Electronica

Electronica
Stylistic origins	Electronic dance music, Musique concrete, Experimental music (Kraftwerk), Rock music, Disco
Cultural origins	1979, German-speaking Europe, France, Italy, United Kingdom, United States
Typical instruments	Synthesizer - Drum machine - Sequencer - Keyboard - Sampler (traditional instrumentation such as guitar, bass, drums often featured more regularly than other electronic genres)
Subgenres
Big beat - Bitpop - Chip - Downtempo - Glitch - IDM - Nu jazz - Trip hop (complete list)
Fusion genres
Indietronica - Post-rock
Other topics
Electronic musical instrument - Computer music - Record labels

Electronica is the name for forms of dance music featuring electronic instruments and synthesizers. It is defined by some to mean modern electronic music designed for listening and not necessarily for the dance floor.

The term became popular in the United States as a means of referring to the then-novel mainstream success of post-rave global electronic dance music; genres such as techno, drum and bass, and ambient are among those encompassed by the umbrella term, defined by such music coming into the American mainstream from "alternative" or "underground" venues during the late 1990s. Prior to the adoption of electronica for this purpose, terms such as electronic listening music, braindance, trance and intelligent dance music (IDM) were common. The All Music Guide categorizes electronica as a top-level genre on their main page, where they state that electronica includes "dozens of stylistic fusions" ranging from danceable grooves to music for headphones and chillout areas.

In the mid-1990s, electronica began to be used by MTV and major record labels to describe mainstream electronic dance music made by such artists as Orbital (who had previously been described as ambient) and The Prodigy, although even at this stage it was not a particularly incisive term. It is currently used to describe a wide variety of musical acts and styles, linked by a penchant for overtly electronic production; a range which includes more popular acts such as Björk, Goldfrapp and glitchy experimental artists such as Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada to dub-oriented downtempo, downbeat, and trip-hop. Madonna and Björk are said to be responsible for electronica's thrust into mainstream culture, with their albums Ray of Light (Madonna), Post and Homogenic (Björk). As a sign of the genre's mainstream crossover success, Madonna's 2005 electronic dance album, Confessions on a Dancefloor, sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, and debuted at number one in 29 different countries, a world record for a solo artist. Many popular artists today use some aspects of electronica in mainstream music.

History

Electronica was made possible by advancements in electronic musical instruments and digital audio workstations. Early forms of electronic music required large amounts of complex equipment and multiple operators for live performances, and multiple engineers to record the music at high quality. As the technology developed, it became possible for individuals or smaller groups to produce electronic songs and recordings in smaller studios, even in project studios. At the same time, computers facilitated the use of music "samples" and "loops" as construction kits for sonic compositions. This led to a period of creative experimentation and the development of new forms, some of which became known as electronica.

Preliminary developments

According to a biography of the folk rock band Crosby, Stills & Nash, a number of early experimental electronic music works were recorded throughout the early 1970s out of a collaboration between David Crosby, Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, and composer Ned Lagin. These included the Lagin album Seastones, first released in 1975. In 1980, UK recording artist Gary Numan helped to bring to electronic music into the wider marketplace of pop music with his hit "Cars" from the album The Pleasure Principle.

Post-rave fusions

Artists that would later become commercially successful under the "electronic" banner such as Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Moby, and Underworld began to record in this early 1990s period. Underworld, with its 1994 album dubnobasswithmyheadman, released arguably one of the defining records of the early electronica period with a blend of club beats, wedded to song writing and subtle vocals and guitar work. A focus on "songs", a fusion of styles and a combination of traditional and electronic instruments often sets apart musicians working in electronic-styles over more straight-ahead styles of house, techno and trance. This genre is also noted for far higher production values than others, featuring more layers, more original samples and fewer "presets", more complex rhythm programming, and influences of world cultural sound samples, as well as multiple remixes by the original artist and other producers also known as "remixers".

The more abstract Autechre and Aphex Twin around this time were releasing early records in the "intelligent techno" or so-called intelligent dance music (IDM) style, while other Bristol-based musicians such as Tricky, Leftfield, Massive Attack and Portishead were experimenting with the fusion of electronic textures with hip-hop, R&B rhythms to form what became known as trip-hop. Later extensions to the trip hop aesthetic around 1997 came from the highly influential Vienna-based duo of Kruder & Dorfmeister, whose blunted, dubbed-out, slowed beats became the blueprint for the new style of downtempo. Roni Size, Goldie and Omni Trio commanded attention in the UK as exemplars of the drum and bass genre.

Growing commercial interest

Around the mid-1990s, with the success of the big beat-sound exemplified by The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy in the UK (due in part to the attention from mainstream artists like Madonna), music of this period began to be produced with a much higher budget, production values, and with more layers than most other forms of dance music before or after, since it was backed by major record labels and MTV as the "next big thing".

According to a 1997 Billboard article, "[t]he union of the club community and independent labels" provided the experimental and trend-setting environment in which electronica acts developed and eventually reached the mainstream. It cites American labels such as Astralwerks (The Future Sound of London, Fluke), Moonshine (DJ Keoki), and City of Angels (The Crystal Method) for playing a significant role in discovering and marketing artists who became popularized in the electronica scene.

Global influences

By the late 1990s, artists like Moby had become internationally famous, releasing albums and performing regularly in major venues. In the United States and other countries like Australia, electronica (and the other attendant dance music genres) remained popular, although largely underground, while in Europe it had become one of the most dominant forms of popular music. Some sources place the initial origin of electronica in the underground nightclub scene of 1990's France, from where it expanded to global awareness.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Electronica's maturing sound embraced multi-cultural influences both through the increasing commercial availability of audio sample libraries of musical instruments from around the globe, as well as cross-pollination with DJs, performers and recording artists from many nations. New York city became one center of experimentation and growth for the electronica sound, with DJs and music producers areas as diverse as Southeast Asia and Brazil brought their creative work to the nightclubs of that city.

Adoption by other pop genres

See also: Alternative dance

Musicians of other styles were also quick to pick up on the trends in electronic music, although much of this cross-influence long predated the use of the term "electronica", which only began in the 1990s. Hip-hop music had been influenced by electronic music from the beginning, inspiring the genre of electro and such artists as Afrika Bambataa and Public Enemy. Rock, synthpop, New Wave and goth music of the 1980s was often heavily electronic in production or form, particularly Madchester bands in the United Kingdom, which had a close connection to the rave scene. New Order, a rock band which had a series of "electronica" hits before the term was coined, exemplified the techno inspiration increasingly common during the '80s era.

The adoption of elements of "electronica" by several of the world's most popular rock bands was also seen beginning in the mid 1990s, with U2's Pop (1997), Radiohead's OK Computer (1997), R.E.M.'s Up (1998), The Smashing Pumpkins' Adore (1998), Blur's 13 (1999) and Oasis's Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000) albums met with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. Several of these albums were produced with electronic dance producers, such as William Orbit. Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A was seen to adopt less commercial styles of electronic music influenced partly by artists such as Autechre, Aphex Twin and Deepspace, and became the rock band's highest charting release worldwide. The word "electronica" was commonly applied to such releases despite large differences in style. Indeed, by the late 1990s, the word was mostly used by rock fans to describe rock and pop artists' adoption of electronic music textures (such as samples, synthesizers and drum machines) with which they were otherwise unfamiliar, as well as to label a few dance-oriented acts that achieved popularity. This was particularly true in the US where the electronic dance subculture was much less prominent.

In the early 2000s, electronica-inspired post punk was seen to experience a revival, with rock bands such as Interpol and The Killers specifically drawing on the 1980s sound of New Order and The Cure. Russian duo t.A.T.u. use electronica styles extensively, and fuse it with rock styles to form an edgy electronica style which is used by many pop artists.

With newly prominent pop music styles such as reggaeton, electroclash, and favela funk, electronic music styles in the current decade are seen to permeate nearly all genres of the mainstream and indie landscape such that a distinct "electronica" genre of pop music is rarely noted. However, the word continues to be more common in the U.S. music industry for synthesized, techno-inspired pop music, as specific genres such as drum and bass and IDM never achieved mainstream attention.

Controversial term

Despite the mainstream popularity of the word "electronica" today, it is often shunned or met with disgust by electronic musicians or former ravers. Many of the people who were actually part of the electronic and rave movements firmly believe that the word was invented by the music industry, and is just a press-word for electronic music. This is understandable, because a major part of the rave and electronic movement was an outcry against the "media machine", and many ravers and musicians did not wish for the music industry to have a large part in their lives. This part of the electronic movement has similarities to the punk movement, in that it was not meant to be mainstream.

In 1998, David Reilly of God Lives Underwater denounced the use of "electronica" in reference to his band, suggesting "Some marketing team probably came up with it to make sure there was a separate section at Virgin Megastore." However, he went on to say that he would prefer the label of "pop band", and also distanced the band from the rave movement: "They just want to take Ecstasy and dance, not listen to lyrics. And we aren't about that."

See also

• List of electronic music genres
• Music genre