Electro was totally stolen as a genre when the likes of fedde la grand came along.
I was working in a record store and part of me would die when customers asked for electro and id give them stuff on direct beat, warp and UR only to have them all handed back because they wanted edm type house.
I still play electro I bought almost 30 years ago and still sounds great. Timeless
Funk is the mother, kraftwerk is the father 
Some artists go beyond genres kraftwerk is one of them
And don’t kick them out, everybody need to learn (we are a bunch of old people with black hoodie but we can be cool 
)
Does anyone know what synths were primarily used in early to mid 80’s Electro for arpeggiated synthetic riffs?
Electro was the precursor to techno. Started in the 80’s. Try CPU records for modern electro
…ooooooo…yeahhhhhh…
once there was a time, where all music that was handmade was considered the only real music…and music that was made with electronic gear was no such thing, because the rumour had it, that gear is making that “music” for u…
that was all long before the nevertheless endless ongoing evolution and the uberdiversitivity of all genres…
and when hiphop started riffing out on beatsnippets of old vinylbreakbeat snippets samples and scratching, one other thing came up…break dance…using 808’s and stuff to get there too…that was known as elektro in first place…
both based on “broken beats” soon to meet and mingle…
while meanwhile the first four to the floor productions also started to emerge…
ready to become all roots of techno…
and when techno started to diversify…hiphop started to become it’s very own thing…
the two big strains of electronic music were finally out there to change the overall perception of electronic music…
and elektro with all it’s breakdance roots became that neighbourfriend genre of techno…
one was breakbeat…one was straight four to the floor…
with the one basic and common rule, it had to be instrumental…
while hiphop needed words on top…
but things are not that simple anymore…right?
uberdiversitivity of subgenres started out to got it all and never stopped ever since…
welcome to the evolution, while the revolution will not be televised…
We should just start a flat out “Electro appreciation thread” thread. Really is the god of groove box business.
Specifically came to check the thread to make sure someone mentioned Drexciya.
Came back tomake sure someone mentioned Andrea Parker:
Some genres get stolen, electro takes the prize, going from the 80s broken beat sound of model 500, drexcya, dopplereffekt, aux 88 and Egyptian lover, through to the 90s with the sound of I-F, interdimensional transmissions, miss kittin and the hacker, gigolo records, Ettiene De Crecy, vitalic and later on fischerspooner and Lexi and k-paul, and culminating in the 2000s with the whole electro House stuff like justice, fedde, and Wolfgang Gartner, which then morphed into more modern big room EDM, luckily leaving the electro name behind 
Deep House has had a similar fate and so has progressive House. But I think electro has been stolen more times so it wins the contest 
As a french guy discovering electronic music around 2008, I can remember we clearly called that Justice blog house scene Electro because we were young, didn’t know better, and electro was way shorter to say than “musique électronique”.
To caricature the general opinion, in France, electronic music starts with Jean-Michel Jarre, then comes Daft Punk/Laurent Garnier, then The Hacker and Miss Kittin, then that weird electroswing Wax Tailor phase with a bit of Birdy Nam Nam, then the blog house explosion, and AAAAAALLL THAT is called electro here, for the sake of simplicity I guess.
After that, you get that weird techno/gabber hybrid kids play nowadays that loudly signalled to me I was old.
Clearly we were fed this scene in a vacuum and had no idea of the whole universe that it was part of. And when the EDM thing came around, we refused to use it because it sounded dumb (who wants to use an acronym to name a gener of music?!) , and was associated to american festival artists such as Avicii, and we didn’t want anything to do with them. (I know Avicii is not american, I meant artists who play electronic music in american festivals, Coachella house if you will)
So pardon us for calling Justice electro, it’s just that we call everything electro here 
electro
In regards to Electro, Pretty Tony’s old school classics still come to mind for me, as well as other artists from Miami:
Electro (of the Drexciya/Aux88 vein) is very much alive in today’s electronic music circles.
It’s just morphed slightly again as it did in the 90s, then 00s.
Here are some examples
No. This is EDM.
Thanks to this thread I discovered drexciya and have been listening permanently to them ever since 
I missed a lot of stuff in the 90s while listening to hip hop only.
What are the defining elements to music that you would classify as electro?
Drummachine with breakbeat rhythm insead of four on the floor? 808/606 instead of 909? Specific synth sounds?
Yeah 808/606 focused beats, very bassline centric with Sci fi inspiration for fx and sound design.
The basslines are the leads in a lot of classic tracks imo.