A recent article for The Verge suggests that the recent shift in electronic music towards a darker, edgier and meaner vibe indicates the genre is ready for its “grunge moment.”
“When grunge bloomed from the Seattle underground in the late 1980s,” Jamieson Cox writes, “it did so by fusing the searing intensity and angsty alienation of punk to the weight and relative complexity of heavy metal. Its practitioners were disillusioned, obsessed with authenticity, and separated from the rest of the music industry by distance and attitude.” Sound familiar?
While metal reigned supreme among American youth at that time, club-friendly EDM now dominates the mainstream, and producers like Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never and Sophie are pushing back. Read Cox’s full piece here, and revisit our recent interview with Daniel Lopatin on uniting experimental and mainstream music here.
