Though no longer active, the magazine’s preserved works continue to influence and inform diggers and obsessives.​

The news landed quietly, and it still hasn’t fully sunk in for those who came up reading it. After more than three decades championing electronic and underground music, XLR8R ceased operations at the end of 2024. It had outlasted most of its peers, transitioning from print to digital, navigating the shaky economics of independent media, and weathering an era increasingly hostile to long-form (or short-form, or medium-form) music journalism.

As former XLR8R editor-in-chief Shawn Reynaldo, who worked there from 2007-2015, wrote in January, “When I myself came across the news a few days ago, I did a quick Google search to see if I’d missed any sort of conversation about the matter. It turned up exactly zero mentions of XLR8R’s closure, and a cursory check of Twitter, Instagram and Reddit was similarly unfruitful.”

Reynaldo noted that XLR8R’s demise wasn’t exactly a shock. In recent years, the site had become a ghost ship, with sporadic updates and bylines replaced by the vague credit “XLR8R Staff.” Even industry insiders had little idea who was actually running it.

That’s a shame, because in the 1990s and well into the 2000s, XLR8R was the definitive American authority on left-field electronic music. It covered experimental sounds that DJ Mag and Mixmag often overlooked, not just dance music but the outer edges — the in-between spaces where genres blurred. It gave equal weight to glitch, IDM, broken beat, dubstep, and the stranger corners of hip-hop and techno, treating them with the same seriousness rock critics applied to guitar bands. It documented a moment when electronic music wasn’t just nightlife, it was a language — a force shaping culture, design, and a digital world still coming into focus.

XLR8R tracked the evolution of sound as new instruments and production tools reshaped composition. Software like Ableton Live and Max/MSP offered unprecedented flexibility, and the magazine chronicled how producers bent sound into new forms. Granular synthesis, field recordings, algorithmic sequencing — XLR8R wasn’t just covering these techniques, it was part of the conversation, capturing the tension between human creativity and digital experimentation. Technology wasn’t just a tool, it was a collaborator in shaping the future of sound.

It was in XLR8R’s pages that readers first encountered artists before they became legends. Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, Burial, Caribou, and Four Tet appeared on its covers before their influence became inescapable. The magazine connected dots between movements — Detroit techno and Berlin minimalism, West Coast beat music and UK bass, the avant fringes of hip-hop and the glacial pulse of Scandinavian electronic composers. Its interviews weren’t about hype, they were about process. XLR8R felt like a magazine made by people who weren’t just covering the music, but living inside it.

A crucial part of XLR8R’s legacy was its writing staff. Over the years, it was home to critics and tastemakers like Mark “Frosty” McNeill, Philip Sherburne, Alexis Georgopoulos (who makes brilliant music as Arp), and Dave Segal, among many others. Their deep knowledge and sharp instincts helped shape the magazine’s perspective. Sherburne, in particular, was instrumental in chronicling the rise of microgenres and shifts in club culture, while friend-of-ISC and dublab cofounder McNeill brought an archivist’s passion to unearthing forgotten gems. The reviews section was essential reading, a guidepost for those hunting for the next great release — whether on vinyl, CD, or MP3. To this day, those reviews remain a goldmine for crate diggers, a roadmap through decades of underappreciated brilliance.

​XLR8R’s advertisements were as much a reflection of its cutting-edge content as the articles themselves. Flipping through its pages, you’d often encounter minimalist campaigns from American Apparel, perfectly aligning with the magazine’s vibe. Sneaker heads weren’t left out either; brands like Nike, Puma, and Airwalk showcased their latest offerings.

Thankfully, much of its history remains accessible. The Internet Archive hosts a decent collection of XLR8R back issues, preserving its deep dives into electronic music culture along with the striking graphic design and photography that made it as much a time capsule as a guide.

Too, the XLR8R podcast series lives on. What started as downloadable MP3s evolved into a landmark mix series featuring exclusive DJ sets from electronic music’s vanguard. These mixes remain a sonic archive of an era when XLR8R wasn’t just documenting electronic music, it was helping to shape it.

Jan Jelinek’s, for example, captured his 2016 three-month stay in Los Angeles. “The idea was to produce a mix that reflects my stay in LA like a journal,” he told XLR8R. “Not necessarily focused on bands and projects from LA, the mix includes music which I was listening to while I lived there. Music that I listened to while I was driving my car, which I discovered during my stay, and which I associate with an LA lifestyle as a foreigner as well. Additionally, the mix integrates a lot of my field recordings of the city. It’s an eclectic gathering of tracks, diary-like, held together by the field recordings of public spaces… well, at least I hope so.”

Like the best records, XLR8R might be out of print, but it’s far from forgotten. What it built — an aesthetic, a language, a map of where music could go — still echoes.