The
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music is awesome. I haven't heard the whole thing but the j-pop entry is a little off and it only mentions shibuya-kei in passing and I wouldn't consider Boards of Canada Illbient since they are not in NY (heh). Also, basic channel/chain reaction get lumped in german techno, microhouse, minimal, and dubtechno, deep house -- maybe deservedly so.
This is not important though, someone who cares about music will not care about denominations. More importantly, this is evidence that the argument about originality in music is banal. You can clearly see how every style builds on each other -- something that is massively missing from rock music, for better or for worse. You can also hear how some styles share technology and instrumentation and how some subset of that can be heard in some other diametrically opposed style. Anyways, if some teenager tells you electro was invented in 2001 you can set him straight right there.
