House is a sub-genre of electronic music characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground club culture in the early/mid 1980s, as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat.
Ghettotech is a genre of electronic music originating from Detroit. It combines elements of Chicago's ghetto house with electro, Detroit techno, Miami bass.
Ghetto house or booty house is a subgenre of house music which started being recognized as a distinct style from around 1992 onwards. It features minimal 808 and 909 drum machine-driven tracks and sometimes sexually explicit lyrics.
Planet Mu is an eclectic English electronic music record label created and run by Mike Paradinas. The label started out as a subsidiary of Virgin Records then Paradinas set up the label independent of Virgin. After releasing intelligent dance music, the label moved to jungle and breakcore, and then grime and dubstep and later footwork. The label also releases the music of Paradinas under various aliases such as μ-Ziq, Kid Spatula and Tusken Raiders. It celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020.
Hyperdub is a British, London-based electronic music record label and former webzine, founded by Steve Goodman, a.k.a. Kode9. The label was formed in 2004, and grew out of the UK's early dubstep scene. Artists signed to the label have included Burial, Cooly G, Dean Blunt, DJ Rashad, DVA, Fatima Al Qadiri, Ikonika, Jessy Lanza, Klein, Laurel Halo and Zomby.
Rusty Santos is a record producer and musician based in Los Angeles. He is known for producing, recording, mixing and/or mastering records like Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs and the reissue of Danse Manatee, Panda Bear’s Person Pitch, Born Ruffians’ Red, Yellow & Blue, Owen Pallett's Heartland & In Conflict, DJ Rashad's Welcome to the Chi, Dawn of Midi's "Dysnomia", and many more.
Footwork, also called juke, footwork/juke or Chicago juke, is a genre of electronic dance music derived from ghetto house with elements of hip hop, first appearing in Chicago in the late 1990s. The music style evolved from the earlier, rapid rhythms of ghetto house, a change pioneered by RP Boo. It may draw from the rapid rhythms and sub-bass frequencies of drum & bass. Tracks also frequently feature heavily syncopated samples from rap, pop and other sources, and are often around 160 bpm.
Double Cup is the first studio album by footwork musician DJ Rashad, and the sole full-length released during his lifetime. It was released on October 20, 2013 via Hyperdub. The cover features a nighttime aerial shot of Chicago, Rashad's hometown.
Shangaan electro is a dance movement and musical style born from a 21st-century reboot of local folk traditions in South African townships, Tsonga Disco and Kwaito House. The movement has been spearheaded by DJ Khwaya and the producer Nozinja in recent years, who has turned it into an iconic Afro-futurist strain of electronic dance music. Shangaan Electro is also called "Tsonga Electro" in the Limpopo province of South Africa.
Rashad Harden, known as DJ Rashad, was a Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as a pioneer in the footwork genre and founder of the Teklife crew. He released his debut studio album Double Cup on Hyperdub in 2013 to critical praise. He died in April 2014 from a drug overdose.
Alan Stanley Soucy Brinsmead, better known by the stage name Sinjin Hawke, is a Canadian-American electronic music producer and DJ.
Jerrilynn Patton, known as Jlin, is an electronic musician. She began producing music in 2008 and received early attention for her 2011 track "Erotic Heat". Jlin's debut album, Dark Energy, was released in 2015 to critical praise. Her follow-up Black Origami (2017) received further acclaim.
The Era is a Chicago-based footwork dance crew. Dancers from the group have performed at London's Barbican, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, and South by Southwest. The group also teaches footwork at High Concept Laboratories, where they have an incubation studio space.
Sold Out is the debut studio album by DJ Paypal. It was released by Brainfeeder on November 13, 2015. It is a record in the Chicago footwork style of dance music.
Kavain Wayne Space, known as RP Boo or Arpebu, is a Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as one of the originators of the footwork genre during the 1990s. He released his debut album Legacy on Planet Mu in 2013.
Wills Glasspiegel is an American filmmaker, artist, scholar and community organizer from Chicago. Glasspiegel has spent several years working alongside electronic musicians and dancers from Sierra Leone, South Africa and Chicago. In 2017, he co-founded the arts and racial justice nonprofit, Open the Circle. He has produced public radio segments for All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and was recognized as a co-recipient of a Peabody Award in 2014 for his contributions to the public radio program Afropop Worldwide. Wills' collaborations have been featured in a variety of publications including CNN, FADER Magazine, Dazed Magazine, Pitchfork, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Chicago Tribune. He worked from 2016-2023 as an artist and filmmaker with The Era Footwork Crew, including as creative director for The Era's touring performance,IN THE WURKZ, a show that won the National Dance Project award in 2019 from the New England Foundation for the Arts. Glasspiegel's work has been recognized with prizes from the MacArthur Foundation, the Field Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of Chicago. His films and installations have screened at Stony Island Arts Bank, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MANA Contemporary, Shibuya crossing in Japan, and several times with Art on the Mart in Chicago.
Jersey club is a style of electronic club music that originated in Newark, New Jersey in the early 2000s. It was pioneered by DJ Tameil and other members of the Brick Bandits crew, who were inspired by Baltimore club's uptempo hybrid of house and hip hop. Other young producers also pushed for the progression of this style of music in the late 2000s.
The Pitchfork Music Festival 2014 was held on July 18 to 19, 2014 at the Union Park, Chicago, United States. The festival was headlined by Beck, Kendrick Lamar and Neutral Milk Hotel. English rock band Slowdive made their first concert in North America in over twenty years. American band The Julie Ruin cancelled their appearance after frontwoman Kathleen Hanna suffered from Lyme disease.
Deeon Boyd, known under his stage name DJ Deeon, was an American Chicago house DJ, credited with pioneering ghetto house and helping create the Dance Mania label.
