Over the 25 years or so I’ve been slowly building a personal archive focused on underground electronic music.
It started from my own collection and library of releases I’ve gathered over time — not a full Discogs mirror or scraped database of everything possible. Most of the releases are things I personally collected, saved or considered worth preserving in one place.
At first it was just a way to organize labels, catalog numbers, years and artists, but gradually the project started turning into something more atmospheric and exploratory rather than a traditional music database.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with things like drifting year visualizations, typographic country maps, label structures and slower navigation systems to make it feel more like wandering through electronic music history instead of endlessly scrolling algorithms.
Yes, algorithms will never replace the human ear. I’ve never used Spotify or other services; I don’t need them. But I’m just curious: what music similar to Legowelt’s work could an AI recommend? I don’t know any (but you can leave a comment).
One of the ideas behind the project is being able to listen to releases directly on the site whenever possible. Right now some releases can be played through embedded Bandcamp players if they exist there. Anyone can add a Bandcamp player to the release if they so desire. The main idea is for anyone who enjoys this type of electronic music to be able to listen and explore for free (and support the musicians).
For older or harder-to-find releases, I’m thinking about adding other listening options in the future — maybe YouTube playback where available.
Still very much a work in progress and evolving slowly, because I have work, family, and I’m not young anymore. But music is what’s always been in my heart.
Returning to the project, I’ve uploaded 70,000 releases and will be gradually adding more. Along the way, I’ve encountered some technical difficulties and limitations. I hope they won’t stop me.
Would genuinely love to hear thoughts from people into electronic music archives / labels / obscure releases. You can hate or laugh at the project. Either way, I’m enjoying it and I like it. Sorry for the poor English, I wrote it with a translator.
incredible… THANK YOU!
