electroclash

Electroclash (also known as synthcore, retro-electro, tech-pop, nouveau disco, and the new new wave) is a genre of popular music that fuses 1980s electro, new wave and synth-pop with 1990s techno, retro-style electropop and electronic dance music. It emerged in the later 1990s and is often thought of as reaching its peak /2003. It was pioneered by and associated with acts such as I-F, DJ Hell, Miss Kittin and The Hacker, and Fischerspooner. Terminology and characteristics The term electroclash describes a musical movement that combined synthpop, techno, punk and performance art. The genre was in reaction to the rigid formulations of techno music, putting an emphasis on song writing, showmanship and a sense of humour, and was described by The Guardian as one of "the two most significant upheavals in recent dance music history". The visual aesthetic of electroclash has been associated with the 1982 cult film Liquid Sky. DJ Hell is widely credited as inventor and name giver of the genre, while DJ and promoter Larry Tee later popularized the term in the US by naming the Electroclash 2001 Festival in New York after it. History Role of International Deejay Gigolos Electroclash emerged in the late 1990s. The Munich-based label International DeeJay Gigolo Records, founded by DJ Hell, is considered the "germ cell" and "THE home" of the electroclash sound. Gigolo featured many of the early electroclash songs, such as for example Christopher Just's I'm a Disco Dancer from 1997 or Chris Korda's Save the Planet, Kill Yourself, which originally even had been released as early as 1993. Then in 1998, Gigolo released the songs "1982" and "Frank Sinatra" by French recording duo Miss Kittin & The Hacker, which were among the most successful early hits of the new genre. This was followed by the hit "Emerge" by New York duo Fischerspooner, as well as the remake of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" by Canadian duo Tiga & Zyntherius, both released on Gigolo in 2001. DJ Hell brought the artists of the new genre together on the label and acted primarily as their mentor. But also Hell's own releases like the album Munich Machine from 1998 are seen as groundbreaking for the genre Electroclash. In the widely recognized film documentary Welcome to the club! 25 years of electronic dance music by European television network Arte, Miss Kittin describes the origination of the first songs of the new style together with DJ Hell and declares him the inventor of the Electroclash genre.