Glossary

The words behind the music

40 terms that turn up across the issues, explained plainly.

808: A drum machine that Roland released in 1980, known for its booming synthesized bass drum, snappy handclap, and cowbell. It sold poorly at first, but cheap secondhand units made it foundational to hip-hop, electro, house, and trap production.
Acid house: A style of house music characterized by squelching, resonant basslines produced using the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. It emerged in Chicago in the mid-1980s and later fueled the UK and European rave scenes.
Amen break: A widely sampled drum break from the 1969 song 'Amen, Brother' by the Winstons, used extensively in hip-hop, jungle, and drum and bass production. Its syncopated pattern became one of the most reused rhythmic samples in popular music.
B-boy/b-girl: A term for a breakdancer. DJ Kool Herc coined 'b-boy' and 'b-girl' for the dancers at his early Bronx parties, who took to the floor during the drum break of a record, the section he extended by switching between two copies.
Balearic: An eclectic style of dance music associated with the island of Ibiza, blending house, pop, and world music influences into open-ended, mood-driven DJ sets, influential on the early development of British acid house culture.
Boom-bap: A hip-hop production style associated with 1990s East Coast rap, built from hard-hitting kick and snare patterns over sampled breaks and soul or jazz loops. The name imitates the sound of the kick drum followed by the snare.
Breakbeat: A drum pattern, usually sampled from the break of a funk or soul record, with syncopated rhythms rather than a steady four-on-the-floor kick. Breakbeats are the rhythmic foundation of hip-hop, breakbeat hardcore, jungle, and drum and bass.
Chillwave: A genre that emerged in the late 2000s, combining lo-fi production, synthesizer textures, and a hazy, nostalgic mood that often recalls 1980s pop. Washed Out, Neon Indian, and Toro y Moi are among its best-known artists.
Concrete poetry: A form of poetry in which the visual arrangement of words and letters on the page is as important as their linguistic meaning, an experimental movement that influenced Brazilian Tropicália musicians and lyricists.
Dembow: A syncopated drum pattern taken from Jamaican dancehall and named after Shabba Ranks' 1990 song 'Dem Bow', which used Steely & Clevie's 'Fish Market' riddim. Sampled by Puerto Rican producers from the early 1990s, it became the rhythmic backbone of reggaeton.
Dubplate: A one-off acetate disc cut for testing or exclusive play, used by sound systems to preview songs or gain material no rival could offer. Originating in Jamaican music culture, dubplates became prized possessions in sound clashes, giving a system unique versions of popular tunes.
Four-on-the-floor: A steady dance rhythm in which the bass drum plays on every beat of a 4/4 measure, forming the foundational pulse of disco, house, and techno. The even kick also makes it easy for DJs to match tempos when mixing.
Highlife: A West African popular music genre, originating in Ghana and spreading through Nigeria, that blends indigenous rhythms and melodies with Western instruments such as guitar and horns. It was an important influence on later genres including Afrobeat.
Love Parade: A street parade and techno festival that began with about 150 people in West Berlin in July 1989 and grew into one of the largest techno gatherings in the world. It left Berlin after 2006 and ended for good after a crowd crush in Duisburg killed 21 people in 2010.
Math rock: A style of rock marked by complex, irregular time signatures, angular guitar riffs, and intricate rhythmic interplay between the players. It often overlaps with post-rock and emo, and bands such as Don Caballero and Hella are often cited as examples.
MC: A performer who raps or chants rhythmically over music, often hosting a set by hyping the crowd, introducing tracks, or delivering lyrics. Central to hip-hop, jungle, garage, and grime scenes alike.
Motorik: A steady, driving 4/4 drumbeat associated with German krautrock, pioneered by Can's Jaki Liebezeit and Neu!'s Klaus Dinger. Motorik is the German word for motor skills, and the rhythm's forward pull has often been compared to driving on a motorway.
Noise music: An experimental genre built from non-musical or non-traditional sound sources, including feedback, distortion, and found objects, that avoids melody and conventional structure in favor of texture and extremity. Japan's harsh noise scene is one of its most extreme branches.
Pirate radio: An unlicensed radio station broadcasting without government authorization. In the UK, pirate stations were essential to jungle, garage, and grime, playing the music and giving MCs airtime long before mainstream or licensed stations would, often from London tower blocks.
Plunderphonics: A practice of making new music entirely or mostly from recognizable samples of existing recordings, blurring the line between composition and appropriation. The composer John Oswald coined the term in a 1985 essay, and the samples involved are often uncleared.
Riddim: A Jamaican term for an instrumental backing track, especially one reused by multiple singers or deejays to create different vocal versions over the same rhythm. Riddims are central to reggae and dancehall production.
Rocksteady: A Jamaican genre that flourished from about 1966 to 1968, between ska and reggae, marked by a slower tempo, prominent basslines, and smoother vocal harmonies. Many rocksteady riddims were later reused in reggae and dancehall.
Roots reggae: A style of reggae from the 1970s emphasizing Rastafarian spirituality, social commentary, and themes of repatriation and resistance, usually with deep basslines and soulful vocals. Burning Spear and the Abyssinians are among its central artists.
Sampler: An electronic instrument or device that records and plays back audio snippets, allowing producers to manipulate, loop, and layer sounds from other recordings. Samplers became essential tools in hip-hop, house, and related genres from the 1980s onward.
Scratching: A DJ technique in which a vinyl record is moved back and forth under the needle to produce a rhythmic, percussive sound, closely associated with hip-hop turntablism. Grand Wizzard Theodore is usually credited with inventing it in the Bronx in the 1970s.
Selector: In reggae and dancehall sound system culture, the person who chooses and plays the records, much like a DJ. The selector usually works alongside a deejay, the Jamaican term for an MC, who toasts or chants live over the instrumentals.
Session musicians: Professional musicians hired to perform on recordings without being official members of the credited artist or band, often forming informal but highly skilled house bands for record labels or studios.
Sound clash: A competition between rival sound systems, which take turns playing to the same crowd and are judged by its reaction. Clashes are won with exclusive dubplates, powerful equipment, and quick-witted selectors and MCs, and the format passed from Jamaica into British scenes such as jungle and grime.
Sound system: A mobile setup of turntables, amplifiers, and large speaker stacks used to play recorded music at outdoor parties and dances, especially in Jamaican and Caribbean culture. Operators competed for crowds through exclusive records, powerful bass, and skilled selectors and DJs.
Space Echo: A tape-based echo and delay unit that Roland introduced in 1974 as the RE-201. Lee 'Scratch' Perry used it heavily through the 1970s, and its warm, sweeping repeats on vocals and instruments became part of the signature sound of dub reggae.
Space rock: A psychedelic rock subgenre marked by long instrumental passages, heavy use of reverb and delay, droning repetition, and themes evoking outer space. Hawkwind and early Pink Floyd are key examples, and Spacemen 3 revived the style in the 1980s.
TB-303: A Roland bass synthesizer and sequencer originally released in 1981 to simulate bass guitar lines. Its distinctive squelchy, resonant tone, discovered through experimentation, became the defining sound of acid house music.
Time-stretching: A digital audio technique that changes the speed or duration of a recording without altering its pitch, or vice versa. It was used prominently in 1990s jungle production to create distorted, elastic breakbeats.
Toasting: A Jamaican vocal style in which a deejay chants or raps rhythmically over an instrumental track or riddim, often improvising phrases to hype a crowd. Toasting is considered a direct precursor to rap vocal delivery.
Trap: A subgenre of hip-hop from the Southern United States, rooted in 1990s Atlanta, where 'trap' meant a house used for dealing drugs. Its modern sound emerged around 1999 and is marked by rapid hi-hat rolls, heavy 808 bass drums, and lyrics about street life.
Tremolo picking: A guitar technique in which a single note or chord is picked very rapidly and repeatedly, producing a sustained, shimmering or buzzing tone. It is common in surf rock and is central to death metal and black metal.
Version: In reggae production, an instrumental or remixed rendering of an existing song, typically placed on the B-side of a single. Versions gave producers and sound systems room to experiment with mixing and became the foundation of dub as a genre.
Wall of Sound: A dense, layered recording production technique developed by producer Phil Spector, using multiple instruments doubling the same parts to create a thick, reverberant, orchestral sound. It later influenced shoegaze and noise pop production.
White label: A vinyl record released with a plain, unbranded label, typically used for promotional copies, test pressings, or unofficial releases before official distribution. White labels are common in dance music scenes where DJs receive exclusive advance copies.
Zine: A self-published, small-circulation booklet or magazine, often photocopied and distributed by hand or mail, historically used by punk, riot grrrl, and other subcultures to share music criticism, art, and political ideas outside mainstream media.