Electro

Electronic music's original synthesised groove, electro predates house by several years and draws directly from Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and the Roland 808's arrival in hip-hop and funk circles. Stripped, mechanical, and polyrhythmic, electro uses the TR-808's characteristic boom and the bass vocabulary of early hip-hop to create something alien but deeply groovy. The genre peaked commercially in the early 1980s — Hashim's "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)", Egyptian Lover's productions, the entire Streetsound Electro series — before going underground and reemerging in the late 1990s through producers like Drexciya, DJ Stingray, and Anthony Shakir. Contemporary electro appears in DJ sets at Dekmantel, Fabric, and the more avant-garde festival stages — serious collectors' music with a devoted following. Mixprism's electro database reflects this: tracks that recur in thoughtful, technically engaged DJ sets, often alongside minimal techno and breakbeat.