Crate

01 — Atlas

Where it happened

Zoom out and the scenes are a weather system; zoom in and they are four streets and a studio.

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02 — Timeline

When it happened

Scenes as bands, influences as hairlines beneath them. Scrub 1968 to now and watch the overlaps.

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03 — Graph

How it argues

A 909 in a pawn shop, an engineer with the good microphones. Follow the edge, not the genre.

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Contents →The plain index. Everything the corpus holds, as a list or a wall of tiles. Review →The masthead — what got written, in the order it was argued. Crate →Your shelves and your want list, filed by the scenes they argue for.

From your shelves

The corpus40 written

KrautrockDÜSSELDORF · 1968–1977Motorik pulse and studio science in postwar West Germany.Berlin SchoolBERLIN · 1969–1979Sequencers running all night in a walled city full of young men avoiding the army.ZamrockLUSAKA · 1972–1979 · FOUND AGAIN 2011Fuzz pedals and Bemba hooks in a copper-boom republic — nearly erased, then found again.London Post-PunkLONDON · 1977–1981What eighteen months of punk left behind, once the shouting stopped.Chicago HouseCHICAGO · 1983–1990Warehouse DJs, drum machines, and a new kind of church.Detroit TechnoDETROIT · 1985–1994Belleville Three futurism built in a post-industrial city.MadchesterMANCHESTER · 1988–1993Guitars and a drum machine in the same room, finally, and everyone too high to argue about it.Bristol SoundBRISTOL · 1991–1998 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDSound system dub slowed to a heartbeat — what the world calls trip-hop, from the city that never accepted the word.New York PunkNEW YORK · 1974–1978 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDOriginal songs only and the band keeps the door — a bar's business model accidentally invents punk.New York GarageNEW YORK · 1970–1987 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDMembers only, no liquor license, the best sound system ever built — why your crate is called a crate.Shibuya-keiTOKYO · 1989–1998 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDA record-shop shelf names a genre, and the musicians it named were the customers.TropicáliaSÃO PAULO · 1967–1969 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDElectric guitars booed by the left in 1967 and jailed by the right in 1968: twenty-one months of Brazilian pop that ended in exile and finished in the cabinet.American New WaveAKRON–CLEVELAND · 1972–1980 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDRubber-city art students answering the dying assembly line with mockery — the new wave that never lived on the Bowery.GqomDURBAN · 2011–2019 · PIPELINE-GENERATEDBass music built for the one speaker that would carry it: a subwoofer bolted into a Durban minibus taxi.Amapiano2012–2019Township bedrooms in Gauteng, cracked software and a log drum under an electric piano — a music named from inside after the instrument it chose.Bacardi House2000–2018Atteridgeville, kwaito sped up into military snares, and a scene that moved its records by hand because the internet did not reach it.Bakersfield Honky-Tonk CircuitUNCHECKED1951–1974Oil wages, seven nights of dancing, and a Telecaster pointed two thousand miles east.Post-Wall Berlin Techno1990–1997A bank vault, a substation and a bunker, let cheap because nobody could prove who owned them.Brooklyn DIYUNCHECKED2001–2014Illegal loft rooms, all ages, on a nine-year zoning fuse.MahraganatUNCHECKED2006–2016Street weddings, cracked FruityLoops, and a record given away to sell the night.Champeta CriollaUNCHECKED1981–1998The African records ran short, so Cartagena's sound systems started hiring Palenque.The Dunedin SoundUNCHECKED1980–1987Cheap flats, a pub with no bouncer, and a label in another city.Durban KwaitoUNCHECKED2005–2013When Johannesburg gave up on kwaito, Durban built the studio, the station and the club circuit, and kept supplying the country.East NashvilleUNCHECKED2000–2016Cheap Victorians across the river, barrooms that grew stages, and a two-dollar cover.Ethio-jazz1965–1974Addis Ababa, where the players were state employees, the law forbade making records, and one man went to India to get around it.Frankfurt TechnoUNCHECKED1988–1998Money and exemption on the way up; leases and fire codes on the way down.harDCore1979–1983X'd hands, church-hall shows, and a label started with six hundred dollars in a cigar box.Istanbul 45'lik NetworkUNCHECKED1965–1980A newspaper wrote the rules, a bazaar pressed the singles, and state radio stayed shut.Jersey Garage1984–1993A motel ballroom, a skate shop, and the garage sound gone back to church.Jungle1991–1994The music the licensed dial would not carry, broadcast off Hackney rooftops until the licensed dial changed its mind.Kingston Lawn DanceUNCHECKED1950–1962Sound systems on fenced yards, playing imported records with the labels scratched off.KwaitoUNCHECKED1993–1997Soweto slowed the imports down and built the labels to own what came out, until a radio station took over the choosing.LA Beat SceneUNCHECKED2004–2018A Wednesday in Lincoln Heights where the whole metro brought its week's beats.Lagos Afro-RockUNCHECKED1971–1977One producer's desk, two studios, and a tariff meant for somebody else.London Acid House1987–1989One Ibiza week, four rooms in six months, somebody else's warehouses.London GarageUNCHECKED1993–2001A licensing gap, a Sunday morning, and American records played wrong on purpose.London Warehouse Soul1985–1988Deleted funk, borrowed keys, and a pirate station reading out directions.New York Hardcore1981–1986An after-hours door on a city-owned block, and a matinee that let the kids in.Paris French TouchUNCHECKED1993–2001Filtered disco cut in bedrooms, tested on Wednesdays, sold abroad in English.Yorkshire BleepUNCHECKED1988–1992Sound-system kids, secondhand samplers, and Britain's first techno accent.

Start listening — records that survive zero context

Rhythim Is RhythimStrings of LifeDetroit Techno · 1987May proves the cold music can break your heart. No bassline. Nobody noticed.Listen ↗

Mahmoud AhmedErè Mèla MèlaEthio-jazz · 1975Recorded as the window was closing; the Imperial Bodyguard singer on the other side of the coup.Listen ↗

Fingers Inc.Can You Feel ItChicago House · 1986Larry Heard could actually play. House discovers it has feelings.Listen ↗

PortisheadDummyBristol Sound · 1994Torch songs cut to vinyl, scratched, and sampled back — the sadness arrives pre-aged.Listen ↗

MFR SoulsBless The Souls EPAmapiano · 2015A PRECURSOR rather than amapiano proper: soulful house on Deep Resolute, four tracks, by the duo four years before the sound they are credited with had a name.Listen ↗

Kabza De SmallAvenue SoundsAmapiano · 2016Debut album, House Afrika Records. The Pretoria claim's strongest single object.Listen ↗

Kabza De Small & LeehlezaAmabele ShayaAmapiano · 2018The track that carried the sound out of the Pretoria clubs and made it a national hit.Listen ↗

JazziDisciplesBlack ChildAmapiano · 2018Alexandra's EP, and the one people reach for when they want the pre-export sound.Listen ↗

JazziDisciplesDisciples of PianoAmapiano · 2019November 2019, their first studio album — the duo's last year before it all became something else.Listen ↗

MFR SoulsThe BeginningAmapiano · 2019The major-label debut from one of the founding duos, arriving as the scene stopped being local.Listen ↗

DJ MujavaTownship FunkBacardi House · 2008Released on Warp, played on BBC Radio 1, absorbed into UK Funky. The scene's only widely held object.Listen ↗

DJ Spoko & DJ MujavaI.M.I. EPBacardi House · 2013The two of them credited together, on True Panther — the pairing the international story split apart.Listen ↗

Tangerine DreamPhaedraBerlin School · 1974The sequencer left running. Charted in Britain, which nobody expected including Virgin.Listen ↗

Klaus SchulzeTimewindBerlin School · 1975Two side-long pieces, no drums, no apology.Listen ↗

Ash Ra TempelAsh Ra TempelBerlin School · 1971Plank engineered it — the single thread to the Rhineland, and it's a person.Listen ↗

ClusterZuckerzeitBerlin School · 1974The Berlin pair who moved to the country and met Rother. The scenes touching, briefly.Listen ↗

Basic ChannelPhylyps TrakPost-Wall Berlin Techno · 1993Almost nothing in it, and enormous on a system built for a bunker. The shop counter turning into a method.Listen ↗

Robert HoodInternal EmpirePost-Wall Berlin Techno · 1994Detroit minimalism issued by a Berlin nightclub, which by 1994 was the ordinary arrangement.Listen ↗

Paul van Dyk45 RPMPost-Wall Berlin Techno · 1994E-Werk's Friday resident, on the road out of the rooms and into the charts the Fuckparade was founded to object to.Listen ↗

Massive AttackBlue LinesBristol Sound · 1991The founding document — hip-hop at walking pace, sung in local accents, built from a decade of carried records.Listen ↗

TrickyMaxinquayeBristol Sound · 1995The Wild Bunch kid gone solo — secrets told through a wall, Martina Topley-Bird as the other voice.Listen ↗

Roni Size / ReprazentNew FormsBristol Sound · 1997The same St Pauls inheritance at double speed — drum and bass takes the Mercury, and a place proves it is not a genre.Listen ↗

Massive AttackMezzanineBristol Sound · 1998The exit door — guitars, paranoia, a band barely speaking, and a victory so complete the scene had nothing left to argue.Listen ↗

Marshall JeffersonMove Your BodyChicago House · 1986Subtitled 'The House Music Anthem' — the piano everyone said didn't belong.Listen ↗

PhutureAcid TracksChicago House · 1987A 303 misused for twelve minutes. Invents acid house by accident.Listen ↗

Frankie KnucklesYour LoveChicago House · 1987The Warehouse itself, finally pressed to vinyl.Listen ↗

CybotronClearDetroit Techno · 1983Atkins before techno had a name. Electro with a thesis.Listen ↗

Model 500No UFO'sDetroit Techno · 1985First Metroplex release. The moment it becomes its own thing.Listen ↗

Inner CityBig FunDetroit Techno · 1988Saunderson makes it a pop record and Britain buys it by the crate.Listen ↗

Sandy BAmajovi JoviDurban Kwaito · 1994Durban's first kwaito album, paid for by a businessman after the Johannesburg meetings failed. One record with nothing behind it, which is why this scene starts eleven years later rather than here.Listen ↗

Big NuzZozoDurban Kwaito · 2006The Durban group's first album, made after they went to Johannesburg to look for a label and found one there.Listen ↗

Big NuzUndisputedDurban Kwaito · 2009The scene's flagship record, and the one that won nationally while the group went on refusing the regional name.Listen ↗

Zakes BantwiniLove, Light & MusicDurban Kwaito · 2010By the man who named the scene, on the label he had started in Durban six years earlier.Listen ↗

ProfessorUniversity of Kalawa JazmeeDurban Kwaito · 2010A Durban artist's triple-platinum debut, titled after the Johannesburg label that signed him. Durban supplied the music and Johannesburg still held the contract.Listen ↗

Getatchew MekuryaNegus of Ethiopian SaxEthio-jazz · 1970The police bandsman's own album, and the clearest case of a state-trained player recording under his own name.Listen ↗

Mulatu AstatkeMulatu of EthiopiaEthio-jazz · 1972The record the export name comes from, and the narrowest thing on this list — one man's fusion standing in for a whole city's output.Listen ↗

RudeboyzRudeboyz EPGqom · 2015The first gqom pressed to vinyl, by a London label, four years after the music started.Listen ↗

DJ LagDJ Lag EPGqom · 2016Four tracks including 'Ice Drop', and the record that turned a Clermont producer into the scene's touring name.Listen ↗

Distruction BoyzGqom Is the FutureGqom · 2017Certified gold within two months. The first gqom album the formal industry counted.Listen ↗

Griffit VigoI Am GqomGqom · 2020The first album by a producer who had been there since the broken-beat records, released from Rome.Listen ↗

Lennie De IceWe Are I.E.Jungle · 1991Recorded 1989, released 1991. Named as the first jungle record more often than any other, by people looking backwards.Listen ↗

Origin UnknownThe Touch / Valley of the ShadowsJungle · 1993Four hours, a magazine cover-mount CD and a documentary about dying. Put on the B-side for not fitting.Listen ↗

UK Apachi with Shy FXOriginal NuttahJungle · 1994Lyrics written in the late eighties, dropped onto a Shy FX track. Ragga jungle at its least apologetic.Listen ↗

Goldie Presents MetalheadsInner City LifeJungle · 1994Diane Charlemagne over a break that had spent three years being illegal to broadcast. The exit, and the loveliest thing in the scene.Listen ↗

GoldieTimelessJungle · 1995Number seven, on a major, programmed largely by Moving Shadow's Rob Playford. The scene's last record and drum and bass's first.Listen ↗

NEU!NEU!Krautrock · 1972Motorik as a complete idea. Dinger's beat is the scene's one true invention.Listen ↗

CanTago MagoKrautrock · 1971Tape editing as composition — hours of jamming cut into shape.Listen ↗

KraftwerkAutobahnKrautrock · 1974The moment the studio stops serving the band and becomes it.Listen ↗

HarmoniaMusik von HarmoniaKrautrock · 1974Cluster + NEU! in one room. The scene proving it's a scene.Listen ↗

FaustFaust IVKrautrock · 1973Opens with 'Krautrock' — the insult, reclaimed at twelve minutes.Listen ↗

Arthur MafokateKaffirKwaito · 1995The first major kwaito hit, and the one record here whose subject this page can date and cannot read.Listen ↗

WirePink FlagLondon Post-Punk · 1977Twenty-one songs, most under two minutes, most stopping before they finish. Convention declared optional.Listen ↗

Gang of FourEntertainment!London Post-Punk · 1979Funk about ideology. The guitar as percussion and the gaps doing the work.Listen ↗

Joy DivisionUnknown PleasuresLondon Post-Punk · 1979Hannett recorded the drums in a stairwell. Sounds like architecture.Listen ↗

The Pop GroupYLondon Post-Punk · 1979Free jazz, dub and agitprop, with no interest in whether you enjoy it.Listen ↗

UltravoxViennaLondon Post-Punk · 1980Plank at the desk. The German transmission arriving by person, not by record.Listen ↗

Happy MondaysPills 'n' Thrills and BellyachesMadchester · 1990Oakenfold smears the groove. Worse musicians, better at the actual job.Listen ↗

Primal ScreamScreamadelicaMadchester · 1991Not Manchester, but the argument's clearest statement — a rock band handing the tapes to a DJ.Listen ↗

808 StateNinetyMadchester · 1989The machine side of the same room, and named after the other machine.Listen ↗

Pere Ubu30 Seconds Over TokyoAmerican New Wave · 1975The first Hearthan single: a bomber-crew dirge, self-written, self-financed, self-shipped — the industrial method applied to the industry's own elegy.Listen ↗

Pere UbuThe Modern DanceAmerican New Wave · 1978The stayed-half's album: song forms with the factory noise left in, the sound of remaining on purpose.Listen ↗

DevoQ: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!American New Wave · 1978Recorded at Conny Plank's studio outside Cologne with Eno — the five-year argument with the machine-men, taped by their own engineer.Listen ↗

MFSBLove Is the MessageNew York Garage · 1973Made in Philadelphia, canonised on King Street — the played canon's cornerstone, the record every room in this lineage agreed on.Listen ↗

Loleatta HollowayLove SensationNew York Garage · 1980The most sampled voice in dance music, doing the original sampling-proof performance.Listen ↗

Taana GardnerHeartbeatNew York Garage · 1981Mixed by Levan for a floor he knew personally — slow, lurching, hated on arrival, eternal ever since.Listen ↗

Patti SmithHorsesNew York Punk · 1975Poetry with a rock band attached, produced by John Cale like a dare. The scene's first proof it could make albums, not just nights.Listen ↗

RamonesRamonesNew York Punk · 1976Fourteen songs, twenty-nine minutes — the entire history of rock and roll compressed until it ignites.Listen ↗

TelevisionMarquee MoonNew York Punk · 1977The band that talked its way into the empty Sundays, repaying the room with ten-minute guitar architecture.Listen ↗

Talking HeadsTalking Heads: 77New York Punk · 1977An anxiety diagram you can dance to — art school nerves given a rhythm section.Listen ↗

Richard Hell & The VoidoidsBlank GenerationNew York Punk · 1977The look, the shirt, the shrug — the scene's self-description, torn and safety-pinned before London saw it.Listen ↗

SuicideSuicideNew York Punk · 1977A broken drum machine and menace — the Bowery act even this room could barely contain, and the corpus's darkest proof that the policy said ORIGINAL, not guitars.Listen ↗

Flipper's GuitarThree Cheers for Our SideShibuya-kei · 1989The earliest record the shelf was built to hold. Sung entirely in English, assembled from British guitar pop most of its audience could not have bought locally.Listen ↗

CorneliusFantasmaShibuya-kei · 1997The collection playing itself. Hundreds of sources cut into a headphone object, and the scene's clearest export.Listen ↗

Os MutantesOs MutantesTropicália · 1968The paulista wing, and the record that proves the movement had a comic register nobody else was using.Listen ↗

Caetano VelosoTransaTropicália · 1972Made in London under expulsion, half in English, and addressed to the country that took him in.Listen ↗

Gilberto GilExpresso 2222Tropicália · 1972The return record, cut months after he was allowed back, with the coming home as its subject.Listen ↗

Tom ZéEstudando o SambaTropicália · 1976The one record here a foreign label genuinely brought back from the dead, fourteen years after it was made.Listen ↗

WITCHIntroductionZamrock · 1972The debut — reportedly the first commercial LP ever cut in Zambia. Scrappy, thrilling, historic by accident.Listen ↗

WITCHIn the PastZamrock · 1974The garage-psych peak of the early run, before the hooks got ambitious.Listen ↗

Rikki IlilongaZambiaZamrock · 1975The scene's founding guitarist solo — gentler, stranger, the melodic conscience of the movement.Listen ↗

WITCHLazy Bones!!Zamrock · 1975The biggest band in the country at the exact moment they stopped being scrappy.Listen ↗

AmanazAfricaZamrock · 1975The scene's masterpiece — menace and melancholy in equal parts, with a title track that is as close as Zamrock gets to a national anthem.Listen ↗

Paul NgoziThe GhettoZamrock · 1976The loudest, rudest flank of the movement — street-level lyrics over blown-out fuzz.Listen ↗

Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi FamilyMy AncestorsZamrock · 1976The drummer steps out front. Collectors treat it like scripture; the drums explain why.Listen ↗

WITCHLukombo VibesZamrock · 1976The sophisticated late run — the arc from scrappy to seasoned, completed.Listen ↗

Ngozi Family45,000 VoltsZamrock · 1977The title is a fair description. The heaviest record of the heaviest scene.Listen ↗

WITCHZangoZamrock · 2023The first new WITCH album in nearly forty years — the revival window's proof that this is a living scene, not an archive.Listen ↗

Influences — things that went places45 tracked

Conny PlankCAREERThe engineer who drove between the cities with the good microphones.Frankie KnucklesCAREERThe man who solved a problem on a Friday night and was told for thirty years that he'd invented a genre.KraftwerkORGANIZATIONFour men who stopped pretending to be a band and became a studio.Musicland StudiosORGANIZATIONA commercial rock studio in a hotel basement, where the disco was made in the gaps.Robby WedelTECHNOLOGYThe assistant who came with the rented Moog and knew a trick its inventor didn't.Roland TR-909TECHNOLOGYA drum machine that failed at sounding like a drummer, and was therefore perfect.Rough TradeINDUSTRYA shop that worked out you could sell three thousand copies of something unlistenable and still eat.David MancusoORGANIZATIONThe private party's constitution, enforced by refusing to grow Richard LongTECHNOLOGYThe rooms' ears — clubs built around his rigs The NYC cabaret lawLAWForbade dancing for 91 years; the scene is its negative image Tony WilsonORGANIZATIONA constitution that could not refuse and could not survive Max’s Kansas CityVENUEConsolidation by subtraction — the room that mattered most by failing on time Punk magazinePRESSThe teaser campaign, the job title, the ink — the second pure member The Third WaveTEXTThe only name in the corpus written before the music existed The Electrifying MojoMAKER · DETROITThe founding venue was airborne — membership by headlight, no address, no face Disco Demolition NightEVENTOne night, five dry years, and the dancers took over the means of production The sequencerMACHINEThe abolished cadence — and the corpus’s first facing-pages dispute The West Berlin exemptionLAWThe third verb: the quota commanded, the cabaret code forbade, this one excuses The HaçiendaORGANIZATIONThe import dock, the premature cathedral, the flats wearing the name HMV Shibuya's domestic shelfORGANIZATIONFiled Japanese records by their distance from the imports two aisles over, and the genre kept the criterion.Martin HannettCAREERSubtraction as production, for two scenes that never met Jimi HendrixTECHNOLOGYReached Lusaka as records and a pedal setting, never as a person CBGBORGANIZATIONTwo rules written for bluegrass, in force for four years The Kaunda radio quotaLAWA profession manufactured by a balance-of-payments memo The copper crashMARKETThe price was set in London; the scene lived and died in Kitwe Now-Again RecordsINDUSTRYThe reissue economy: touches revival windows, not lifetimes The Wild BunchORGANIZATIONA sound system that mattered most by ending.The Dug OutORGANIZATIONArchitecture doing curation, then closure doing release The London music pressMARKETNamed half these scenes, made none of them Institutional Act No. 5LAWSet no rule to break, then read every lyric for ten years Kool FMORGANIZATIONA bedroom in Hackney, a transmitter on somebody else's roof, and by 1993 a club night of its own: the outlet and the promoter were…YFMUNCHECKEDORGANIZATIONThe station that ended kwaito's independence by finally putting it on the radio.The Durban minibus taxiINDUSTRY STRUCTURESixteen seats, no subsidy, and a driver deciding what plays — the audition gqom had to pass, and the reason it sounds like that.Hard WaxINDUSTRY STRUCTUREKreuzberg, 1989: the counter came first, and the label, the cutting room and the distribution grew onto it.ZwischennutzungORGANIZATIONOwnership was unknown, so nothing could be sold and anything could be let: rooms in Mitte on short terms, at one official's…FrontpageINDUSTRY STRUCTUREEight pages, black and white, 5,000 copies at a Frankfurt airport discotheque — German techno's national press started as a club…AfrotainmentUNCHECKEDORGANIZATIONA label capitalised at the door, in a city where no advance was on offer.The Hager Fikir monopolyLAW REGULATIONA publishing monopoly granted as a favour in 1948, exercised almost never, and obeyed for twenty years by people nobody had…The DubplateINDUSTRY STRUCTUREA studio test disc that sound systems made unbuyable: one copy, cut in time to play that night, wearing faster than the vinyl it…DatafilehostINDUSTRY STRUCTUREA place to park a file, which became a national release channel and could not have paid anyone if it had wanted to.Gagasi FMUNCHECKEDORGANIZATIONA smooth-jazz licence that failed for eight years, then came back speaking isiZulu to the audience Johannesburg had stopped feeding.Amha RecordsINDUSTRY STRUCTUREAn import business that ran its freight the other way, and accidentally became the only record industry a country ever had.Soundway RecordsINDUSTRY STRUCTUREA catalogue built from other people's storerooms, licensed one signature at a time.Cracked FL StudioMARKETThe same studio the professionals use, at a price of nothing, because the licence went unenforced rather than because the product…The Broadcasting Act 1990LAW REGULATIONA statute that charged for pirate radio in years of eligibility rather than in money, and drew its amnesty line twenty-two months…

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