Electropop

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Electropop (also called Technopop) is a form of electronic music that is made with synthesizers, and which first flourished from 1978 to 1981. Electropop laid the groundwork for a mass market in chart-oriented synthpop. Numerous bands have since carried on the electropop tradition into the 1990s and 2000s.

Electropop is different from synthpop because it is often characterised by a cold, robotic, electronic sound, which was largely due to the early limitations of the analog synthesizers used to make the music. The alienated deadpan lyrics usually have a science-fiction edge to them, and do not use the "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" theme that was so common among mass-market chart-topping new wave artists from about 1981 onwards.

Most electropop songs are pop songs at heart, often with simple, catchy hooks and dance beats, but differing from those of electronic dance music genres which electropop helped to inspire — techno, house, electroclash, etc. — in that strong songwriting is emphasized over simple danceability.

[edit] History

Many early electropop artists were British and were inspired by David Bowie's "Berlin period" albums Heroes and Low. Other main influences on electropop were the German band Kraftwerk and the Japanese group Yellow Magic Orchestra. Some groups also took inspiration from the NYC synthpunk group Suicide, and the Krautrock groups Neu!, Cluster, and Can.

There had been a long history of experimental avant-garde electronic music, notably in northern Europe, but this had little influence on electropop. The avant-garde electronic music tradition did, however, provide access to a bank of technical expertise built up over decades, via organisations such as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and the London Electronic Music Studios. These institutions were patronised by early rock synth pioneers such as Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, and Pink Floyd.

Electropop was strongly disparaged in the British music press of the late 1970s and early 1980s as the "Adolf Hitler Memorial Space Patrol" (Mick Farren, exemplifying the suspicions of left-wing journalists). The New Musical Express once^[vague] printed a two-page photomontage showing the band Kraftwerk on the podium of the Nuremberg Rally. Slightly later, many British bands chose names reminiscent of Nazism, such as New Order, A Certain Ratio, and Joy Division, influenced by the Junge Wilde movement then current in German music.^{[citation needed]}

Electropop later fed into, and its synthesiser sound became intertwined with, the British New Romantic movement of the early 80s. Early electropop laid the groundwork for acceptance of later rave music, which appeared from New Order's 1983 "Blue Monday" single. Within ten years of electropop's 'death' around 1982, the cultural meaning of its 'blips and beeps' had been shorn of the taint of modernism, and firmly attached to rave culture's neo-romantic 'nostalgia for the archaic'.^{[citation needed]}

While electropop had been suspected of racism or fascism by some, it flourished in the United States in black culture, particularly in Detroit. Musicians such as A Number of Names and Cybotron pursued a version of the style inflected by R&B and funk which eventually established the Detroit techno scene. Afrika Bambaata, from New York, also invented the electro style of hip-hop by sampling Kraftwerk.

Electropop later fed into synthpop with bands like Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell and Culture Club and afterwards the electroclash movements of the 1990s, and underwent a revival at the end of the 1990s and and early 2000s through artists such as Felix Da Housecat, Luke Slater and nightclubs such as Nag Nag Nag, Kashpoint and Electrogogo in London (witness the Random tribute album to Gary Numan) with electroclash.

A number of electropop bands came out of the electroclash scenes, going on to make popular albums from 2002 to present, from London and New York including bands such as Fischerspooner, Temposhark, Peaches, Gonzales, The Whip, Dragonette and Does It Offend You, Yeah?.

[edit] Further reading

• Q/Mojo magazine collaboration Depeche Mode & The Story of Electro-Pop - is a 124-page history published in 2005. It uses a Depeche Mode cover as the 'hook' to get people to buy it, but actually covers the history of early electropop in great depth.

• Electronic Music: The Instruments, the Music & The Musicians by Andy Mackay, of Roxy Music (Harrow House, 1981)

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Electropop