Your Musical Origin Story

#22

and now I’m indebted to you for passing that album along. Listening now, great stuff!

#25

I made this playlist a few years ago, going through some of the “formative” tracks for me since the year I was 3 or 4. Gives a bit of a glimpse into how it’s gone.

(1988 ish) Kylie Minogue - I Should Be So Lucky (loved this according to my parents)
(1990 ish) Desmond Dekker - Israelites (my dad liked old ska)
(1990 ish) The Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand (and Beatles, obviously)
(1991 ish) Lots of Amiga-music in between here
(1994 ish) Green Day - Basket Case
(1996 ish) Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench
(1998 ish) Three Drives On A Vinyl - Greece 2000 (was very much into trance around here)
(1999 ish) Bad Religion - I Want to Conquer the World
(1999 ish) Sasha - Xpander
(2000 ish) Underworld - Shudder / King of Snake
(2001 ish) Fugazi - Ex-Spectator
(2001 ish) At the Drive-In - Cosmonaut
(2002 ish) And You Will Know us By the Trail of Dead - Days of being wild
(2003 ish) El-P - T.O.J.
(2004 ish) Manitoba - I’ve Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life
(2004 ish) Primal Scream - Accelerator
Lots of weird rock and hip hop in between here, as well as more electronic music.
(2008) Flying Lotus - Breathe.Something/Stellar Star
(2009) Mount Kimbie - Maybes
(2010) Ous Mal - Merilaulu
… and from there just more weird electronic stuff, and now it’s more broader just trying to find music I like.

The first concert I remember going to was some friends of mine when I was 14. I thought they were really cool. They played some Nirvana-like grunge. First real “wow” moment from a show I can remember must’ve been seeing Rancid back in 2000 or something.

Dabbled in Ableton Live in 2007. First hardware synth was a Monomachine in 2012. I got a lot of music from my brother up until I was 15, and then just found my own way from there.

#26

Grew up in the East Midlands (UK), folks into Country & Western. I thought their records were the only records worth listening to until I got to maybe 5 or 6 and discovered the radio, and then Top of the Pops.

First time I heard house / electronic music was when Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s Jack Your Body got into the UK charts in early 1987. I was 11. It blew my mind. Then everything exploded, although for a couple of years I was still only aware of chart music. If it didn’t get into the top 40, I didn’t know it existed. Stakker Humanoid, Fast Eddie, D Mob, Beatmasters, Black Riot, Royal House.

Key release of those early years was Serious Records’ Best of House Megamix which I borrowed from a guy at school - still sends shivers down my spine. Bam Bam’s Give It To Me was the best thing I’d ever heard.

Then about 1991 I discovered John Peel. Second blown mind. I was just a bit too young, a bit too well-behaved and a bit too rural to go to any raves, but I started getting into things that weren’t top 40, especially Warp / Rising High / early XL / R&S, and then things like Reinforced / Shut Up & Dance / Kickin’, and then Go Bang! / ESP. There was a small record shop about 5 miles away from my village that stocked rave / hardcore 12"s, and I bought quite a bit of stuff blind, a lot of which turned out to be disappointing (I hated the novelty stuff, and some of it sounded lame even at the time). I was just within receiving distance of Sheffield Community Radio, which had regular slots from Astrix & Space.

Then Warp’s artificial intellgence stuff kicked off, which I got really into. The Black Dog, B12, Autechre, then GPR label stuff like Beaumont Hannant and Luke Slater. I was listening to a load of indie stuff at the time, too, especially shoegaze and American indie (Sonic Youth, Mudhoney).

I first started trying to make my own music on a Windows 3.1 PC at university, running Fasttracker and later Modplug. It was all pretty shit, objectively speaking, but it was great fun. No synths or MIDI, just using low bit-rate samples ripped from CDs. None of it survives, which is no great loss.

Edited to say:

“First time I heard house / electronic music”

I was a big Eurythmics fan from 1983-1987, so obviously I’d heard electronic music - I’m making a distinction between verse-chorus-verse electronic pop songs and the more repetitive chorus-free structure of house and techno, which at the time seemed revolutionary.

Also: first live experience of electronic music was mid 1993, one of the Megadog parties at the Leadmill in Sheffield. Aphex Twin was headlining (billed as Polygon Window, as far as I remember), and I’m pretty sure Drum Club and Orbital supported.

#27

1988 Pet Shop Boys
1990 MC Hammer
1992 Metallica
1993 Faith No More
1994 The Orb
1995 Aphex Twin
1996 Bjork
1996 DJ Krush
1997 Orbital
1998 Amon Tobin
1999 Roots Manuva
2001 Autechre
2002 I can’t remember what happened in 2002
2006 Thomas Koner
2009 Colleen
2010 Demdike Stare
2011 Kraftwerk
2012 Basic Channel
2013 The Caretaker
2015 Taylor Deupree
2016 Richard Chartier
2017 Stephan Mathieu
2018 Eliane Radigue
2019 This year I’ve mostly been listening to white noise
2020 A sensory deprivation chamber will do me fine

#28

One of my earliest memories is hearing Do You Really Like It on kids saturday morning TV, can’t remember if it was live & kicking or CDUK

#29

Bump to resurrect in hopes of more stories

#30

I first came across electronic music in my highschool years. That shit commercial EDM shite that was played everywhere.

Anyway I then started to develop my own taste and started listening to some bat shit crazy stuff from a producer called LORN.

Along with a guy called DOLOR creating similar atmospheres,

This sent my spiraling up from my depression hole and sent me spiraling down the music hole. I had never heard anything like it, the emotions it gives and the stories it can tell.

Also a guy called clams casino, no need for an explanation…just listen. This guy showed me another world in which anything was possible. I then started to delve deeper and deeper and started to then create my own things.

Burial was then discovered holy shit.

Then from then on I was hooked on electronic music, all genres, all abilities. The way emotions are shown and exposed whilst listening to music was something I’m wanting to replicate myself in my own way.

Electronic music saved my life and continues to give me life.

All this in 3-4 years I’m now 20

#31

bumping from the depths of the catacombs

#32

I’ve been loving the new Clams Casino, has he been doing production for rappers too? Any albums you could recommend if so?

#33

I still listen to the Deepchord album regularly on cold dark nights it’s sooo good thanks again :pray:t3:

#34

I know I’m bumping an old thread but since I’m new here this seems like a good place to introduce myself.

Born in 87, grew up at the Jersey Shore. The dominant culture was steroid abusing tourists from NYC coming out on weekends to party at clubs playing house and trance. Seemed extremely lame to me at the time.

The “alternative” culture for local kids was punk/hardcore/metal. I was pretty into it, but leaned to the more experimental side. Refused were putting breakbeats in their hardcore tracks, the Locust were using synths, etc.

Throughout this time I was also posting on a ton of music message boards, which was where I got turned on to weirder IDM stuff that my friends didn’t like. Aphex Twin, u-ziq, Kid 606, squarepusher, etc. Made some crappy tracks with FL that got included on web label comps, but did it all kinda secretly while playing in hardcore bands, and knowing my IRL friends didn’t care.

Once I was old enough to start hanging out in Brooklyn there were a ton of bands bridging the rock/dance gap, to varying degrees of success. I loved the first Liars record. There was also a ton of blog house bubbling up which I fucking hated, and still hate.

By the mid-2000s minimal was starting to bubble up and I would find myself at loft parties or after hours where that stuff played, and I found it a lot more palatable than the other “real” dance music going around. If anyone remembers the Rubulad parties, those were a place where there were like a dozen rooms with different genres, so a goofy youngster like me would hear a lot of new stuff on those nights.

Studied abroad in Berlin during 2007-2008 and that pretty much sealed the deal in terms of living techno. Stuff like Sandwell District had a clear connection to post-punk, noise, and industrial. That was appealing to me, and made a lot of sense coming from the experimental and hardcore scenes.

Coming back to NYC was rough for a few years but by 2013 or so the local techno was really exciting. I feel lucky to have been around to witness something like that bubble up from nothing and get big enough to produce “stars” like Yaeji, well-known labels like LIES, a respected festival like Sustain-Release, etc.

And now I’m a jaded mid 30s experimental industrial noise techno weirdo. And I’m posting on 555-5555 because I really miss old fashioned forums.

#35

I may end up doing my own more detailed one of these stories but in the absence of that I would def second the influence of Bjork in general (esp Homogenic and to a lesser extent Vespertine and the earlier albums).

I also got into Micachu / Mica Levi through Bjork, who premiered the Turn Me Well video when it first came out. And she has also been very influential for me.

Other big ones in foreshadowing my dive into dance music (as I grew up on rock and indie mainly) were Aphex and Boards of Canada obviously, videogame music, the first 2 Dizzee Rascal albums, Madlib and MF Doom. But probably most importantly - a childhood which experienced rave / hardcore and UK Garage as big mainstream radio phenomenons, and stuff like jungle and techno as big influences on the general sound ambience of the times (eg adverts and incidental music in TV, Tekken 3 soundtrack was full of breakbeats etc).

But yeah. Homogenic. What an album.

#36

started off playing in samba carnival bands when i was around 8, then fell in love with techno and house when i was around 11 or 12. started producing right after. been at it for 12 years now. went to study music and then taught music production at the same uni

#37

Got an acoustic nylon string Finnish-built Landola when I was like 9-10, started playing along to the music my mum and dad listened to. After that I started making beats in Rave eJay, then moved to MadTracker 2, then on to that classic cracked Reason 4 somewhere in high school I think. Also, my dad had a small 2 day festival at his house in the Swedish forest, and my mum played in a couple different bands, so lots of music people around me all my childhood.

I’ve been sticking to Reason for the last 14 years or so, but I’ve gone back to trackers again lately (FastTracker 2). Checked out Renoise for a while too, still got the license, but I don’t use it.

#38

Killed my first borrowed PC back in the nineties!
Tried to do multitrack mixtapes on it . . . not good

#39

massive respect to anyone who learned to produce using trackers, that shit is utterly baffling to me