Five Electronic Music Styles You Have to Be Absolutely Blitzed to Enjoy

​Drugs and electronic music have always gone hand in hand.

For one thing, raving like the Tasmanian Devil from dusk until the wee hours of the morning isn't gonna happen without stimulants. But more importantly, the enhanced sensory perception induced by drugs like MDMA can make the sci-fi sound effects of synthesizers more mind-blowing and the repetitive drum machine beats more hypnotic.

Drugs aren't necessary to enjoy more traditional straightforward styles of electronic music like house and techno. But there are definitely some insane sub-genres that basically require a super-size cocktail of psychotropic brain candy to enjoy.



1. Psybreaks
Psytrance or psychedelic trance is trippy enough with its serpentine undulating synth squelches. But psybreaks throws in some rapid-fire syncopated breakbeats to make sure you're not just getting head-fucked. You're also being body-snatched by the rhythm like a voodoo zombie.



2. Gabber
It's hard to believe this knuckle-headed style of hardcore techno remains popular in Europe. Honestly, it gives us the shivers to imagine what sort of crowd gets down to it in the club. There's no question you've gotta be completely cranked out of your skull to enjoy these head-pounding 150- to 220-bpm distorted kicks.



3. Happy Hardcore
Happy hardcore is what happens when you take a bunch of Gabber-loving soccer hooligan meatheads and give them so much E that they turn all sappy and sentimental, but no less oafish and brutal.



4. Jumpstyle
The reason you need to be on drugs to enjoy jumpstyle is 'cause that's the only way you're gonna be completely oblivious to what a fool you're making out of yourself while dancing to this shit in public. Even the guy in this video is wearing a mask because he doesn't want to be recognized.



5. Power Electronics
An offshoot of early industrial music (meaning, industrial when it was literally made with machine noises, not the glossed-over melodic Nine Inch Nails variety), power electronics takes the formula to the extreme, skipping tone and rhythm altogether in favor of screeching feedback, high frequency squeals, and general white noise. We don't even know what controlled substance could facilitate the enjoyment of this genre. Might have to skip the drugs and just drink some industrial-grade metal polish or something.

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