Today we ask ourselves if our AI can shed light on how electronic music has evolved over the last 20 years. Which club would be better suited for this than London’s Fabric? Its legendary club compilations hand-picked by popular and emerging DJs boast almost 20 years of history.

We look into all the main characteristics of Fabric compilations such as genre, mood, and energy level to show how the sound of the club progressed over the years.

Although the two series are clearly different from each other, we will try to find out if our AI can find common elements that could be characteristic and representative of Fabric’s sound and its development over time.

Our approach was to narrow the analysis down to the most favorite Fabric compilations. For this, we used the best-of lists from media outlets such as DJ Mag, Mixmag, and the Fabric team itself. In total, we selected 25 compilations and limited the analysis to them. You can find the full list at the end of the article.  

Our findings include: 

• fabric series progressed from house to techno
• Fabriclive exhibits a strong tendency toward breakbeat/drum and bass
• Fabriclive series has more albums with uplifting vibes than fabric
• fabric’s sound is robotic and bouncy and Fabriclive is pulsing and driving
• Common elements of fabric and Fabriclive compilations are high energy and a cool character.

And many more interesting insights, so keep reading to find them out.

fabric compilations are dedicated to electronic dance as the main genre. Fabriclive is more diverse in its genre featuring electronic dance and other sub-genres such as funk-soul, rap/hip hop, and rock.

Each sug-genre has a score from 0-1 where 0 indicates that the track is unlikely – 0% – to represent the sub-genre, and 1 indicates that the track by 100% represents the given sub-genre. 

Insights from the sub-genre analysis: from house to techno for fabric, and drum and bass for Fabriclive

On the graphics below, you’ll see the development of main sub-genres over time for fabric and Fabriclive. 

The first fabric compilations (fabric 01, fabric 10, fabric 11, and fabric 31) are heavily focused on house music. In fabric 36, Ricardo Villalobos delivers an album that is consistently minimal and house. Finally, in the latest years, fabric compilations gear toward techno with fabric 96 being the most (50%) techno album of all.

Meanwhile, breakbeat / drum and bass takes over, Fabriclive 32 is 32% breakbeat / drum and bass and Fabriclive 44 and Fabriclive 46 are fully breakbeat / drum and bass with 80% and 73% respectively. Finally, Fabriclive 75 restores a bit of a balance with a combination of drum and bass, electro, and house. 

Finally, the odd ones out are Fabriclive 07 by John Peel which is indie / alternative at the core, Fabriclive 24 by Diplo which is mainly electro, and Fabriclive 36 by LCD Soundsystem which is 39% disco. There is definitely more variety and experimentation within the Fabriclive series.

Insights from the mood analysis: fabric – dark, energetic, and ethereal, Fabriclive – energetic and uplifting

Both fabric and Fabriclive are quite energetic. fabric series tend to be more dark and ethereal, while Fabriclive is uplifting.

The darkest compilation – fabric 36 featuring Ricardo Villalobos.

The most energetic and aggressive one – fabric 60 by Dave Clarke.

The most ethereal album – fabric 55 by Shackleton.

Most uplifting albums – Fabriclive 36 by LCD Soundsystem and Fabriclive 09 by Stuart Price.

The happiest album is Fabriclive 09 by Stuart Price.

Fabriclive 09 by Stuart Price is an album with a lot of extremes being one of the most energetic, uplifting, and happiest albums.

But the results vary across the compilations with some odd figures in between. So you might become a witness to the Fabriclive night where dark, ethereal, and sad moods are prevalent similar to Fabriclive 50 by DBridge and Instra:mental.  

Insights from the character analysis: fabric – luxurious, cool, and mysterious, Fabriclive – cool, unpolished, and powerful. 

fabric compilations have a cool and luxurious character but only at the start in fabric 01, fabric 10, and fabric 19 albums. In later compilations, the sound continues to be cool with a touch of mysterious and bold, which makes sense with Techno being more present in these albums. Finally, fabric 55 breaks through with an ethereal character but it still maintains a bit of mystery. fabric 60 and fabric 91 introduce unpolished character while the last one, fabric 96, is mysterious and ethereal.

Dracula’s soundtrack is quite dark, sad, and scary, though the dominant mood is dark with 16% of dark emotions throughout the whole soundtrack.

28 Days Later soundtrack is epic and sad rather than scary. It only scored 4% on scary which makes it one of the least scary movies on the list. 

Mostly sad, epic and chilled, Corpse Bride’s soundtrack doesn’t pursue to scare its viewers. It is actually also one of the least scary movies on the list with only 4% of the scary mood. 

The Shining music is dark, scary, and sad with some energetic notes across the soundtrack. It is one of the three scariest movies on the list.

Halloween 2 soundtrack scores 18.6% on being scary only preceded by 21.8% of the dark mood. The soundtrack is also quite energetic and aggressive.

Midsommer’s soundtrack is 16.2% dark, 15% sad, and 12.7% spherical. It is also mildly scary with 10% of the scary mood. 

The series’ soundtrack is sad, spherical, and dark. It is also quite calm but not that scary. 

Genre Analysis

We also analyzed the genres of all the movie soundtracks. The results are as follows:

The most classical soundtrack is Dracula. It is 67.46% classical and only 7.11% ambient. 

The most ambient soundtrack is Stranger Things. The movie’s soundtrack has the most ambient and electronic dance profile out of all. 

Apart from that, the Corpse Bride scored very high on the jazz genre with 23.89%, and 28 Days Later boasts some rock tunes with 21.34% for the rock genre. 

Overall, it seems that the movie makers prefer classical, ambient, electronic dance, jazz, and rock compositions.

Emotional Profile and Energy Levels 

Our analysis uncovered the energy level and emotional profile of each soundtrack. The emotional profile tends to be negative with only two movies being somewhat positive which are 28 Days Later and Corpse Bride. For horror movies, it is quite a natural result.

The Scariest Movie Soundtrack for Halloween is…? 

And the title of the scariest soundtrack for Halloween goes to Halloween 2 with 18.6% of the scary mood. John Carpenter co-wrote the movie, but he’s also the composer of the film’s iconic soundtrack. This is not surprising considering that the previous movie’s soundtrack – Halloween I – was named the greatest horror soundtrack by Rolling Stone in 2019 and served as an inspiration for many movies to come.

We hope you enjoyed this data story and wish you a Happy Halloween! If you’re interested in doing a joined data story or analysis reach out to rano@cyanite.ai. 

If you want to get the first grip on Cyanite’s technology, you can also register for our free web app to analyze music and try similarity searches without any coding needed.

In the world of electronic music, shifting between different aliases allows artists to explore different sounds and demonstrate their versatility without transforming existing music identities too much. But is it really true that different aliases mean different sound for all the DJs? In this article, we are going to analyze the music of one of the famous German DJs across all of their aliases to confirm or challenge that view.

Late last year, Dutch musician Afrojack, known for EDM, revived his house and techno alias Kapuchon, releasing a housey single ‘10 Years Later’. With the TESTPILOT alias, deadmau5 flaunts his techno chops. 

But, not all aliases signal a vastly different sound change. Some reveal more subtle transformations, which makes it a little more challenging for listeners, fans, and reviewers to articulate, but never any less pleasing to the ears.

In these cases, how can machine learning help to identify even the more granular differences in your music catalog? 

We put our Cyanite music intelligence tools to the test through tracking and analyzing the different aliases of quite possibly one of the most reclusive German producers in the underground electronic world, Traumprinz. 

The Banksy of the underground music community, his presence is marked by sporadic Soundcloud releases across various identities, no announcements of live gigs, and definitely no hints at his real name. Having produced under 7 different aliases throughout his career, the elusive producer’s musical output spans techno, ambient, and house, and everything in-between, and yet somehow remains recognizably ‘Traumprinz-sounding’.

We analyzed EPs and albums from all 7 aliases, amounting to over 150 songs. Today, we share with you some interesting insights gleaned using our mood and genre algorithms.

Analyzing tracks from all his aliases, we obtained unique statistics on each track’s genre breakdown, emotion breakdown, BPM, and more. From there, we arrived at alias-level breakdowns, and a whole-of-Traumprinz, combined aliases musical breakdown of his ‘average’ sound across all aliases. 

The emotions of Traumprinz’s many aliases

Sentiment analysis in the world of Music AI goes beyond positive and negative. Our Cyanite models detect 13 different facets of emotions in the tracks it analyzes. 

Overall, our analysis shows that Traumprinz sound veers towards the contemplative, melancholy territory, being detected by our music models as largely spherical, sad, and dark. Musical output from the DJ Healer era is detected as being the saddest, most calm, most spherical, and most chilled out of all 7. Occasional experimentation with the lighter side of things is seen in his releases under the DJ Metatron and The Phantasy aliases. 

If you are an artist, check out this article on how to build trust with the gatekeepers in the music industry.

The ‘benchmark’ Traumprinz sound

The Cyanite intelligence tools revealed that the Traumprinz sound can be largely summed up (if that was ever possible!) as being largely electronic dance (techno and house-oriented), with a significant touch of ambient and in some parts classical.

And now, on to a deep-dive:

The most electronic dance era: Traumprinz

With more house-tinged tracks in releases such as Into the Sun, Mothercave, and Intrinity, and a more upbeat BPM of 121, the Traumprinz era was detected as being 82.6% electronic dance in the genre makeup, soaring above the average of 59.5%. 

The most ambient-sounding era: DJ Healer 

We found that Traumprinz’s songs were most ambient-sounding under the DJ Healer alias, with the solemn, sophisticated Nothing 2 Loose release, moderately paced at an average BPM of 102. At 71.9% ambient, this amount was far above the average Traumprinz ambient level of 28.4%. 

The most classical-sounding era: DJ Healer

At 8.0% classical in makeup, songs from the DJ Healer days were found as being the most classical, although DJ Metatron alias, with releases like Loops of Infinity, was found to be a very close runner-up, at 7.8% classical.

Looking at the other aliases, ambient makes up slightly more than one quarter of DJ Metatron’s overall sound, and electronic dance in vibe dominates. Compared to DJ Metatron, Golden Baby has more of that electronic dance feel, and less of the ambient. Musical output from The Phantasy era very similar mirrors Golden Baby in genre profile, with just a little bit more ambient.

Even dancier than the Golden Baby is the Prince of Denmark sound. Finally, the closest runner up to Traumprinz for the most electronic dance-sounding era would be the Prime Minister of Doom alias. 

Energy levels and emotional profiles

Apart from the data on genre and moods, our analysis uncovered the energy level and emotional profile of each song. Our general summary of the analysis can be described as follows: 

• The emotional profile tends to be negative with very few songs being neutral, and even less tracks being tagged as positive

• The energy level, for the most part, alternates between low and medium. But when it comes to Prince of Denmark and the Phantasy, there are definitely more high-energy songs compared to other aliases. Are these two aliases a way for the producer to show a more energetic side? 

Here is a detailed Excel sheet with each song’s data. Click on the links in the file to see the full albums. 

Our final thoughts: AI as a tool for discovering new ways for music curation

Through this music analysis experiment, we can once again see how music tagging and categorization software can be used as a counterpart to human judgment and instinct when it comes to appreciation of music. Moreover, this data can be used to select the tracks for DJ sets to interchange smoothly. For music companies, it represents the inner workings of AI, which can be used to sort music in the catalog and make similar song recommendations. 

To end off, here’s a mix of Traumprinz for your listening pleasure.