Synthpop Totally Explained

Everything about Synth-pop totally explained

Synthpop is a subgenre of New Wave in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It is most closely associated with the era between the late 1970s and early to middle 1980s, although it has continued to exist and develop ever since. Kraftwerk (from Germany) and Yellow Magic Orchestra (from Japan) are often hailed as the pioneers of the style.

Characteristics

While most current popular music in the industrialized world is realized via electronic instruments, synthpop has its own stylistic tendencies which differentiate it from other music produced by the same means. These include the exploitation of artificiality (the synthesizers are not used to imitate acoustic instruments), the use of mechanical sounding rhythms, vocal arrangements as a counterpoint to the artificiality of the instruments, and ostinato patterns as an effect. Synthpop song structures are generally the same as in other popular music.

History

Influences

Mid 20th Century avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen were pioneers in the development of electronic music. The use of synthesizers in rock music began in the 1960s, notably by The Beatles, however, the instruments were highly complex, temperamental, and expensive. In the late 1960s there was a surge of Moog synthesizer-affected albums by artists like Perrey and Kingsley, Dick Hyman and, most notably, Wendy Carlos. Synthesizers became more widely used by progressive rock and jazz fusion groups such as Pink Floyd, Yes, ELO , Genesis, Return to Forever, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Weather Report. Many Krautrock groups like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk heavily incoporated synthesizers into their music as well. The late 1970s Kraftwerk albums, such as Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, were particularly influential in the creation of the Synthpop sound.
The mid-1970s, saw the rise of electronic art music musicians such as Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Brian Eno, and Tomita, who were a significant influence of the development of New Age Music. In the late seventies, Suicide, a duo from New York, combined vocals and keyboard in a harsh, avant-garde and often very controversial form. Italian producer Giorgio Moroder was also a significant influence on the further development of electronic music, producing synth driven hits for many artists, most notably Donna Summer.

Late 1970s to mid 1980s

In 1978, the self titled debut by the seminal Yellow Magic Orchestra was released in Japan. The same year, the British group Ultravox released their third album, Systems of Romance, which featured synthesizers more prominently than their earlier work. Other pioneering British Synthpop acts began to surface, including Gary Numan and The Human League. The original Synthpop groups had a sound that was generally dark, moody and robotic. Fad Gadget, who was signed to Daniel Miller's Mute Records, was particularly dark and menacing and his stage shows had a Performance art quality to them. At the same time, Giorgio Moroder collaborated with former glam rock group Sparks on their album, No. 1 In Heaven.
   Synthpop continued to evolve in the early 1980s, often in a more radio friendly, pop direction. It was made into danceable music and brought into mainstream by Duran Duran who grafted it into a dance beat. The band made the sound warmer than it was before. The sounds of synthesizers dominated the pop music of the era. Albums like Gary Numan's Telekon (1980), Vienna (1980) by Ultravox, Dare (1981) by The Human League, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981) by Soft Cell, From the Tearooms of Mars...to the Hellholes of Uranus (1981) by Landscape, Soul Mining (1983) by The The, Visage (1980) by Visage, and Metamatic (1980) by former Ultravox singer John Foxx, typified the early synthpop sound.
   The 1983 album Burning Bridges (released as Naked Eyes in the U.S.and Canada), by the group Naked Eyes, was the first pop LP to extensively feature the Fairlight CMI. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush had used the sampling synthesiser on prior efforts, but the usage had been far less than normal than Naked Eyes would employ on their debut effort. The CMI (and similar workstation-type machines such as the Synclavier and PPG Wave) would become commonplace in the movement, eventually dying out as inexpensive digital samplers and eventually personal computers duplicated the capabilities of these machines.
   Other key synthpop or synthpop-influenced groups and artists from the early-mid 1980s include Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, a-ha, A Flock of Seagulls, Tears for Fears, Pet Shop Boys, Devo, Berlin, OMD, New Order, Thomas Dolby, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Alphaville, Thompson Twins, Bronski Beat, Heaven 17, Howard Jones, Blancmange, Yello, Paul Haig, Animotion, Propaganda, Modern Talking, Psyche, The Buggles, Kajagoogoo, Missing Persons, Real Life, The System and even early Ministry.

Late 1980s and onward

In the United States, a backlash against the predominant styles of commercial pop in general, and synthesized music specifically, largely drove the Synthpop genre underground. Its fall in popularity may have been partially due to the increasing popularity of Glam metal and Hip-Hop beginning around 1986. Even fewer of the genre's 1980s acts were able to thrive commercially during the 1990s, as a new generation of radio DJs, video jockeys and record label representatives dismissed synthesiser-driven music as less visceral or artistic than the emerging styles of Grunge and Gangsta Rap. Major American labels would no longer sign or support the synthesizer-oriented bands that had been popular in the 1980s. This would eventually change in the late 1990s.
   However, in Europe, South America, Australia, and Asia, Synthpop remained more widely accepted, and artists from these regions, as well as American artists temporarily expatriated there, performing music with 1980s synthpop roots have remained popular, and acts such as Ace of Base and Savage Garden have even spurred minor resurgences of the genre in the U.S. Eventually, the global synthpop scene re-emerged in the United States with the growing success of American record labels such as A Different Drum. Synth-pop pioneers in Latin America during the 80s were Virus.
   Some bands embraced by modern synthpop fans like Red Flag and Anything Box were dropped by their labels and began self-releasing new albums. Some Christian bands, such as Joy Electric, were influenced by formerly 1980s acts like Depeche Mode and Erasure. Low-fidelity synthpop artists Stephin Merritt and Ariel Pink have found success on independent labels.
   While the Modern Synthpop scene is heavily centered in the United States, some of the popular bands to emerge in the genre, such as De/Vision and Mesh, are European. However many such bands are not strictly part of the independent Modern Synthpop scene, since they're signed to major European record labels. European bands signed to the aforementioned U.S. labels and their ilk include Blue October, The Nine, Spray, and Empire State Human.

A Different Drum

Modern Synthpop as a genre was coalesced in the mid 1990s by the emergence of the A Different Drum label out of the state of Utah. The label started as a mail order business but soon began to release their own CDs from bands who sent in demos. The label also began to release albums from established modern synthpop bands like Cosmicity and The Echoing Green and eventually from classic synthpop acts like Gary Numan and Soft Cell. The label also released one of the best selling modern synthpop albums ever, Iris’s Disconnect. Disconnect featured one of the few modern synthpop songs to be played at mainstream dance clubs, “Annie, Would I Lie To You.” In online discussions the band has said that several thousand copies of that album have been sold.
It was also during this time that two key labels that focused on synthpop emerged as well. Jarret Records released albums by Anything Box but vanished within a couple of years. Synthphony Records on the other hand has been longer lived and initially released single artist albums but have recently released mostly remix collections.

Importance of various artist collection albums in the genre

The very first CD that A Different Drum released was a collection of some of the more high-profile synthpop music being released in Europe. Other labels like Synthphony and Ninthwave also started with CDs that compiled songs by various artists. Often these sets have been popular because they feature remixes or unreleased tracks from popular bands. They have also been helpful for fans of the genre providing an outlet for new bands. Popular ongoing series include Electricity and WXJL from Ninthwave, Synthpop Club Anthems and State of Synthpop from A Different Drum and Synthphony’s REMIXed series.

Emergence of Electroclash

The late 1990s into 2001 saw what was arguably the height of the genre, demonstrating its maturity but also its limitations. A national magazine, Lexicon Magazine, focused on the Genre, but folded in 2001. Two large scale “festivals” were held in Los Angeles, California in 2000 and 2001 under the name Synthcon. The 2000 Synthcon saw the debut of Soviet, one of the few bands to cross over to the Electroclash scene and also saw an informal reuniting of one of the more influential synthpop bands, Information Society.
Funding problems plagued both festivals, to the point that the 2001 festival collapsed mid way through. A larger scale festival, Synthpop Goes the World was held in Toronto in 2002 but hasn't been repeated. A smaller scale festival was held in 2004, 2005, and 2006 in Salt Lake City by A Different Drum.
Modern Synthpop was briefly lumped with the explosion of the Electroclash movement in 2002. However, fans of both genres often fought to distance themselves. Aside from Soviet and the Boston band Freezepop, few Modern Synthpop bands were able to jump on the Electroclash bandwagon.

Decline

Since 2002, some have claimed the genre to be in decline or to have splintered. The failure of Synthcon 2001, the near collapse of Ninthwave Records, the disappearance of Lexicon Magazine, and the failure of a succession of fan websites are all testaments to these perceptions.
However, A Different Drum continues to flourish, the genre continues to exert heavy influence on EBM and industrial music, and arguably the biggest modern synthpop album ever came out in 2003, from The Postal Service. Although The Postal Service are not a product of the modern synthpop scene, they've distilled a number of the same influences. 2004 saw the launch of Section 44 Records born from the ashes of the long-standing synthpop forum Sloth Radio and defunct label Kiss My Asterix Records. A Different Drum, Section 44, Ninthwave, Nilaihah Records & Synthphony Records have taken the torch into the next decade by supporting modern synthpop acts.

Usage

Synthpop is sometimes confused with electropop, which is generally regarded to be a particular style of synthpop that incorporates the more robotic elements and feel of electro music. The term "synthpop" has also become increasingly used in goth and industrial circles to describe various alternative electronic artists who have used influences from synthpop, particularly those in the electronic body music and futurepop genres such as Psyche, Covenant, Mesh, And One, Melotron, S.P.O.C.K, Beborn Beton, VNV Nation and Wolfsheim. It is otherwise generally used in its more classic sense, referring to early-to-middle 1980s synthesizer-driven pop acts (for example, The Human League, Eurythmics), less precisely, to a variety of New Romantic pop acts from the same era (for example, Duran Duran, Visage, Japan, and Spandau Ballet), and to current and emerging synthesizer-driven pop acts.

Artists

Further Information

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