sound like Debussy and gave American players something to hold on to.
Came out of Samba
The rhythm, folded into one instrument. João Gilberto's right hand plays the surdo, the tamborim and the agogô at once on nylon strings, which is why bossa needs no percussion section to still be samba.
Led to Shibuya-kei
The chords and the cool. Shibuya-kei's default harmonic language is Jobim's, and Pizzicato Five and Cornelius both worked from Brazilian records long before Western listeners noticed.
Led to Tropicália
The harmony and the parentage they were rebelling against. Caetano and Gil revered João Gilberto and then argued that a music this refined could no longer describe the country it came from.
  1. 1Chega de SaudadeJoão Gilberto
  2. 2Garota de IpanemaAntônio Carlos Jobim
  3. 3DesafinadoJoão Gilberto
  4. 4CorcovadoAstrud Gilberto and Stan Getz
  5. 5InsensatezAntônio Carlos Jobim
  6. 6Águas de MarçoElis Regina and Antônio Carlos Jobim
  7. 7Samba de Uma Nota SóJoão Gilberto
  8. 8BerimbauBaden Powell

The full ranking →

Detroit and Memphis · 1961 · 10 tracks

Soul

Came out of Blues
The material and the tuning of the voice. The bent third that makes a soul vocal sound like it is telling the truth is a blues inflection, applied to a song that now has a bridge.
Came out of Gospel
The whole technique, secularised. Cooke, Franklin and Redding were trained in church and changed the subject and nothing else; the melisma, the call-and-response and the build to a shout all arrive fully formed.
Came out of Rhythm and Blues
The band behind them. Soul is jump blues with the shuffle straightened and the horn section made to serve a singer rather than a dancer, cut by the same players for the same labels.
Led to City Pop
The vocal manners. The phrasing, the backing-vocal stacks and the chord changes are lifted from American soft soul, then sung in Japanese, which does something odd and lovely to the stresses.
Led to Disco
The arrangements and the voices. Philadelphia's disco records are Philly soul records with the tempo fixed and the running time doubled, cut by the same string sections and the same singers.
Led to Funk
The band, the studio and the singers, all already in place. Funk is what the Stax and King house bands did once the chord changes stopped being the interesting part and the drummer's placement started being it.
Led to Neo-Soul
The thing being restored. Neo-soul is explicitly an argument that the seventies got something right — the live rhythm section, the album as a statement, the singer as an interpreter rather than a brand.
Led to Northern Soul
The records, all of them, and none of them made for this. Northern soul is a curatorial act performed on other people's commercial failures — mostly mid-sixties Detroit and Chicago sides that had sold nothing at home.
  1. 1What's Going OnMarvin Gaye
  2. 2A Change Is Gonna ComeSam Cooke
  3. 3RespectAretha Franklin
  4. 4Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding
  5. 5Papa's Got a Brand New BagJames Brown
  6. 6Dancing in the StreetMartha and the Vandellas
  7. 7The Tracks of My TearsThe Miracles
  8. 8Soul ManSam & Dave
  9. 9Move On UpCurtis Mayfield
  10. 10Ain't No SunshineBill Withers

The full ranking →

Liverpool, England · 1962 · 7 tracks

Merseybeat

Came out of Rhythm and Blues
The records the ships brought in. Liverpool got American R&B 45s before London did, straight off the Cunard boats, and the groups were covering Barrett Strong and the Shirelles while the BBC was ignoring both.
Came out of Rock and Roll
The repertoire, learned note for note. Every one of these bands started as a covers act working Hamburg clubs eight hours a night, which is where the tightness came from and why the songwriting arrived so suddenly.
Led to Britpop
The model, quoted openly. Everyone here is working from the Beatles and the Kinks — the melodies, the chord movements and the flat vowels are all deliberate retrievals of 1965.
Led to Psychedelic Rock
The bands themselves, three years older. Psychedelia in Britain is largely beat groups who could suddenly afford studio time and had stopped touring — the same players, the same producers, an entirely different brief.
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
She Loves You
  1. 1She Loves YouThe Beatles
  2. 2Please Please MeThe Beatles
  3. 3Ferry Cross the MerseyGerry and the Pacemakers
  4. 4Do You Love MeThe Dave Clark Five
  5. 5You Really Got MeThe Kinks
  6. 6Hippy Hippy ShakeThe Swinging Blue Jeans
  7. 7Twist and ShoutThe Beatles

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Kingston, Jamaica · 1962 · 8 tracks

Ska

Came out of Jazz
The players. The Skatalites were Alpha Boys School-trained jazz musicians, and the horn arrangements and solos on these records are bebop-literate in a way the form did not require.
Came out of Rhythm and Blues
The source signal, received from Miami. Jamaican sound systems ran on American jump blues records until the supply dried up, and ska began as an attempt to make more of them locally.
Led to Reggae
The same musicians, decelerating. Ska slowed into rocksteady and rocksteady slowed again, and at each step the bass took over more of the tune until the offbeat guitar chop was all that was left of the original feel.
Led to Two-Tone
The rhythm, the repertoire and the point. These bands covered Prince Buster and the Skatalites outright, and the offbeat guitar chop is unchanged — only the tempo and the anger are new.
  1. 1Simmer DownThe Wailers
  2. 2Man in the StreetDon Drummond & The Skatalites
  3. 3Guns of NavaroneThe Skatalites
  4. 4My Boy LollipopMillie Small
  5. 5Al CaponePrince Buster
  6. 6Carry Go Bring ComeJustin Hinds & The Dominoes
  7. 7007 (Shanty Town)Desmond Dekker & The Aces
  8. 8Train to SkavilleThe Ethiopians

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New York and San Francisco · 1964 · 9 tracks

Minimalism

Came out of Impressionism
The precedent nobody claimed. Satie wrote a page and asked for it 840 times in 1893, which is the whole method sixty years early, and Cage spent a career pointing this out to anyone who would listen.
Came out of Modernism
The thing being rejected. Riley, Reich and Glass were trained in serialism and walked away from it — minimalism is a reaction against Darmstadt that could only have been made by people who had been through Darmstadt.
Came out of Musique Concrète
The tape machine as a compositional instrument. Reich's phase pieces are literally two tape loops drifting apart — a Paris technique applied to an American obsession with process.
Led to Ambient
The premise. Once Riley and Reich had shown that a process could be left running and would generate its own detail, music that asks for no attention at all is only one step further, and Eno took it.
Led to Krautrock
The permission to repeat. New York drone and phase music reached Germany through Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, and gave a generation of bands a reason to hold one figure for twenty minutes and call it finished.
  1. 1In CTerry Riley
  2. 2Music for 18 MusiciansSteve Reich
  3. 3Come OutSteve Reich
  4. 4I Am Sitting in a RoomAlvin Lucier
  5. 5From the Side of Man and WomankindTony Conrad with Faust
  6. 6Bye Bye ButterflyPauline Oliveros
  7. 7Stay On ItJulius Eastman
  8. 8The Sinking of the TitanicGavin Bryars
  9. 9OpeningPhilip Glass

The full ranking →

San Francisco and London · 1966 · 9 tracks

Psychedelic Rock

Came out of Blues
The material underneath the effects. Strip the phasing off most of these records and a twelve-bar structure is still holding them up, which is why the guitar solos go where they go.
Came out of Merseybeat
The bands themselves, three years older. Psychedelia in Britain is largely beat groups who could suddenly afford studio time and had stopped touring — the same players, the same producers, an entirely different brief.
Came out of Rock and Roll
The instrumentation and the format, taken somewhere it was not designed to go. Every band here started out playing Chuck Berry covers, then discovered the studio was an instrument and the three-minute single was optional.
Led to Anadolu Rock
The equipment and the licence. Turkish bands were hearing Cream and Hendrix on shortwave and taking from them exactly one idea — that the guitar could carry a melody nobody had written for a guitar.
Led to Cambodian Rock
What they did with it by 1969 — fuzz, farfisa and long instrumental sections, applied to melodies that stay resolutely Khmer in their ornamentation.
Led to Grunge
The riffs and the volume. The other half of the record collection was late sixties and early seventies heavy rock, which hardcore orthodoxy had spent a decade treating as the enemy.
Led to Krautrock
The starting point most of these bands were reacting against and extending at once. Amon Düül II are a commune psych band by any reading; Can and Faust keep the studio experiment and throw out the blues and the whimsy.
Led to Shoegaze
The pedals and the ambition. Everything shoegaze does to a guitar was first done in 1967; what changed was that the effects stopped being a decoration on the song and became the song.
Led to Tropicália
The electric guitars, imported precisely because Brazilian purists considered them a betrayal. Os Mutantes had heard Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles' studio tricks are all over these records.
Led to Zamrock
Hendrix, Cream and Black Sabbath, arriving on records and reproduced with what was available. The fuzz here is often an overdriven cheap amplifier rather than a pedal, and it is better for it.
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Tomorrow Never Knows
  1. 1Tomorrow Never KnowsThe Beatles
  2. 2Interstellar OverdrivePink Floyd
  3. 3Purple HazeThe Jimi Hendrix Experience
  4. 4Eight Miles HighThe Byrds
  5. 5Venus in FursThe Velvet Underground
  6. 6White RabbitJefferson Airplane
  7. 72000 Light Years from HomeThe Rolling Stones
  8. 8Sunshine of Your LoveCream
  9. 9Dark StarGrateful Dead

The full ranking →

Cincinnati, Ohio · 1967 · 10 tracks

Funk

Came out of Jazz
The players and the harmony. The horn sections on these records read charts, and when a jazz musician like Herbie Hancock decides the groove is the interesting problem, the traffic is going both ways.
Came out of Soul
The band, the studio and the singers, all already in place. Funk is what the Stax and King house bands did once the chord changes stopped being the interesting part and the drummer's placement started being it.
Led to Afrobeat
The rhythm section and the discipline. Fela heard James Brown's band on tour and took the interlocking, unresolving groove home, where Tony Allen recombined it with highlife and made the pattern breathe rather than march.
Led to City Pop
The rhythm section. Japanese session players studied American funk records with a rigour bordering on the forensic, and the bass and drum parts here are technically cleaner than most of what they were copying.
Led to Disco
The same rhythm section, straightened out. Disco takes funk's interlocking parts and puts a kick on every beat so a DJ can join two records together, which trades the syncopation for something a room can move to for hours.
Led to Electro
The parts, reassigned. Electro keeps funk's syncopation and its emphasis on the bass figure, then hands every one of those parts to a machine that cannot get tired and will not swing unless told to.
Led to G-Funk
The source, and unusually openly. Where New York chopped James Brown into unrecognisable fragments, Dre interpolated whole Parliament and Funkadelic arrangements with session players, which is closer to covering than to sampling.
Led to Golden Age Hip-Hop
The raw material. The break a DJ looped was almost always a funk drummer's four bars, and the genre's whole method — take the best part of somebody else's record and refuse to let it end — is a verdict on funk arrangements.
Led to Neo-Soul
The instrumentation and the harmony. When the samples came off, what was left underneath was a live rhythm section playing the parts the samples had been lifted from in the first place.
Led to Post-Punk
The other half of the rhythm section. Gang of Four and A Certain Ratio played James Brown's interlocking parts with the warmth deliberately removed, using funk as an argument about tension rather than pleasure.
Led to Zamrock
The rhythm sections, which swing where their British models plod. James Brown records circulated in Lusaka alongside the rock ones, and Zamrock's drummers clearly preferred them.
Shares 1 record with Roots
Cold Sweat
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Chameleon
  1. 1Cold SweatJames Brown
  2. 2Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)Sly & the Family Stone
  3. 3Funky DrummerJames Brown
  4. 4SuperstitionStevie Wonder
  5. 5ChameleonHerbie Hancock
  6. 6Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)Parliament
  7. 7Jungle BoogieKool & the Gang
  8. 8Pick Up the PiecesAverage White Band
  9. 9ApacheIncredible Bongo Band
  10. 10One Nation Under a GrooveFunkadelic

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New York City · 1967 · 8 tracks

Salsa

Came out of Jazz
The harmony and the solos. Salsa arrangers were reading big-band charts, and the horn writing on a Fania record is closer to Basie than to anything recorded in Cuba.
Came out of Son Cubano
The whole architecture, unchanged. Clave, montuno, coro-pregón and the conjunto line-up all arrive intact from Havana; what New York adds is trombones, volume and a different set of grievances.
Shares 1 record with Dancing to Bad News
El Cantante
  1. 1Pedro NavajaRubén Blades
  2. 2Che Che ColéWillie Colón and Héctor Lavoe
  3. 3Quítate TúFania All-Stars
  4. 4El CantanteHéctor Lavoe
  5. 5Bemba ColoráCelia Cruz
  6. 6Oye Como VaTito Puente
  7. 7AnacaonaCheo Feliciano
  8. 8IndestructibleRay Barretto

The full ranking →

Bahia and São Paulo, Brazil · 1967 · 8 tracks

Tropicália

Came out of Bossa Nova
The harmony and the parentage they were rebelling against. Caetano and Gil revered João Gilberto and then argued that a music this refined could no longer describe the country it came from.
Came out of Psychedelic Rock
The electric guitars, imported precisely because Brazilian purists considered them a betrayal. Os Mutantes had heard Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles' studio tricks are all over these records.
Came out of Samba
The rhythm underneath the noise. However far the arrangements go, the percussion is Brazilian and the songs are still built to be understood by an audience that grew up on carnival.
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Baby
  1. 1TropicáliaCaetano Veloso
  2. 2Alegria, AlegriaCaetano Veloso
  3. 3Domingo no ParqueGilberto Gil
  4. 4Panis et CircensesOs Mutantes
  5. 5BabyGal Costa
  6. 6É Proibido ProibirCaetano Veloso
  7. 7Bat MacumbaGilberto Gil
  8. 8Que PenaJorge Ben

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Istanbul, Turkey · 1968 · 7 tracks

Anadolu Rock

Came out of Psychedelic Rock
The equipment and the licence. Turkish bands were hearing Cream and Hendrix on shortwave and taking from them exactly one idea — that the guitar could carry a melody nobody had written for a guitar.
Shares 1 record with 1976
Yaz Gazeteci Yaz
  1. 1EstarabimErkin Koray
  2. 2Ince İnce Bir Kar YağarMoğollar
  3. 3Yuh YuhCem Karaca
  4. 4DönenceBarış Manço
  5. 5Yaz Gazeteci YazSelda Bağcan
  6. 6CemalimSelda Bağcan
  7. 7Kendim Ettim Kendim BuldumErkin Koray

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Phnom Penh, Cambodia · 1968 · 6 tracks

Cambodian Rock

Came out of Psychedelic Rock
What they did with it by 1969 — fuzz, farfisa and long instrumental sections, applied to melodies that stay resolutely Khmer in their ornamentation.
Came out of Rock and Roll
The arrival mechanism. American Forces Vietnam Network was audible across Cambodia, and Phnom Penh bands learned surf, twist and rock and roll off the radio without ever seeing anyone play it.
  1. 1Chnam Oun Dop-Pram MuyRos Serey Sothea
  2. 2Jam 10 Kai TheitSinn Sisamouth–
  3. 3CycloYol Aularong
  4. 4Old Pot Still Cooks Good RicePan Ron
  5. 5Have You Seen My BoyfriendRos Serey Sothea
  6. 6Kingdom of CambodiaSinn Sisamouth–

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Kingston, Jamaica · 1968 · 9 tracks

Reggae

Came out of Ska
The same musicians, decelerating. Ska slowed into rocksteady and rocksteady slowed again, and at each step the bass took over more of the tune until the offbeat guitar chop was all that was left of the original feel.
Led to Dancehall
The rhythms themselves, often literally: dancehall's first decade is largely built on rocksteady and roots riddims recut faster, with the deejay doing the work the vocal group used to do.
Led to Dub
The records themselves. A dub is not a new composition but the B-side of an existing one, so every dub plate on this list is a roots reggae rhythm with the singer removed and the engineer promoted.
Shares 1 record with 1976
Police and Thieves
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
No Woman, No Cry
  1. 1No Woman, No CryBob Marley & The Wailers
  2. 2Satta MassaganaThe Abyssinians
  3. 3The Harder They ComeJimmy Cliff
  4. 4Marcus GarveyBurning Spear
  5. 5IsraelitesDesmond Dekker & The Aces
  6. 6Police and ThievesJunior Murvin
  7. 7Right TimeThe Mighty Diamonds
  8. 8Two Sevens ClashCulture
  9. 9Legalize ItPeter Tosh

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Lagos, Nigeria · 1969 · 8 tracks

Afrobeat

Came out of Funk
The rhythm section and the discipline. Fela heard James Brown's band on tour and took the interlocking, unresolving groove home, where Tony Allen recombined it with highlife and made the pattern breathe rather than march.
Came out of Highlife
The other half of the formula, and the half Lagos already had. Fela played highlife before he played anything else, and afrobeat's horn writing and guitar figures are West African long before James Brown is involved.
Came out of Jazz
The solos and the length. Fela trained at Trinity College of Music and led a band that improvises over a vamp for fifteen minutes, which is a jazz structure with a highlife rhythm section inside it.
Led to Post-Punk
The polyrhythm. Talking Heads, A Certain Ratio and Rip Rig + Panic were all openly studying Fela's interlocking parts, which is how a scene that started with three chords ended up with two percussionists.
Shares 1 record with 1976
Zombie
Shares 1 record with Dancing to Bad News
Zombie
  1. 1ZombieFela Kuti & Africa 70
  2. 2Water No Get EnemyFela Kuti & Africa 70
  3. 3ShakaraFela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70
  4. 4Sorrow Tears and BloodFela Kuti & Africa 70
  5. 5Soul MakossaManu Dibango
  6. 6HeavenEbo Taylor
  7. 7No DiscriminationTony Allen & The Afro Messengers
  8. 8Beng Beng BengFemi Kuti

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia · 1969 · 7 tracks

Ethio-Jazz

Came out of Jazz
The training and the format. Astatke studied in London and Boston and came home with a vibraphone and a soul-jazz rhythm section, then bent both to modes that do not fit a Western scale.
  1. 1Yèkèrmo SèwMulatu Astatke
  2. 2Ere Mela MelaMahmoud Ahmed
  3. 3TezetaMulatu Astatke
  4. 4Yègellé TezetaMulatu Astatke
  5. 5Musicawi SiltGirma Bèyènè and the Walias Band
  6. 6AlmazTlahoun Gèssèssè
  7. 7HeywetéAlèmayèhu Eshèté

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West Germany · 1970 · 9 tracks

Krautrock

Came out of Minimalism
The permission to repeat. New York drone and phase music reached Germany through Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, and gave a generation of bands a reason to hold one figure for twenty minutes and call it finished.
Came out of Musique Concrète
The editing. Faust and Can built records out of tape splices rather than takes, and Stockhausen taught two of Can's members directly — the lineage here is a classroom, not an influence.
Came out of Psychedelic Rock
The starting point most of these bands were reacting against and extending at once. Amon Düül II are a commune psych band by any reading; Can and Faust keep the studio experiment and throw out the blues and the whimsy.
Led to Ambient
The sound and the licence. Eno was producing and recording with Cluster and Harmonia in the years either side of Discreet Music, and took from them the idea that a synthesiser could hold one state for a very long time.
Led to Detroit Techno
The other half of the formula, and the one Derrick May named: Kraftwerk's precision meeting Parliament's funk in an elevator. Detroit heard European machine music as a model for the future rather than as a novelty.
Led to Electro
The source material, taken literally. Planet Rock is Trans-Europe Express played over Numbers, which is less an influence than an act of appropriation — and it is the moment European machine music becomes Black American dance music.
Led to Post-Punk
The engine. Joy Division, Wire and PiL all took the unaccented forward pulse off Neu! and Can records rather than off American rock, which is why post-punk drives instead of swinging.
Shares 1 record with Roots
Hallogallo
  1. 1HallogalloNeu!
  2. 2AutobahnKraftwerk
  3. 3HalleluhwahCan
  4. 4Trans-Europe ExpressKraftwerk
  5. 5PhaedraTangerine Dream
  6. 6It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine GirlFaust
  7. 7HollywoodCluster
  8. 8E2-E4Manuel Göttsching
  9. 9Archangels ThunderbirdAmon Düül II

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Wigan and Manchester, England · 1970 · 7 tracks

Northern Soul

Came out of Soul
The records, all of them, and none of them made for this. Northern soul is a curatorial act performed on other people's commercial failures — mostly mid-sixties Detroit and Chicago sides that had sold nothing at home.
  1. 1Out on the FloorDobie Gray
  2. 2Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)Frank Wilson
  3. 3The SnakeAl Wilson
  4. 4Long After Tonight Is OverJimmy Radcliffe–
  5. 5Tainted LoveGloria Jones
  6. 6You Didn't Say a WordYvonne Baker
  7. 7Time Will Pass You ByTobi Legend

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Lusaka and Kitwe, Zambia · 1972 · 6 tracks

Zamrock

Came out of Funk
The rhythm sections, which swing where their British models plod. James Brown records circulated in Lusaka alongside the rock ones, and Zamrock's drummers clearly preferred them.
Came out of Psychedelic Rock
Hendrix, Cream and Black Sabbath, arriving on records and reproduced with what was available. The fuzz here is often an overdriven cheap amplifier rather than a pedal, and it is better for it.
Shares 2 records with 1976
Nizakupanga Ngozi, Waile
  1. 1IntroductionWITCH
  2. 2Khala My FriendAmanaz
  3. 3Nizakupanga NgoziNgozi Family
  4. 4WaileWITCH
  5. 5AfricaAmanaz
  6. 6Day of JudgementNgozi Family

The full ranking →

Kingston, Jamaica · 1973 · 8 tracks

Dub

Came out of Reggae
The records themselves. A dub is not a new composition but the B-side of an existing one, so every dub plate on this list is a roots reggae rhythm with the singer removed and the engineer promoted.
Led to Dancehall
The idea that the instrumental is the real product. Once a version could carry a record on its own, a riddim could be sold to twenty artists in a season, and the whole economy of the music followed from that.
Led to Drum and Bass
The bass and the ritual. Jungle came out of British sound-system culture: the sub-bass as the point of the record, the dubplate as currency, and the MC and the rewind as things a rave inherited directly from Kingston.
Led to Dub Techno
The signal path. Everything is a send: the chord exists only as its own echo, the mix is performed rather than arranged, and the noise floor is treated as an instrument exactly as King Tubby treated it.
Led to Dubstep
The method and the name. Everything is mixed around the bass, effects are performed live rather than printed, and the twelve-inch exists so a sound system can play it at a volume the record was designed to need.
Led to Trip-Hop
The mix. Bristol's sound-system inheritance is why these records are built from the bass upward, why the reverb is a location rather than an effect, and why the vocal is allowed to disappear for a bar and come back.
Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
Kunta Kinte Dub
  1. 1King Tubby Meets Rockers UptownAugustus Pablo
  2. 2Black PantaThe Upsetters
  3. 3Pick a DubKeith Hudson
  4. 4Super ApeThe Upsetters
  5. 5Kunta Kinte DubThe Revolutionaries
  6. 6The GhostBurning Spear
  7. 7Dance of the VampiresScientist
  8. 8Under Me Sleng TengWayne Smith

The full ranking →

New York City · 1974 · 10 tracks

Disco

Came out of Funk
The same rhythm section, straightened out. Disco takes funk's interlocking parts and puts a kick on every beat so a DJ can join two records together, which trades the syncopation for something a room can move to for hours.
Came out of Soul
The arrangements and the voices. Philadelphia's disco records are Philly soul records with the tempo fixed and the running time doubled, cut by the same string sections and the same singers.
Led to Balearic
The DJ's authority over an evening, and the twelve-inch as its unit. What Alfredo did was a Paradise Garage idea relocated to an open-air club with no obligation to a single genre.
Led to Chicago House
The records themselves. Chicago DJs were playing Philadelphia and Salsoul twelve-inches to a crowd disco had abandoned, and house began as the attempt to make new ones with a drum machine instead of an orchestra.
Led to City Pop
The gloss and the four-on-the-floor. City pop takes disco's string arrangements and production budget and points them at a private, domestic kind of pleasure rather than at a dancefloor.
Led to French House
The raw material, and openly. French house is largely a set of arguments about which four bars of a seventies record were the good ones, which makes it the most affectionate genre on this map towards its own ancestor.
Led to Golden Age Hip-Hop
The apparatus. The twelve-inch, the extended version and the idea of a DJ as the author of an evening all reached the Bronx from downtown, and the first rap hits were made over disco rhythm sections playing live.
Led to Italo Disco
The form, kept alive somewhere the backlash never reached. Italo holds on to the four-on-the-floor kick, the extended twelve-inch and the sentimental melody, and simply replaces the string section with a Juno.
Shares 1 record with Roots
I Feel Love
  1. 1I Feel LoveDonna Summer
  2. 2Love Is the MessageMFSB
  3. 3Good TimesChic
  4. 4Love HangoverDiana Ross
  5. 5Ten PercentDouble Exposure
  6. 6Doctor LoveFirst Choice
  7. 7Is It All Over My FaceLoose Joints
  8. 8Love's ThemeLove Unlimited Orchestra
  9. 9Don't Leave Me This WayThelma Houston
  10. 10Lady MarmaladeLabelle

The full ranking →

Tokyo, Japan · 1976 · 8 tracks

City Pop

Came out of Disco
The gloss and the four-on-the-floor. City pop takes disco's string arrangements and production budget and points them at a private, domestic kind of pleasure rather than at a dancefloor.
Came out of Funk
The rhythm section. Japanese session players studied American funk records with a rigour bordering on the forensic, and the bass and drum parts here are technically cleaner than most of what they were copying.
Came out of Soul
The vocal manners. The phrasing, the backing-vocal stacks and the chord changes are lifted from American soft soul, then sung in Japanese, which does something odd and lovely to the stresses.
Led to Shibuya-kei
The studio standards and the personnel. This is the previous Tokyo generation's obsessive production quality, applied by people young enough to treat that generation as a crate to dig in.
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Plastic Love
  1. 1Plastic LoveMariya Takeuchi
  2. 2Ride on TimeTatsuro Yamashita
  3. 3Mayonaka no Door / Stay With MeMiki Matsubara
  4. 4Windy SummerAnri
  5. 5SparkleTatsuro Yamashita
  6. 6SunshowerTaeko Ohnuki
  7. 7RydeenYellow Magic Orchestra
  8. 8Telephone NumberJunko Ohashi

The full ranking →

New York and London · 1976 · 9 tracks

Punk

Came out of Rock and Roll
The same three chords and the same two minutes, retrieved deliberately. Punk is a raid on 1956 conducted in order to throw out everything rock had accumulated in the twenty years since.
Led to Britpop
The attitude and the independent labels. Creation and Food are punk-era structures, and the willingness to be rude in the press is inherited directly.
Led to Hardcore Punk
Everything, accelerated and stripped. Hardcore keeps punk's chord vocabulary and its independence and discards the pop tunes, the art-school irony and any song longer than ninety seconds.
Led to Post-Punk
The clue is in the name. Post-punk is made by people who were in punk bands or at punk gigs, keeping the amateurism and the independence and discarding the three chords within about eighteen months.
Led to Two-Tone
The speed and the infrastructure. Two-Tone runs on punk's independent labels, punk's touring circuit and punk's assumption that a band should be able to start on Tuesday and play on Friday.
  1. 1Anarchy in the U.K.Sex Pistols
  2. 2Blitzkrieg BopRamones
  3. 3White RiotThe Clash
  4. 4Blank GenerationRichard Hell & The Voidoids
  5. 5Oh Bondage! Up Yours!X-Ray Spex–
  6. 6Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)Buzzcocks
  7. 7Search and DestroyThe Stooges
  8. 8Piss FactoryPatti Smith
  9. 9Alternative UlsterStiff Little Fingers

The full ranking →

England · 1978 · 10 tracks

Ambient

Came out of Impressionism
Named, not merely borrowed. Eno's ambient manifesto restates Satie's furniture music almost point for point — music designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting — and Eno has always said so.
Came out of Krautrock
The sound and the licence. Eno was producing and recording with Cluster and Harmonia in the years either side of Discreet Music, and took from them the idea that a synthesiser could hold one state for a very long time.
Came out of Minimalism
The premise. Once Riley and Reich had shown that a process could be left running and would generate its own detail, music that asks for no attention at all is only one step further, and Eno took it.
Led to IDM
What replaced the dancefloor. Once a record no longer had to work at two in the morning, Eno's idea of music as an environment was the only available model for what it should do instead.
Led to Shoegaze
Eno's premise — that the studio is the instrument and texture is the composition — reached Thames Valley guitar bands a decade later and was played at volume. The wall of noise is an ambient record with the gain up.
Led to Trip-Hop
What the breaks sit in. The space around a Massive Attack record is Eno's rather than hip-hop's: a mix built as weather instead of as a stack of parts, which is why the genre sounds like a room.
Shares 1 record with Warp
Rhubarb
  1. 1An Ending (Ascent)Brian Eno
  2. 2XtalAphex Twin
  3. 3dlp 1.1William Basinski
  4. 4Requiem for Dying MothersStars of the Lid
  5. 5Lost in the Humming AirHarold Budd & Brian Eno
  6. 6Pop 1Gas
  7. 7BlinkHiroshi Yoshimura
  8. 8Little Fluffy CloudsThe Orb
  9. 9RhubarbAphex Twin
  10. 10Heavy Water / I'd Rather Be SleepingGrouper

The full ranking →

United Kingdom · 1978 · 10 tracks

Post-Punk

Came out of Afrobeat
The polyrhythm. Talking Heads, A Certain Ratio and Rip Rig + Panic were all openly studying Fela's interlocking parts, which is how a scene that started with three chords ended up with two percussionists.
Came out of Funk
The other half of the rhythm section. Gang of Four and A Certain Ratio played James Brown's interlocking parts with the warmth deliberately removed, using funk as an argument about tension rather than pleasure.
Came out of Krautrock
The engine. Joy Division, Wire and PiL all took the unaccented forward pulse off Neu! and Can records rather than off American rock, which is why post-punk drives instead of swinging.
Came out of Punk
The clue is in the name. Post-punk is made by people who were in punk bands or at punk gigs, keeping the amateurism and the independence and discarding the three chords within about eighteen months.
Led to Dream Pop
The same effects pedals, pointed the other way. Chorus and delay stop being used to make a guitar sound anxious and start being used to make it sound enormous, and the singer stops declaiming and starts floating.
Led to Madchester
The personnel and the label. Factory Records, New Order and the Haçienda are the same institution one decade later, and the guitar bands that followed inherited a venue built by post-punk profits.
Led to Riot Grrrl
The other model. The Slits and the Raincoats had already shown that a band could be deliberately untrained and rhythmically strange, and riot grrrl cited them constantly and correctly.
Led to Shoegaze
The guitars and the temperament. Effects used to obscure rather than to display, a bass carrying the tune, and a singer positioned as one more texture — all settled practice in Britain by 1982.
Shares 1 record with Roots
Public Image
  1. 1Love Will Tear Us ApartJoy Division
  2. 2Public ImagePublic Image Ltd
  3. 3Damaged GoodsGang of Four
  4. 4A ForestThe Cure
  5. 5Once in a LifetimeTalking Heads
  6. 6Typical GirlsThe Slits
  7. 7Nag Nag NagCabaret Voltaire
  8. 8Shot by Both SidesMagazine
  9. 9Bela Lugosi's DeadBauhaus
  10. 10CeremonyNew Order

The full ranking →

Kingston, Jamaica · 1979 · 9 tracks

Dancehall

Came out of Dub
The idea that the instrumental is the real product. Once a version could carry a record on its own, a riddim could be sold to twenty artists in a season, and the whole economy of the music followed from that.
Came out of Reggae
The rhythms themselves, often literally: dancehall's first decade is largely built on rocksteady and roots riddims recut faster, with the deejay doing the work the vocal group used to do.
Led to Bleep Techno
The weight, and the reason it sounds British. Leeds and Sheffield had Jamaican sound systems in the same halls, and bleep is Detroit melody arranged for a rig built to shake a room.
Led to Breakbeat Hardcore
The bass and the voice. Sound-system culture supplied the sub-bass weight, the ragga vocal sample and the MC on the microphone, which is what separates a British rave record from a European one.
Led to Daggering
Everything structural — the riddim economy, the deejay, the tempo. What daggering added was a subject: for three years the records described one dance in the plainest language available, and the rhythm tracks were built to be moved to in exactly that way.
Led to Gqom
The distribution. A gqom track circulates as a bare rhythm that MCs and dancers claim, spread hand to hand rather than through a label, exactly as a riddim moves through Kingston.
Led to Grime
The delivery. The grime MC's cadence, the clash, the reload and the instrumental sold as its own record are all dancehall practices, arriving in East London through families and pirate radio rather than through records.
Led to Kwaito
The voice. The chanted, repeated, half-sung vocal over a shared rhythm track is a deejay's technique rather than a house singer's, and kwaito's slang-heavy delivery works the way a Kingston toast does.
Led to Reggaeton
One riddim, taken literally. Shabba Ranks's Dem Bow was recut in Panama and then in San Juan until the boom-ch-boom-chick under it stopped being a quotation and became the genre's definition.
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Ring the Alarm
  1. 1Bam BamSister Nancy
  2. 2ZungguzungguguzungguzengYellowman
  3. 3Ring the AlarmTenor Saw
  4. 4Dem BowShabba Ranks
  5. 5Murder She WroteChaka Demus & Pliers
  6. 6BoombasticShaggy
  7. 7Who Am IBeenie Man
  8. 8Get BusySean Paul
  9. 9ClarksVybz Kartel

The full ranking →

Coventry, England · 1979 · 7 tracks

Two-Tone

Came out of Punk
The speed and the infrastructure. Two-Tone runs on punk's independent labels, punk's touring circuit and punk's assumption that a band should be able to start on Tuesday and play on Friday.
Came out of Ska
The rhythm, the repertoire and the point. These bands covered Prince Buster and the Skatalites outright, and the offbeat guitar chop is unchanged — only the tempo and the anger are new.
  1. 1Ghost TownThe Specials
  2. 2GangstersThe Special AKA
  3. 3A Message to You, RudyThe Specials
  4. 4On My RadioThe Selecter
  5. 5One Step BeyondMadness
  6. 6Mirror in the BathroomThe Beat
  7. 7Too Much Too YoungThe Specials

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Washington DC and Los Angeles · 1980 · 8 tracks

Hardcore Punk

Came out of Punk
Everything, accelerated and stripped. Hardcore keeps punk's chord vocabulary and its independence and discards the pop tunes, the art-school irony and any song longer than ninety seconds.
Led to Grunge
The methods and the people. Everyone here came up through American hardcore's independent labels and touring circuit; grunge is what happened when those musicians slowed down and admitted they liked choruses.
Led to Riot Grrrl
The volume, the brevity and the labels. Kill Rock Stars and Dischord are the same infrastructure; what changed was who was allowed to use it and what the songs were permitted to be about.
Shares 2 records with The Eighties
Rise Above, Straight Edge
  1. 1Rise AboveBlack Flag
  2. 2Straight EdgeMinor Threat
  3. 3Pay to CumBad Brains–
  4. 4Nervous BreakdownBlack Flag
  5. 5FillerMinor Threat
  6. 6InstitutionalizedSuicidal Tendencies–
  7. 7WastedCircle Jerks
  8. 8Waiting RoomFugazi

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Italy · 1980 · 8 tracks

Italo Disco

Came out of Disco
The form, kept alive somewhere the backlash never reached. Italo holds on to the four-on-the-floor kick, the extended twelve-inch and the sentimental melody, and simply replaces the string section with a Juno.
Led to Balearic
The records themselves. Half of what filled those sets was Italian — cheap, melodic, synthetic and unfashionable everywhere else, which is precisely why Ibiza could claim it.
Led to Chicago House
The synthetic half of the record collection. Chicago DJs were playing Italian imports next to Philadelphia twelve-inches, and the cheap sequencer-and-drum-machine sound of house owes as much to Milan as to anywhere in America.
Shares 1 record with Balearic
Sueño Latino
  1. 1Dirty TalkKlein + M.B.O.–
  2. 2Spacer WomanCharlie
  3. 3Problèmes d'AmourAlexander Robotnick
  4. 4I'm ReadyKano
  5. 5Dolce VitaRyan Paris
  6. 6Hypnotic TangoMy Mine
  7. 7Vamos a la PlayaRigheira
  8. 8Sueño LatinoSueño Latino

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New York City · 1982 · 9 tracks

Electro

Came out of Funk
The parts, reassigned. Electro keeps funk's syncopation and its emphasis on the bass figure, then hands every one of those parts to a machine that cannot get tired and will not swing unless told to.
Came out of Krautrock
The source material, taken literally. Planet Rock is Trans-Europe Express played over Numbers, which is less an influence than an act of appropriation — and it is the moment European machine music becomes Black American dance music.
Led to Detroit Techno
The machines and the posture. Juan Atkins was making Cybotron records in the Planet Rock era, and techno's cold, sequenced, science-fiction surface is electro's surface before it is anything of Detroit's own.
Led to Juke and Footwork
The low end. Ghetto house took its 808 kick and hand-clap pattern from electro and Miami bass rather than from Chicago's own house records, which is why it hits so much harder than what it grew out of.
Led to Miami Bass
The same drum machine, one idea narrowed. Miami took Planet Rock's 808 and discarded everything except the kick and the handclap, then tuned the kick until it was the entire arrangement.
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Rockit
  1. 1Planet RockAfrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force
  2. 2NumbersKraftwerk
  3. 3The MessageGrandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
  4. 4Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)Hashim
  5. 5Play at Your Own RiskPlanet Patrol
  6. 6RockitHerbie Hancock
  7. 7Egypt, EgyptThe Egyptian Lover
  8. 8Jam On ItNewcleus
  9. 9Set It OffStrafe

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London and Grangemouth · 1983 · 8 tracks

Dream Pop

Came out of Post-Punk
The same effects pedals, pointed the other way. Chorus and delay stop being used to make a guitar sound anxious and start being used to make it sound enormous, and the singer stops declaiming and starts floating.
Led to Shoegaze
The immediate parent. 4AD had already established the voice-as-texture, the guitar-as-weather and the refusal to put the lyric forward; shoegaze added volume and a wall of pedals to a template that was otherwise finished.
  1. 1Song to the SirenThis Mortal Coil
  2. 2Pearly-Dewdrops' DropsCocteau Twins
  3. 3Fade into YouMazzy Star
  4. 4A Love from Outer SpaceAR Kane
  5. 5TugboatGalaxie 500
  6. 6Under the Milky WayThe Church
  7. 7FallingJulee Cruise
  8. 8Space SongBeach House

The full ranking →

Chicago, Illinois · 1984 · 10 tracks

Chicago House

Came out of Disco
The records themselves. Chicago DJs were playing Philadelphia and Salsoul twelve-inches to a crowd disco had abandoned, and house began as the attempt to make new ones with a drum machine instead of an orchestra.
Came out of Gospel
The voices. Robert Owens, Darryl Pandy and Jamie Principle sing house records with church phrasing and church conviction, in rooms that most congregations would not have admitted them to. That tension is the genre's emotional engine.
Came out of Italo Disco
The synthetic half of the record collection. Chicago DJs were playing Italian imports next to Philadelphia twelve-inches, and the cheap sequencer-and-drum-machine sound of house owes as much to Milan as to anywhere in America.
Led to Acid House
The same city, the same producers, one new box. Acid is house with the 303's filter sweep placed where the vocal or the piano would go — a subtraction that turned out to be the most exportable thing Chicago made.
Led to Amapiano
The chords. Underneath the log drum is deep house harmony played on a piano, which is why the genre feels familiar to anyone who has heard a Mr. Fingers record even when nothing else about it does.
Led to Detroit Techno
Chicago made a drum machine the lead instrument, and Detroit kept the apparatus while discarding the gospel: the same 909 discipline aimed at science fiction rather than at the church.
Led to French House
The machine and the format. The 909, the twelve-inch and the loop held past the point of politeness all arrive from Chicago intact; what Paris adds is compression and a refusal to let the loop develop at all.
Led to Juke and Footwork
The same city, the same drum machines, forty BPM faster. Ghetto house took the 909 out of the loft parties and into the South and West Side, keeping the loop discipline while abandoning any obligation to sound expensive.
Led to Kwaito
The imported twelve-inches, played too slow. Johannesburg DJs pitched Chicago and New York house down towards 100 BPM to fit local dancing, and producers then simply made records at the speed the records were played at.
Led to UK Garage
Garage never stopped being a New York and Chicago idea — four-to-the-floor under a gospel vocal — until London swung the hi-hats and cut the kick out of every other bar.
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Your Love
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Can You Feel It
  1. 1Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  2. 2Your LoveFrankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle
  3. 3Acid TraxPhuture–
  4. 4Move Your BodyMarshall Jefferson
  5. 5Jack Your BodySteve "Silk" Hurley
  6. 6No Way BackAdonis
  7. 7French KissLil Louis
  8. 8Mystery of LoveMr. Fingers
  9. 9Bring Down the WallsFingers Inc.–
  10. 10That's the Way Love IsTen City–

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Detroit, Michigan · 1985 · 11 tracks

Detroit Techno

Came out of Chicago House
Chicago made a drum machine the lead instrument, and Detroit kept the apparatus while discarding the gospel: the same 909 discipline aimed at science fiction rather than at the church.
Came out of Electro
The machines and the posture. Juan Atkins was making Cybotron records in the Planet Rock era, and techno's cold, sequenced, science-fiction surface is electro's surface before it is anything of Detroit's own.
Came out of Krautrock
The other half of the formula, and the one Derrick May named: Kraftwerk's precision meeting Parliament's funk in an elevator. Detroit heard European machine music as a model for the future rather than as a novelty.
Led to Bleep Techno
The palette. Yorkshire producers were buying Transmat and KMS imports and copying the clean sequenced tones, then finding they had no interest in the strings or the science fiction.
Led to Breakbeat Hardcore
The imported records. Britain's rave DJs were playing Transmat and Underground Resistance twelve-inches alongside their own, and the riffs and stabs that define hardcore are Detroit's, sped up and made cruder on purpose.
Led to Drum and Bass
Detroit supplied the sub-bass and the machine futurism, jungle supplied the breaks. Run Model 500's low end under chopped drums at twice the tempo and the rave apparatus is already assembled.
Led to Dub Techno
The chords and the reverence. Basic Channel licensed and pressed Detroit records before making their own, and the melancholy stab they built a label on is straight off a Transmat twelve-inch.
Led to IDM
The hardware and the posture. Warp's Artificial Intelligence series was explicitly modelled on Detroit's science-fiction seriousness, and half its artists were licensing or imitating records from Metroplex and Transmat.
Shares 2 records with The Eighties
No UFO's, Strings of Life
  1. 1Strings of LifeRhythim Is Rhythim
  2. 2No UFO'sModel 500–
  3. 3Good LifeInner City
  4. 4JaguarDJ Rolando / Underground Resistance
  5. 5The BellsJeff Mills
  6. 6Never Grow OldRobert Hood–
  7. 7At LesCarl Craig
  8. 8Bubble MetropolisDrexciya
  9. 9ClearCybotron
  10. 10The Art of StalkingSuburban Knight
  11. 11Hi-Tech JazzGalaxy 2 Galaxy

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Miami, Florida · 1985 · 7 tracks

Miami Bass

Came out of Electro
The same drum machine, one idea narrowed. Miami took Planet Rock's 808 and discarded everything except the kick and the handclap, then tuned the kick until it was the entire arrangement.
Led to Baile Funk
Two records, endlessly. The Volt Mix and 808 breaks arrived from Florida on cassette and became the bed for essentially the entire genre — a whole music built by looping somebody else's drum programming.
Led to Juke and Footwork
The kick. Ghetto house's tuned, overlong 808 is Miami's rather than Chicago's — house records did not hit like that until the bass tapes came up from Florida.
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Throw the D
  1. 1Throw the D2 Live Crew
  2. 2Bass Rock ExpressMC A.D.E.
  3. 3Planet RockAmos Larkins II
  4. 4Doo Doo Brown2 Hyped Brothers and a Dog
  5. 5Tootsee Roll69 Boyz
  6. 6Whoot, There It Is95 South
  7. 7ScarfaceDynamix II

The full ranking →

New York City · 1986 · 12 tracks

Golden Age Hip-Hop

Came out of Disco
The apparatus. The twelve-inch, the extended version and the idea of a DJ as the author of an evening all reached the Bronx from downtown, and the first rap hits were made over disco rhythm sections playing live.
Came out of Funk
The raw material. The break a DJ looped was almost always a funk drummer's four bars, and the genre's whole method — take the best part of somebody else's record and refuse to let it end — is a verdict on funk arrangements.
Came out of Jazz
The crates. Once producers exhausted the obvious funk breaks they went into Blue Note and CTI records for horn stabs and upright bass, and A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr built entire aesthetics out of what they found.
Led to Drum and Bass
The Amen break reached a British sampler because American records had already established that a drum loop lifted from someone else's song was a legitimate foundation to build on.
Led to G-Funk
The form, slowed and moved west. G-funk keeps the verse structure and the producer-as-author model intact and rejects the density: where New York stacked four samples, Dre used one line and a great deal of space.
Led to Grime
The other half of the vocal. Grime inherits rap's bar structure and its appetite for the competitive verse, then doubles the tempo and refuses the American accent along with the American swing.
Led to Juke and Footwork
The voice. The chanted, repeated, obscene vocal fragment is a rap technique rather than a house one — a hook cut down to two words and used as percussion.
Led to Memphis Rap
The form, received and immediately degraded. Memphis kept the verse and the sampler and threw out the crispness — these tapes are deliberately muddy, and the murk is the aesthetic rather than a budget problem.
Led to Neo-Soul
The rhythmic feel and the standards. Neo-soul players learned their timing from sampled loops rather than from live soul records, which is why the drums sit fractionally late in a way no session drummer of the seventies would have allowed.
Led to Reggaeton
The vocal and the economy. Reggaeton's verses are rapped, its records were made on cheap samplers and sold hand to hand on cassette, and the mixtape came to Puerto Rico from New York rather than Kingston.
Led to Trip-Hop
The method, slowed. Bristol took the loop-and-verdict grammar off New York records — a break held long enough to become the song — and dropped it forty BPM into something nobody could dance to.
Shares 2 records with 1994
N.Y. State of Mind, Juicy
  1. 1Fight the PowerPublic Enemy
  2. 2N.Y. State of MindNas
  3. 3Paid in FullEric B. & Rakim
  4. 4C.R.E.A.M.Wu-Tang Clan
  5. 5They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
  6. 6ScenarioA Tribe Called Quest featuring Leaders of the New School
  7. 7South BronxBoogie Down Productions
  8. 8JuicyThe Notorious B.I.G.
  9. 9Ain't No Half-Steppin'Big Daddy Kane
  10. 10Me Myself and IDe La Soul
  11. 11Mass AppealGang Starr
  12. 12Strictly BusinessEPMD

The full ranking →

Chicago and London · 1987 · 8 tracks

Acid House

Came out of Chicago House
The same city, the same producers, one new box. Acid is house with the 303's filter sweep placed where the vocal or the piano would go — a subtraction that turned out to be the most exportable thing Chicago made.
Led to Breakbeat Hardcore
The audience and the venues. Hardcore is what the acid house crowd wanted once four-to-the-floor stopped being enough — the same warehouses, the same night, a chopped funk break in place of the straight kick.
Led to Madchester
The rhythm and the pharmacology. Once the Haçienda's floor was moving to Chicago imports, a Manchester band that wanted to be played there had to supply a groove rather than a riff.
  1. 1Voodoo RayA Guy Called Gerald
  2. 2Washing MachinePhuture–
  3. 3Pacific State808 State
  4. 4Stakker HumanoidHumanoid
  5. 5Acid ThunderFast Eddie
  6. 6We Call It AcieedD Mob
  7. 7Energy FlashJoey Beltram
  8. 8Higher State of ConsciousnessJosh Wink

The full ranking →

Ibiza, Spain · 1987 · 7 tracks

Balearic

Came out of Disco
The DJ's authority over an evening, and the twelve-inch as its unit. What Alfredo did was a Paradise Garage idea relocated to an open-air club with no obligation to a single genre.
Came out of Italo Disco
The records themselves. Half of what filled those sets was Italian — cheap, melodic, synthetic and unfashionable everywhere else, which is precisely why Ibiza could claim it.
Led to Madchester
The holiday that changed the city. The Haçienda's DJs came back from Ibiza in 1987 with a set of records and a licence to play anything, and the guitar bands followed the floor.
Shares 1 record with Italo Disco
Sueño Latino
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Sueño
Shares 1 record with Warp
Sueño
  1. 1JibaroElkin & Nelson
  2. 2Promised LandJoe Smooth
  3. 3Sueño LatinoSueño Latino
  4. 4Why Why WhyWoodentops
  5. 5SueñoNightmares on Wax–
  6. 6Loops of InfinityCosmic Baby
  7. 7Tirami SuNino Nardini–

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Seattle, Washington · 1988 · 8 tracks

Grunge

Came out of Hardcore Punk
The methods and the people. Everyone here came up through American hardcore's independent labels and touring circuit; grunge is what happened when those musicians slowed down and admitted they liked choruses.
Came out of Psychedelic Rock
The riffs and the volume. The other half of the record collection was late sixties and early seventies heavy rock, which hardcore orthodoxy had spent a decade treating as the enemy.
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Touch Me I'm Sick
  1. 1Smells Like Teen SpiritNirvana
  2. 2Touch Me I'm SickMudhoney
  3. 3BlackPearl Jam
  4. 4Would?Alice in Chains
  5. 5OutshinedSoundgarden
  6. 6Negative CreepNirvana
  7. 7Dyers EveTAD
  8. 8Where Is My Mind?Pixies

The full ranking →

Manchester, England · 1988 · 8 tracks

Madchester

Came out of Acid House
The rhythm and the pharmacology. Once the Haçienda's floor was moving to Chicago imports, a Manchester band that wanted to be played there had to supply a groove rather than a riff.
Came out of Balearic
The holiday that changed the city. The Haçienda's DJs came back from Ibiza in 1987 with a set of records and a licence to play anything, and the guitar bands followed the floor.
Came out of Post-Punk
The personnel and the label. Factory Records, New Order and the Haçienda are the same institution one decade later, and the guitar bands that followed inherited a venue built by post-punk profits.
Led to Britpop
The immediate predecessor and the swagger. Oasis are a Manchester band whose first gigs were in the Haçienda's afterglow, and Blur's early records are baggy records.
  1. 1Fools GoldThe Stone Roses
  2. 2Blue MondayNew Order
  3. 3Wrote for LuckHappy Mondays
  4. 4LoadedPrimal Scream
  5. 5Getting Away with ItElectronic
  6. 6Sit DownJames
  7. 7Move Any MountainThe Shamen
  8. 8WeekenderFlowered Up

The full ranking →

England · 1988 · 10 tracks

Shoegaze

Came out of Ambient
Eno's premise — that the studio is the instrument and texture is the composition — reached Thames Valley guitar bands a decade later and was played at volume. The wall of noise is an ambient record with the gain up.
Came out of Dream Pop
The immediate parent. 4AD had already established the voice-as-texture, the guitar-as-weather and the refusal to put the lyric forward; shoegaze added volume and a wall of pedals to a template that was otherwise finished.
Came out of Post-Punk
The guitars and the temperament. Effects used to obscure rather than to display, a bass carrying the tune, and a singer positioned as one more texture — all settled practice in Britain by 1982.
Came out of Psychedelic Rock
The pedals and the ambition. Everything shoegaze does to a guitar was first done in 1967; what changed was that the effects stopped being a decoration on the song and became the song.
  1. 1Only ShallowMy Bloody Valentine
  2. 2SoonMy Bloody Valentine
  3. 3AlisonSlowdive
  4. 4Vapour TrailRide
  5. 5Cherry-Coloured FunkCocteau Twins
  6. 6Just Like HoneyThe Jesus and Mary Chain
  7. 7Souvlaki Space StationSlowdive
  8. 8PearlChapterhouse
  9. 9De-LuxeLush
  10. 10DuelSwervedriver

The full ranking →

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · 1989 · 7 tracks

Baile Funk

Came out of Miami Bass
Two records, endlessly. The Volt Mix and 808 breaks arrived from Florida on cassette and became the bed for essentially the entire genre — a whole music built by looping somebody else's drum programming.
Came out of Samba
The vocal and the occasion. The call-and-response, the local celebrity and the neighbourhood dance are carnival practices; funk carioca is what happens when the bateria is replaced by a drum machine.
Shares 1 record with Dancing to Bad News
Rap do Silva
  1. 1Rap da FelicidadeCidinho e Doca
  2. 2Rap do SilvaBob Rum
  3. 3Melô do TabacoDJ Marlboro–
  4. 4Sou Feia Mas Tô na ModaTati Quebra Barraco
  5. 5Bota o Cabelo pra TrásMC Bola–
  6. 6Baile de FavelaMC João
  7. 7Um Tapinha Não DóiMC Serginho

The full ranking →

Sheffield and Leeds, England · 1989 · 6 tracks

Bleep Techno

Came out of Dancehall
The weight, and the reason it sounds British. Leeds and Sheffield had Jamaican sound systems in the same halls, and bleep is Detroit melody arranged for a rig built to shake a room.
Came out of Detroit Techno
The palette. Yorkshire producers were buying Transmat and KMS imports and copying the clean sequenced tones, then finding they had no interest in the strings or the science fiction.
Led to Breakbeat Hardcore
The bass and the British-ness. Bleep put Jamaican sub-weight under Detroit melody two years early, and hardcore inherited that combination wholesale before speeding it up and adding the break.
Led to IDM
The label, literally. Warp existed to press bleep records and signed Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada off the back of them; Artificial Intelligence is bleep producers being told they no longer had to fill a dancefloor.
Shares 4 records with Warp
Track With No Name, LFO, Dextrous, Testone
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Track With No Name
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Dextrous
  1. 1LFOLFO
  2. 2Track With No NameForgemasters
  3. 3The ThemeUnique 3
  4. 4TestoneSweet Exorcist
  5. 5DextrousNightmares on Wax
  6. 6Tricky DiscoTricky Disco

The full ranking →

United Kingdom · 1990 · 9 tracks

Breakbeat Hardcore

Came out of Acid House
The audience and the venues. Hardcore is what the acid house crowd wanted once four-to-the-floor stopped being enough — the same warehouses, the same night, a chopped funk break in place of the straight kick.
Came out of Bleep Techno
The bass and the British-ness. Bleep put Jamaican sub-weight under Detroit melody two years early, and hardcore inherited that combination wholesale before speeding it up and adding the break.
Came out of Dancehall
The bass and the voice. Sound-system culture supplied the sub-bass weight, the ragga vocal sample and the MC on the microphone, which is what separates a British rave record from a European one.
Came out of Detroit Techno
The imported records. Britain's rave DJs were playing Transmat and Underground Resistance twelve-inches alongside their own, and the riffs and stabs that define hardcore are Detroit's, sped up and made cruder on purpose.
Led to Drum and Bass
The direct line. Jungle is hardcore with the breaks chopped finer and the tempo split in two, made by the same producers on the same equipment for the same rooms, about two years later.
Led to UK Garage
The other half of the split. When hardcore divided, one side went to 170 BPM and got darker while the other kept the swing and the vocal and slowed down, and garage is what the second group made.
  1. 1We Are I.E.Lennie De Ice
  2. 2CharlyThe Prodigy
  3. 3Bombscare2 Bad Mice
  4. 4TerminatorMetalheads
  5. 5On a Ragga TipSL2
  6. 6AnasthasiaT99
  7. 7DominatorHuman Resource
  8. 8Valley of the ShadowsOrigin Unknown
  9. 9The Sound of EdenShades of Rhythm

The full ranking →

Olympia, Washington · 1991 · 7 tracks

Riot Grrrl

Came out of Hardcore Punk
The volume, the brevity and the labels. Kill Rock Stars and Dischord are the same infrastructure; what changed was who was allowed to use it and what the songs were permitted to be about.
Came out of Post-Punk
The other model. The Slits and the Raincoats had already shown that a band could be deliberately untrained and rhythmically strange, and riot grrrl cited them constantly and correctly.
  1. 1Rebel GirlBikini Kill
  2. 2Her JazzHuggy Bear
  3. 3SuggestionFugazi
  4. 4Cool SchmoolBratmobile
  5. 5Feels BlindBikini Kill
  6. 6Tell MeHeavens to Betsy–
  7. 7Dig Me OutSleater-Kinney

The full ranking →

Bristol, England · 1991 · 12 tracks

Trip-Hop

Came out of Ambient
What the breaks sit in. The space around a Massive Attack record is Eno's rather than hip-hop's: a mix built as weather instead of as a stack of parts, which is why the genre sounds like a room.
Came out of Dub
The mix. Bristol's sound-system inheritance is why these records are built from the bass upward, why the reverb is a location rather than an effect, and why the vocal is allowed to disappear for a bar and come back.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The method, slowed. Bristol took the loop-and-verdict grammar off New York records — a break held long enough to become the song — and dropped it forty BPM into something nobody could dance to.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Glory Box
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Les Nuits
Shares 1 record with Warp
Les Nuits
  1. 1Unfinished SympathyMassive Attack
  2. 2Glory BoxPortishead
  3. 3AftermathTricky
  4. 4Midnight in a Perfect WorldDJ Shadow
  5. 5AngelMassive Attack
  6. 6RoadsPortishead
  7. 7Rabbit in Your HeadlightsUNKLE featuring Thom Yorke
  8. 86 UndergroundSneaker Pimps
  9. 9TeardropMassive Attack
  10. 10Hell Is Round the CornerTricky
  11. 11KemuriDJ Krush
  12. 12Les NuitsNightmares on Wax

The full ranking →

United Kingdom · 1992 · 15 tracks

Drum and Bass

Came out of Breakbeat Hardcore
The direct line. Jungle is hardcore with the breaks chopped finer and the tempo split in two, made by the same producers on the same equipment for the same rooms, about two years later.
Came out of Detroit Techno
Detroit supplied the sub-bass and the machine futurism, jungle supplied the breaks. Run Model 500's low end under chopped drums at twice the tempo and the rave apparatus is already assembled.
Came out of Dub
The bass and the ritual. Jungle came out of British sound-system culture: the sub-bass as the point of the record, the dubplate as currency, and the MC and the rewind as things a rave inherited directly from Kingston.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The Amen break reached a British sampler because American records had already established that a drum loop lifted from someone else's song was a legitimate foundation to build on.
Led to Dubstep
The culture around it. Dubplate exclusivity, pirate radio, and an audience trained by jungle to treat the drop as the structural event a track is organised around.
Led to Grime
The bass weight and the ritual. Jungle taught East London the reload, the dubplate and the idea that an MC over a rhythm is the event rather than the accompaniment.
Led to UK Garage
The infrastructure arrived before the music: the same pirate stations, the same MCs, the same soundsystem bass. Garage is what jungle's audience wanted at half the tempo, on a night they came to dance with someone.
Shares 2 records with 1994
Inner City Life, Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
Original Nuttah
  1. 1Inner City LifeGoldie
  2. 2Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache
  3. 3Renegade SnaresOmni Trio
  4. 4MusicLTJ Bukem
  5. 5Brown Paper BagRoni Size / Reprazent
  6. 6Ni Ten Ichi RyuPhotek–
  7. 7Pulp FictionAlex Reece
  8. 8The Angels FellDillinja
  9. 9Mr Kirk's Nightmare4hero–
  10. 10CirclesAdam F
  11. 11BacteriaEd Rush & Optical
  12. 12Return of ForeverHigh Contrast
  13. 13TarantulaPendulum
  14. 14TimewarpSub Focus
  15. 15Machine GunNoisia

The full ranking →

Los Angeles, California · 1992 · 8 tracks

G-Funk

Came out of Funk
The source, and unusually openly. Where New York chopped James Brown into unrecognisable fragments, Dre interpolated whole Parliament and Funkadelic arrangements with session players, which is closer to covering than to sampling.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The form, slowed and moved west. G-funk keeps the verse structure and the producer-as-author model intact and rejects the density: where New York stacked four samples, Dre used one line and a great deal of space.
Led to Memphis Rap
The tempo relationship and the local-tape economy. The West Coast showed that a region could build an industry outside New York, and Memphis inverted its sunlit tone into something closer to a horror film.
Led to Trap
The regional model. Atlanta learned from Los Angeles that a city outside New York could build its own industry, its own producers and its own accent, and then decline to apologise for any of it.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Regulate
  1. 1Nuthin' but a "G" ThangDr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg
  2. 2It Was a Good DayIce Cube
  3. 3RegulateWarren G & Nate Dogg
  4. 4Gin and JuiceSnoop Doggy Dogg
  5. 5California Love2Pac featuring Dr. Dre
  6. 6ToniteDJ Quik
  7. 7I Got 5 on ItLuniz
  8. 8Fantastic VoyageCoolio

The full ranking →

Sheffield and Cornwall, England · 1992 · 8 tracks

IDM

Came out of Ambient
What replaced the dancefloor. Once a record no longer had to work at two in the morning, Eno's idea of music as an environment was the only available model for what it should do instead.
Came out of Bleep Techno
The label, literally. Warp existed to press bleep records and signed Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada off the back of them; Artificial Intelligence is bleep producers being told they no longer had to fill a dancefloor.
Came out of Detroit Techno
The hardware and the posture. Warp's Artificial Intelligence series was explicitly modelled on Detroit's science-fiction seriousness, and half its artists were licensing or imitating records from Metroplex and Transmat.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Flutter
  1. 1DidgeridooAphex Twin
  2. 2FlutterAutechre
  3. 3RoygbivBoards of Canada
  4. 4WindowlickerAphex Twin
  5. 5Come On My SelectorSquarepusher
  6. 6Gantz GrafAutechre
  7. 7Do WhileOval
  8. 8Hasty Boom Alertµ-Ziq

The full ranking →

Chicago, Illinois · 1992 · 8 tracks

Juke and Footwork

Came out of Chicago House
The same city, the same drum machines, forty BPM faster. Ghetto house took the 909 out of the loft parties and into the South and West Side, keeping the loop discipline while abandoning any obligation to sound expensive.
Came out of Electro
The low end. Ghetto house took its 808 kick and hand-clap pattern from electro and Miami bass rather than from Chicago's own house records, which is why it hits so much harder than what it grew out of.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The voice. The chanted, repeated, obscene vocal fragment is a rap technique rather than a house one — a hook cut down to two words and used as percussion.
Came out of Miami Bass
The kick. Ghetto house's tuned, overlong 808 is Miami's rather than Chicago's — house records did not hit like that until the bass tapes came up from Florida.
Shares 2 records with Miami
Freak Like Me, Run
Shares 1 record with 1994
Freak Like Me
  1. 1PercolatorCajmere
  2. 2Freak Like MeDJ Deeon
  3. 3RunDJ Funk
  4. 4Baby Come OnRP Boo
  5. 5FeelinDJ Rashad
  6. 6Footworkin on AirTraxman
  7. 7Hatas Our MotivationDJ Nate
  8. 8Erotic HeatJlin–

The full ranking →

London, England · 1993 · 8 tracks

Britpop

Came out of Madchester
The immediate predecessor and the swagger. Oasis are a Manchester band whose first gigs were in the Haçienda's afterglow, and Blur's early records are baggy records.
Came out of Merseybeat
The model, quoted openly. Everyone here is working from the Beatles and the Kinks — the melodies, the chord movements and the flat vowels are all deliberate retrievals of 1965.
Came out of Punk
The attitude and the independent labels. Creation and Food are punk-era structures, and the willingness to be rude in the press is inherited directly.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Live Forever
  1. 1Common PeoplePulp
  2. 2Live ForeverOasis
  3. 3Girls & BoysBlur
  4. 4The UniversalBlur
  5. 5AlrightSupergrass
  6. 6ConnectionElastica
  7. 7A Design for LifeManic Street Preachers
  8. 8WonderwallOasis

The full ranking →

Berlin, Germany · 1993 · 8 tracks

Dub Techno

Came out of Detroit Techno
The chords and the reverence. Basic Channel licensed and pressed Detroit records before making their own, and the melancholy stab they built a label on is straight off a Transmat twelve-inch.
Came out of Dub
The signal path. Everything is a send: the chord exists only as its own echo, the mix is performed rather than arranged, and the noise floor is treated as an instrument exactly as King Tubby treated it.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Quadrant Dub
  1. 1Phylyps TrakBasic Channel
  2. 2Quadrant DubBasic Channel
  3. 3M-4.5Maurizio
  4. 4Port of CallPorter Ricks
  5. 5LyotVainqueur
  6. 6CyanMonolake
  7. 7Never Tell YouRhythm & Sound featuring Sugar Minott
  8. 8RaumPole

The full ranking →

Johannesburg, South Africa · 1993 · 8 tracks

Kwaito

Came out of Chicago House
The imported twelve-inches, played too slow. Johannesburg DJs pitched Chicago and New York house down towards 100 BPM to fit local dancing, and producers then simply made records at the speed the records were played at.
Came out of Dancehall
The voice. The chanted, repeated, half-sung vocal over a shared rhythm track is a deejay's technique rather than a house singer's, and kwaito's slang-heavy delivery works the way a Kingston toast does.
Led to Amapiano
The tempo and the temperament. Amapiano sits at the same unhurried pace kwaito established, with the same preference for a vocal that hangs back — and it inherits kwaito's function as township music before it is anything else.
Led to Gqom
The inheritance and the argument with it. Gqom keeps kwaito's chanted vocal and township-tempo weight while throwing out the steady kick entirely, which is why Durban producers spent years being told what they made was not music.
Shares 1 record with 1994
Tsiki Tsiki
Shares 1 record with Dancing to Bad News
Kaffir
  1. 1KaffirArthur Mafokate
  2. 2Tsiki TsikiM'du Masilela
  3. 3NkalakathaMandoza
  4. 4VulindlelaBrenda Fassie
  5. 5ShiboboTKZee
  6. 6It's About TimeBoom Shaka
  7. 7Vokol as NiksMashamplani–
  8. 8MdlwembeZola

The full ranking →

Memphis, Tennessee · 1993 · 7 tracks

Memphis Rap

Came out of G-Funk
The tempo relationship and the local-tape economy. The West Coast showed that a region could build an industry outside New York, and Memphis inverted its sunlit tone into something closer to a horror film.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The form, received and immediately degraded. Memphis kept the verse and the sampler and threw out the crispness — these tapes are deliberately muddy, and the murk is the aesthetic rather than a budget problem.
Led to Trap
The rhythm, wholesale. The triplet hi-hat, the tuned 808, the chanted hook and the murk are all on Memphis tapes from a decade earlier — Atlanta's contribution was the budget and the mixing desk.
Shares 1 record with 1994
North Memphis Area
  1. 1Slob on My KnobTear Da Club Up Thugs
  2. 2Mystic StylezThree 6 Mafia
  3. 3Sweet RobberyDJ Squeeky
  4. 4Playa HatazTommy Wright III
  5. 5Where Dem Dollas AtGangsta Boo
  6. 6Late Nite TipThree 6 Mafia
  7. 7North Memphis AreaDJ Paul

The full ranking →

Shibuya, Tokyo · 1993 · 7 tracks

Shibuya-kei

Came out of Bossa Nova
The chords and the cool. Shibuya-kei's default harmonic language is Jobim's, and Pizzicato Five and Cornelius both worked from Brazilian records long before Western listeners noticed.
Came out of City Pop
The studio standards and the personnel. This is the previous Tokyo generation's obsessive production quality, applied by people young enough to treat that generation as a crate to dig in.
  1. 1Twiggy TwiggyPizzicato Five
  2. 2Star Fruits Surf RiderCornelius
  3. 3Aoi SoraFlipper's Guitar
  4. 4Sweet Soul RevuePizzicato Five
  5. 5TokyoKahimi Karie–
  6. 6FantasmaCornelius
  7. 7Nantettatte IdolKyoko Koizumi

The full ranking →

San Juan, Puerto Rico · 1994 · 8 tracks

Reggaeton

Came out of Dancehall
One riddim, taken literally. Shabba Ranks's Dem Bow was recut in Panama and then in San Juan until the boom-ch-boom-chick under it stopped being a quotation and became the genre's definition.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The vocal and the economy. Reggaeton's verses are rapped, its records were made on cheap samplers and sold hand to hand on cassette, and the mixtape came to Puerto Rico from New York rather than Kingston.
  1. 1GasolinaDaddy Yankee
  2. 2Dem BowNando Boom
  3. 3MuéveloEl General
  4. 4BandolerosDon Omar and Tego Calderón
  5. 5Pa' Que RetozenTego Calderón
  6. 6RakataWisin & Yandel
  7. 7SafaeraBad Bunny, Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow
  8. 8DespacitoLuis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee

The full ranking →

Paris, France · 1995 · 9 tracks

French House

Came out of Chicago House
The machine and the format. The 909, the twelve-inch and the loop held past the point of politeness all arrive from Chicago intact; what Paris adds is compression and a refusal to let the loop develop at all.
Came out of Disco
The raw material, and openly. French house is largely a set of arguments about which four bars of a seventies record were the good ones, which makes it the most affectionate genre on this map towards its own ancestor.
  1. 1Music Sounds Better with YouStardust
  2. 2Da FunkDaft Punk
  3. 3EzioMotorbass
  4. 4Spinal ScratchThomas Bangalter
  5. 5Prix ChocÉtienne de Crécy
  6. 6Cassius 1999Cassius
  7. 7Lady (Hear Me Tonight)Modjo
  8. 8IntroAlan Braxe & Fred Falke
  9. 9D.A.N.C.E.Justice

The full ranking →

Philadelphia and New York City · 1995 · 9 tracks

Neo-Soul

Came out of Funk
The instrumentation and the harmony. When the samples came off, what was left underneath was a live rhythm section playing the parts the samples had been lifted from in the first place.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The rhythmic feel and the standards. Neo-soul players learned their timing from sampled loops rather than from live soul records, which is why the drums sit fractionally late in a way no session drummer of the seventies would have allowed.
Came out of Soul
The thing being restored. Neo-soul is explicitly an argument that the seventies got something right — the live rhythm section, the album as a statement, the singer as an interpreter rather than a brand.
  1. 1Brown SugarD'Angelo
  2. 2Untitled (How Does It Feel)D'Angelo
  3. 3On & OnErykah Badu
  4. 4Ex-FactorLauryn Hill
  5. 5You Got MeThe Roots featuring Erykah Badu
  6. 6Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)Maxwell
  7. 7Guess WhoSlum Village–
  8. 8The LightCommon
  9. 9Cranes in the SkySolange

The full ranking →

London · 1995 · 10 tracks

UK Garage

Came out of Breakbeat Hardcore
The other half of the split. When hardcore divided, one side went to 170 BPM and got darker while the other kept the swing and the vocal and slowed down, and garage is what the second group made.
Came out of Chicago House
Garage never stopped being a New York and Chicago idea — four-to-the-floor under a gospel vocal — until London swung the hi-hats and cut the kick out of every other bar.
Came out of Drum and Bass
The infrastructure arrived before the music: the same pirate stations, the same MCs, the same soundsystem bass. Garage is what jungle's audience wanted at half the tempo, on a night they came to dance with someone.
Led to Dubstep
The tempo and the skeleton. Dubstep keeps garage's 140 BPM and its shuffled hi-hats but halves the kick pattern, so the same grid that carried a soulful vocal is suddenly mostly empty space.
Led to Grime
The parent it turned on. Grime kept garage's tempo and its pirate-radio infrastructure while throwing out the soul vocal, the champagne and the swing, which is precisely what got its first MCs thrown out of the raves.
Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
RIP Groove
  1. 1SincereMJ Cole
  2. 2Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)Artful Dodger featuring Craig David
  3. 3Flowers (Sunship Remix)Sweet Female Attitude
  4. 4BattleWookie featuring Lain
  5. 5RIP GrooveDouble 99
  6. 6Saved My LifeTodd Edwards
  7. 7DestinyDem 2
  8. 821 SecondsSo Solid Crew
  9. 9NeighbourhoodZed Bias
  10. 10Stone ColdGroove Chronicles–

The full ranking →

Croydon, South London · 2002 · 9 tracks

Dubstep

Came out of Drum and Bass
The culture around it. Dubplate exclusivity, pirate radio, and an audience trained by jungle to treat the drop as the structural event a track is organised around.
Came out of Dub
The method and the name. Everything is mixed around the bass, effects are performed live rather than printed, and the twelve-inch exists so a sound system can play it at a volume the record was designed to need.
Came out of UK Garage
The tempo and the skeleton. Dubstep keeps garage's 140 BPM and its shuffled hi-hats but halves the kick pattern, so the same grid that carried a soulful vocal is suddenly mostly empty space.
  1. 1Midnight Request LineSkream
  2. 2Anti-War DubDigital Mystikz
  3. 3ArchangelBurial
  4. 4Sine of the DubKode9 & The Spaceape
  5. 5NightBenga & Coki
  6. 6ForgiveHorsepower Productions
  7. 7SkengThe Bug featuring Killa P & Flowdan
  8. 8Hyph MngoJoy Orbison
  9. 9Scary Monsters and Nice SpritesSkrillex

The full ranking →

East London · 2002 · 9 tracks

Grime

Came out of Dancehall
The delivery. The grime MC's cadence, the clash, the reload and the instrumental sold as its own record are all dancehall practices, arriving in East London through families and pirate radio rather than through records.
Came out of Drum and Bass
The bass weight and the ritual. Jungle taught East London the reload, the dubplate and the idea that an MC over a rhythm is the event rather than the accompaniment.
Came out of Golden Age Hip-Hop
The other half of the vocal. Grime inherits rap's bar structure and its appetite for the competitive verse, then doubles the tempo and refuses the American accent along with the American swing.
Came out of UK Garage
The parent it turned on. Grime kept garage's tempo and its pirate-radio infrastructure while throwing out the soul vocal, the champagne and the swing, which is precisely what got its first MCs thrown out of the raves.
Led to UK Drill
The accent, the crews and the delivery. Drill MCs are working in a London tradition of pirate radio, clashes and video premieres that grime built, and the rhythmic placement of the bars is grime's rather than Atlanta's.
  1. 1Pulse XMusical Mob–
  2. 2I Luv UDizzee Rascal
  3. 3EskimoWiley
  4. 4Pow! (Forward)Lethal Bizzle
  5. 5Functions on the LowXTC–
  6. 6Wot Do U Call It?Wiley
  7. 7Destruction VIPJammer featuring Wiley, Kano, D Double E and Durrty Goodz–
  8. 8That's Not MeSkepta & JME
  9. 9ShutdownSkepta

The full ranking →

Atlanta, Georgia · 2003 · 8 tracks

Trap

Came out of G-Funk
The regional model. Atlanta learned from Los Angeles that a city outside New York could build its own industry, its own producers and its own accent, and then decline to apologise for any of it.
Came out of Memphis Rap
The rhythm, wholesale. The triplet hi-hat, the tuned 808, the chanted hook and the murk are all on Memphis tapes from a decade earlier — Atlanta's contribution was the budget and the mixing desk.
Led to UK Drill
The instrument list and the tempo. Drill is a trap kit — tuned 808, rolled hats, sparse synth — with the bass line made to slide between notes, which is the single element that makes it identifiable in one bar.
  1. 1Trap MuzikT.I.
  2. 2Never ScaredBone Crusher
  3. 3Ice Cream Paint JobDorrough
  4. 4Hard in da PaintWaka Flocka Flame
  5. 5VersaceMigos
  6. 6Codeine CrazyFuture
  7. 7Bad and BoujeeMigos featuring Lil Uzi Vert
  8. 8No HandsWaka Flocka Flame featuring Roscoe Dash and Wale

The full ranking →

Kingston, Jamaica · 2006 · 9 tracks

Daggering

Came out of Dancehall
Everything structural — the riddim economy, the deejay, the tempo. What daggering added was a subject: for three years the records described one dance in the plainest language available, and the rhythm tracks were built to be moved to in exactly that way.
  1. 1Romping ShopVybz Kartel & Spice
  2. 2Bend OverRDX
  3. 3Pon de FloorMajor Lazer
  4. 4So Mi Like ItSpice
  5. 5Hundred StabAidonia
  6. 6Squeeze BreastMavado
  7. 7DaggeringMr. Vegas
  8. 8Up in Her BellyBusy Signal
  9. 9All DaygeringPWFT

The full ranking →

Durban, South Africa · 2011 · 7 tracks

Gqom

Came out of Dancehall
The distribution. A gqom track circulates as a bare rhythm that MCs and dancers claim, spread hand to hand rather than through a label, exactly as a riddim moves through Kingston.
Came out of Kwaito
The inheritance and the argument with it. Gqom keeps kwaito's chanted vocal and township-tempo weight while throwing out the steady kick entirely, which is why Durban producers spent years being told what they made was not music.
  1. 1Ice DropDJ Lag
  2. 2WololoBabes Wodumo featuring Mampintsha
  3. 3MercedesRudeboyz featuring TD Snax
  4. 4OmunyeDistruction Boyz featuring Benny Maverick and Dladla Mshunqisi
  5. 5Trip to New YorkDJ Lag
  6. 6Come to DurbanGriffit Vigo
  7. 7John CenaSho Madjozi

The full ranking →

Gauteng, South Africa · 2012 · 7 tracks

Amapiano

Came out of Chicago House
The chords. Underneath the log drum is deep house harmony played on a piano, which is why the genre feels familiar to anyone who has heard a Mr. Fingers record even when nothing else about it does.
Came out of Kwaito
The tempo and the temperament. Amapiano sits at the same unhurried pace kwaito established, with the same preference for a vocal that hangs back — and it inherits kwaito's function as township music before it is anything else.
  1. 1UmshoveKabza De Small featuring Leehleza
  2. 2Ke StarFocalistic featuring Vigro Deep
  3. 3AmanikinikiMFR Souls featuring Major League Djz, Kamo Mphela and Bontle Smith
  4. 4AdiweleYoung Stunna featuring Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa
  5. 5WozaMr JazziQ featuring Lady Du, Kabza De Small and Boohle
  6. 6Labantwana Ama UberSemi Tee featuring Miano and Kammu Dee
  7. 7MnikeTyler ICU & Tumelo ZA

The full ranking →

South London, England · 2015 · 7 tracks

UK Drill

Came out of Grime
The accent, the crews and the delivery. Drill MCs are working in a London tradition of pirate radio, clashes and video premieres that grime built, and the rhythmic placement of the bars is grime's rather than Atlanta's.
Came out of Trap
The instrument list and the tempo. Drill is a trap kit — tuned 808, rolled hats, sparse synth — with the bass line made to slide between notes, which is the single element that makes it identifiable in one bar.
  1. 1Next Up?Headie One
  2. 2Mad About BarsDigga D
  3. 3Kennington Where It Started67
  4. 4BodyRuss Millions and Tion Wayne
  5. 5Homerton BUnknown T
  6. 6Panic RoomSkengdo and AM
  7. 7LocationDave featuring Burna Boy

The full ranking →

Curator selections

Someone else's ear, on the same map. A selection is a set, not a ranking, so it carries no positions and no date.

11 picks, unranked

1976

Shares 2 records with Highlife
Sunshine Day, Sweet Mother
Shares 2 records with Zamrock
Nizakupanga Ngozi, Waile
Shares 1 record with Afrobeat
Zombie
Shares 1 record with Anadolu Rock
Yaz Gazeteci Yaz
Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
Kunta Kinte Dub
Shares 1 record with Gnawa
Bouderbala
Shares 1 record with Reggae
Police and Thieves
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Sweet Mother
  1. ZombieFela Kuti & Africa 70
  2. Sweet MotherPrince Nico Mbarga
  3. Sunshine DayOsibisa
  4. Nizakupanga NgoziNgozi Family
  5. WaileWITCH
  6. BouderbalaNass El Ghiwane–
  7. Yaz Gazeteci YazSelda Bağcan
  8. King Tubby Meets Rockers UptownAugustus Pablo
  9. Super ApeThe Upsetters
  10. Police and ThievesJunior Murvin
  11. Kunta Kinte DubThe Revolutionaries

The whole selection →

12 picks, unranked

1994

Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Britpop
Live Forever
Shares 1 record with Dub Techno
Quadrant Dub
Shares 1 record with G-Funk
Regulate
Shares 1 record with IDM
Flutter
Shares 1 record with Juke and Footwork
Freak Like Me
Shares 1 record with Kwaito
Tsiki Tsiki
Shares 1 record with Memphis Rap
North Memphis Area
Shares 1 record with Miami
Freak Like Me
Shares 1 record with Trip-Hop
Glory Box
Shares 1 record with Warp
Flutter
  1. Inner City LifeGoldie
  2. Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache
  3. Glory BoxPortishead
  4. N.Y. State of MindNas
  5. JuicyThe Notorious B.I.G.
  6. RegulateWarren G & Nate Dogg
  7. Quadrant DubBasic Channel
  8. FlutterAutechre
  9. Freak Like MeDJ Deeon
  10. North Memphis AreaDJ Paul
  11. Tsiki TsikiM'du Masilela
  12. Live ForeverOasis

The whole selection →

5 picks, unranked

Bass Weight

Shares 2 records with Dubstep
Midnight Request Line, Skeng
Shares 1 record with 1976
Kunta Kinte Dub
Shares 1 record with 1994
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Drum and Bass
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Dub
Kunta Kinte Dub
Shares 1 record with UK Garage
RIP Groove
  1. Kunta Kinte DubThe Revolutionaries
  2. Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache
  3. RIP GrooveDouble 99
  4. Midnight Request LineSkream
  5. SkengThe Bug featuring Killa P & Flowdan

The whole selection →

11 picks, unranked

Dancing to Bad News

Shares 2 records with 1976
Zombie, Police and Thieves
Shares 1 record with Afrobeat
Zombie
Shares 1 record with Baile Funk
Rap do Silva
Shares 1 record with Britpop
A Design for Life
Shares 1 record with Italo Disco
Vamos a la Playa
Shares 1 record with Kwaito
Kaffir
Shares 1 record with Reggae
Police and Thieves
Shares 1 record with Salsa
El Cantante
Shares 1 record with Tropicália
Domingo no Parque
  1. Domingo no ParqueGilberto Gil
  2. Time Will Pass You ByTobi Legend
  3. ZombieFela Kuti & Africa 70
  4. Police and ThievesJunior Murvin
  5. El CantanteHéctor Lavoe
  6. Vamos a la PlayaRigheira
  7. Mr Kirk's Nightmare4hero–
  8. They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
  9. Rap do SilvaBob Rum
  10. KaffirArthur Mafokate
  11. A Design for LifeManic Street Preachers

The whole selection →

11 picks, unranked

Miami

Shares 2 records with Juke and Footwork
Freak Like Me, Run
Shares 1 record with 1994
Freak Like Me
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Throw the D
  1. Bass Rock ExpressMC A.D.E.
  2. Throw the D2 Live Crew
  3. Planet RockAmos Larkins II
  4. ScarfaceDynamix II
  5. Doo Doo Brown2 Hyped Brothers and a Dog
  6. Tootsee Roll69 Boyz
  7. Melô do TabacoDJ Marlboro–
  8. Rap da FelicidadeCidinho e Doca
  9. Baile de FavelaMC João
  10. Freak Like MeDJ Deeon
  11. RunDJ Funk

The whole selection →

5 picks, unranked

Roots

Shares 1 record with Disco
I Feel Love
Shares 1 record with Funk
Cold Sweat
Shares 1 record with Krautrock
Hallogallo
Shares 1 record with Post-Punk
Public Image
  1. Cold SweatJames Brown
  2. King Tubby Meets Rockers UptownAugustus Pablo
  3. HallogalloNeu!
  4. I Feel LoveDonna Summer
  5. Public ImagePublic Image Ltd

The whole selection →

12 picks, unranked

Sung to Someone

Shares 1 record with 1976
Sweet Mother
Shares 1 record with Chicago House
Your Love
Shares 1 record with City Pop
Plastic Love
Shares 1 record with Highlife
Sweet Mother
Shares 1 record with Reggae
No Woman, No Cry
Shares 1 record with Soul
The Tracks of My Tears
Shares 1 record with Tropicália
Baby
  1. I'm So Lonesome I Could CryHank Williams
  2. Lawdy Miss ClawdyLloyd Price
  3. Tainted LoveGloria Jones
  4. Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)Frank Wilson
  5. The Tracks of My TearsThe Miracles
  6. Sunshine of Your LoveCream
  7. BabyGal Costa
  8. No Woman, No CryBob Marley & The Wailers
  9. Sweet MotherPrince Nico Mbarga
  10. Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)Buzzcocks
  11. Plastic LoveMariya Takeuchi
  12. Your LoveFrankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle

The whole selection →

13 picks, unranked

The Eighties

Shares 2 records with Hardcore Punk
Rise Above, Straight Edge
Shares 1 record with Bleep Techno
Track With No Name
Shares 1 record with Chicago House
Can You Feel It
Shares 1 record with Dancehall
Ring the Alarm
Shares 1 record with Dream Pop
Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops
Shares 1 record with Grunge
Touch Me I'm Sick
Shares 1 record with Miami
Throw the D
Shares 1 record with Miami Bass
Throw the D
Shares 1 record with Warp
Track With No Name
  1. Love Will Tear Us ApartJoy Division
  2. Rise AboveBlack Flag
  3. Straight EdgeMinor Threat
  4. Dirty TalkKlein + M.B.O.–
  5. Problèmes d'AmourAlexander Robotnick
  6. Pearly-Dewdrops' DropsCocteau Twins
  7. No UFO'sModel 500–
  8. Ring the AlarmTenor Saw
  9. Throw the D2 Live Crew
  10. Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  11. Strings of LifeRhythim Is Rhythim
  12. Touch Me I'm SickMudhoney
  13. Track With No NameForgemasters

The whole selection →

6 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — 160

Shares 2 records with Juke and Footwork
Feelin, Baby Come On
Shares 1 record with 1994
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Drum and Bass
Original Nuttah
  1. Valley of the ShadowsOrigin Unknown
  2. TerminatorMetalheads
  3. We Are I.E.Lennie De Ice
  4. FeelinDJ Rashad
  5. Baby Come OnRP Boo
  6. Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache

The whole selection →

10 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — A Way In

Shares 2 records with UK Garage
Sincere, Saved My Life
Shares 1 record with 1994
Inner City Life
Shares 1 record with Ambient
An Ending (Ascent)
Shares 1 record with Chicago House
Can You Feel It
Shares 1 record with Drum and Bass
Inner City Life
Shares 1 record with Golden Age Hip-Hop
Paid in Full
Shares 1 record with Shoegaze
Only Shallow
Shares 1 record with Trip-Hop
Unfinished Sympathy
  1. Strings of LifeRhythim Is Rhythim
  2. Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  3. Inner City LifeGoldie
  4. Unfinished SympathyMassive Attack
  5. Only ShallowMy Bloody Valentine
  6. Paid in FullEric B. & Rakim
  7. An Ending (Ascent)Brian Eno
  8. SincereMJ Cole
  9. Bubble MetropolisDrexciya
  10. Saved My LifeTodd Edwards

The whole selection →

4 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Detroit Techno

Shares 1 record with The Eighties
No UFO's
  1. No UFO'sModel 500–
  2. The BellsJeff Mills
  3. Bubble MetropolisDrexciya
  4. At LesCarl Craig

The whole selection →

4 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Detroit, Heard in Europe

Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Strings of Life
  1. Strings of LifeRhythim Is Rhythim
  2. The BellsJeff Mills
  3. JaguarDJ Rolando / Underground Resistance
  4. Bubble MetropolisDrexciya

The whole selection →

6 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Garage on the Mix

Shares 1 record with Bass Weight
RIP Groove
  1. SincereMJ Cole
  2. Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)Artful Dodger featuring Craig David
  3. Flowers (Sunship Remix)Sweet Female Attitude
  4. RIP GrooveDouble 99
  5. DestinyDem 2
  6. 21 SecondsSo Solid Crew

The whole selection →

6 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts

Shares 1 record with 1994
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Drum and Bass
Original Nuttah
Shares 1 record with Dubstep
Archangel
Shares 1 record with Grime
Eskimo
Shares 1 record with Juke and Footwork
Feelin
  1. King Tubby Meets Rockers UptownAugustus Pablo
  2. Kunta Kinte DubThe Revolutionaries
  3. Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache
  4. EskimoWiley
  5. ArchangelBurial
  6. FeelinDJ Rashad

The whole selection →

6 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — In the Room

Shares 1 record with Disco
Is It All Over My Face
Shares 1 record with Electro
Set It Off
Shares 1 record with Sung to Someone
Your Love
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Can You Feel It
  1. Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  2. Your LoveFrankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle
  3. Move Your BodyMarshall Jefferson
  4. Bring Down the WallsFingers Inc.–
  5. Set It OffStrafe
  6. Is It All Over My FaceLoose Joints

The whole selection →

3 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Looped and Filtered

Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Can You Feel It
  1. Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  2. French KissLil Louis
  3. Move Your BodyMarshall Jefferson

The whole selection →

6 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — One Subject

Shares 3 records with Afrobeat
Heaven, Shakara, Soul Makossa
Shares 2 records with Soul
Move On Up, What's Going On
Shares 1 record with Funk
Chameleon
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Chameleon
  1. What's Going OnMarvin Gaye
  2. Move On UpCurtis Mayfield
  3. ShakaraFela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70
  4. Soul MakossaManu Dibango
  5. HeavenEbo Taylor
  6. ChameleonHerbie Hancock

The whole selection →

100 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred

Shares 3 records with Grime
I Luv U, Shutdown, Eskimo
Shares 2 records with Acid House
Pacific State, Voodoo Ray
Shares 2 records with Afrobeat
Water No Get Enemy, Zombie
Shares 2 records with Amapiano
Ke Star, Mnike
Shares 2 records with Dancing to Bad News
Kaffir, Zombie
Shares 2 records with Dub Techno
Phylyps Trak, Quadrant Dub
Shares 2 records with IDM
Windowlicker, Roygbiv
Shares 2 records with Italo Disco
Dirty Talk, Sueño Latino
Shares 2 records with Juke and Footwork
Percolator, Feelin
Shares 2 records with Kwaito
Kaffir, Nkalakatha
Shares 2 records with Madchester
Blue Monday, Fools Gold
Shares 2 records with Reggae
No Woman, No Cry, Marcus Garvey
Shares 2 records with Warp
Windowlicker, Roygbiv
Shares 1 record with Balearic
Sueño Latino
Shares 1 record with Dream Pop
Song to the Siren
Shares 1 record with Electro
Planet Rock
Shares 1 record with Gqom
Ice Drop
  1. Strings of LifeRhythim Is Rhythim
  2. What's Going OnMarvin Gaye
  3. I Feel LoveDonna Summer
  4. Cold SweatJames Brown
  5. Can You Feel ItMr. Fingers
  6. A Change Is Gonna ComeSam Cooke
  7. Unfinished SympathyMassive Attack
  8. Planet RockAfrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force
  9. King Tubby Meets Rockers UptownAugustus Pablo
  10. Fight the PowerPublic Enemy
  11. Good TimesChic
  12. Love Will Tear Us ApartJoy Division
  13. AutobahnKraftwerk
  14. Only ShallowMy Bloody Valentine
  15. RespectAretha Franklin
  16. Inner City LifeGoldie
  17. ZombieFela Kuti & Africa 70
  18. Music for 18 MusiciansSteve Reich
  19. Voodoo RayA Guy Called Gerald
  20. Paid in FullEric B. & Rakim
  21. No UFO'sModel 500–
  22. An Ending (Ascent)Brian Eno
  23. Glory BoxPortishead
  24. Bam BamSister Nancy
  25. Music Sounds Better with YouStardust
  26. Once in a LifetimeTalking Heads
  27. SuperstitionStevie Wonder
  28. SincereMJ Cole
  29. Untitled (How Does It Feel)D'Angelo
  30. HallogalloNeu!
  31. ArchangelBurial
  32. Your LoveFrankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle
  33. Nuthin' but a "G" ThangDr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg
  34. No Woman, No CryBob Marley & The Wailers
  35. Original NuttahShy FX & UK Apache
  36. Song to the SirenThis Mortal Coil
  37. Funky DrummerJames Brown
  38. Love Is the MessageMFSB
  39. I Luv UDizzee Rascal
  40. The BellsJeff Mills
  41. Phylyps TrakBasic Channel
  42. WindowlickerAphex Twin
  43. Public ImagePublic Image Ltd
  44. N.Y. State of MindNas
  45. Fools GoldThe Stone Roses
  46. Trans-Europe ExpressKraftwerk
  47. Ex-FactorLauryn Hill
  48. Midnight Request LineSkream
  49. Acid TraxPhuture–
  50. Come OutSteve Reich
  51. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)Sly & the Family Stone
  52. Renegade SnaresOmni Trio
  53. Ten PercentDouble Exposure–
  54. SoonMy Bloody Valentine–
  55. Water No Get EnemyFela Kuti & Africa 70–
  56. Blue MondayNew Order–
  57. Da FunkDaft Punk–
  58. PercolatorCajmere–
  59. Marcus GarveyBurning Spear–
  60. XtalAphex Twin–
  61. C.R.E.A.M.Wu-Tang Clan–
  62. Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)Artful Dodger featuring Craig David–
  63. JaguarDJ Rolando / Underground Resistance–
  64. It Was a Good DayIce Cube–
  65. Dirty TalkKlein + M.B.O.–
  66. TeardropMassive Attack–
  67. TerminatorMetalheads–
  68. Move Your BodyMarshall Jefferson–
  69. Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding–
  70. EskimoWiley–
  71. FeelinDJ Rashad–
  72. AlisonSlowdive–
  73. KaffirArthur Mafokate–
  74. RoygbivBoards of Canada–
  75. NkalakathaMandoza–
  76. Damaged GoodsGang of Four–
  77. Brown SugarD'Angelo–
  78. Move On UpCurtis Mayfield–
  79. On a Ragga TipSL2–
  80. Ice DropDJ Lag–
  81. HalleluhwahCan–
  82. RegulateWarren G & Nate Dogg–
  83. Little Fluffy CloudsThe Orb–
  84. Ke StarFocalistic featuring Vigro Deep–
  85. SkengThe Bug featuring Killa P & Flowdan–
  86. Flowers (Sunship Remix)Sweet Female Attitude–
  87. Under Me Sleng TengWayne Smith–
  88. ShutdownSkepta–
  89. IntroAlan Braxe & Fred Falke–
  90. Pacific State808 State–
  91. Just Like HoneyThe Jesus and Mary Chain–
  92. Sueño LatinoSueño Latino–
  93. Brown Paper BagRoni Size / Reprazent–
  94. ZungguzungguguzungguzengYellowman–
  95. Guess WhoSlum Village–
  96. ApacheIncredible Bongo Band–
  97. Quadrant DubBasic Channel–
  98. MnikeTyler ICU & Tumelo ZA–
  99. Midnight in a Perfect WorldDJ Shadow–
  100. E2-E4Manuel Göttsching–

The whole selection →

5 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — The Night It Went National

  1. Anti-War DubDigital Mystikz
  2. Midnight Request LineSkream
  3. Sine of the DubKode9 & The Spaceape
  4. ArchangelBurial
  5. NightBenga & Coki

The whole selection →

5 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — What the DJs Kept

Shares 1 record with Funk
One Nation Under a Groove
  1. Good TimesChic
  2. Love Is the MessageMFSB
  3. Is It All Over My FaceLoose Joints
  4. Ten PercentDouble Exposure
  5. One Nation Under a GrooveFunkadelic

The whole selection →

5 picks, unranked

The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved

Shares 1 record with Roots
Cold Sweat
Shares 1 record with Twice Over
Chameleon
  1. Cold SweatJames Brown
  2. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)Sly & the Family Stone
  3. SuperstitionStevie Wonder
  4. ChameleonHerbie Hancock
  5. Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)Parliament

The whole selection →

9 picks, unranked

Twice Over

Shares 3 records with Warp
Dextrous, Les Nuits, Sueño
Shares 1 record with Balearic
Sueño
Shares 1 record with Bleep Techno
Dextrous
Shares 1 record with Electro
Rockit
Shares 1 record with Funk
Chameleon
Shares 1 record with Jazz
Maiden Voyage
Shares 1 record with Merseybeat
She Loves You
Shares 1 record with Musique Concrète
Revolution 9
Shares 1 record with Trip-Hop
Les Nuits
  1. Maiden VoyageHerbie Hancock
  2. ChameleonHerbie Hancock
  3. RockitHerbie Hancock
  4. She Loves YouThe Beatles
  5. Tomorrow Never KnowsThe Beatles
  6. Revolution 9The Beatles
  7. DextrousNightmares on Wax
  8. Les NuitsNightmares on Wax
  9. SueñoNightmares on Wax–

The whole selection →

12 picks, unranked

Warp

Shares 3 records with Twice Over
Dextrous, Les Nuits, Sueño
Shares 1 record with 1994
Flutter
Shares 1 record with Ambient
Rhubarb
Shares 1 record with Balearic
Sueño
Shares 1 record with The Eighties
Track With No Name
Shares 1 record with Trip-Hop
Les Nuits
  1. Track With No NameForgemasters
  2. DextrousNightmares on Wax
  3. TestoneSweet Exorcist
  4. LFOLFO
  5. RhubarbAphex Twin
  6. FlutterAutechre
  7. Come On My SelectorSquarepusher
  8. RoygbivBoards of Canada
  9. WindowlickerAphex Twin
  10. Les NuitsNightmares on Wax
  11. SueñoNightmares on Wax–
  12. Gantz GrafAutechre

The whole selection →

Records more than one list reached for

Every dashed line on the map, read as records rather than as pairs. These are the 201 recordings that two or more of our lists arrived at independently.