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The Electro Futurist

Robot funk, broken rhythms, and a sound that did not exist last year.

Designed rarity: about 5% of takers

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You want to hear something new. Electro started in 1982 when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force built Planet Rock out of Kraftwerk and hip hop, and a year later in Detroit Juan Atkins and Rick Davis made Clear as Cybotron, one of the places techno started. You land here because ideas excite you, you plan your listening like a research project, and you would rather hear a bold experiment than a perfect copy.

You tend to seek out the strange rooms and the late slots where producers try things, and you are often the first to share a record that nobody else has found yet. SOPHIE's pop records, which sounded like nothing else, are a touchstone for you. Given the choice, you would rather spend a week at MUTEK in Montreal than a weekend at any festival with a main stage.

Your strength

You hear where dance music is going before most people know it left.

Your blind spot

You can treat a difficult record as a better one, and be wary of anything widely loved.

Key takeaways

  • Your sound is electro, deconstructed club and hyperpop.
  • You care more about new ideas than about a perfect night out.
  • Electro started as music for dancing, and it still is.

Genres to start with

Records to start with

In Seoul

Electro and experimental club music in Seoul live in small rooms in Itaewon and Mullae, at art space events and at nights where the lineup is half DJs and half live acts.

Your first night

Look for an experimental club or live electronics night this weekend, stay for at least one live act, and give the strangest set of the night a full half hour.

Rooms to try in Seoul

  • Cakeshop, Itaewon: Cakeshop brought PC Music artists like umru to Seoul, so you can hear hyperpop and broken club rhythms on a system built for strange sounds.
  • Modeci, Hongdae: This rooftop club near Hongdae hosts new crews playing hard drum, Latin club and experimental sounds, so you hear what comes next before anyone else.

Rooms to try around the world

  • Elsewhere, New York: This Brooklyn venue mixes forward thinking club nights with pop and experimental acts, so you can catch the newest sounds across several rooms in one night.
  • Tresor, Berlin: Its 313 030 series links Detroit and Berlin, so you hear electro and machine funk in the room that helped both cities shape the future.
  • ILLUM, Shanghai: Collectives like KNOT run hyperpop, trance and techno nights here, so you can hear Shanghai's young scene bending genres into something new.

Your nearest types

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