Electroclash

Electroclash is a style of Electronic Dance Music that emerged in the late 1990s in New York City and Detroit, as well as throughout Germany and the Netherlands. It developed as a 1980s revival of various Electro, New Wave, Electro-Disco, Synth Punk and Synthpop tropes combined with more contemporary EDM production values, most notably a heavy Techno influence. This melting pot of styles came together to promote a raw, retro, robotic musical template and image that was often highly sexualized, kinky, and deliberately trashy. Musically, electroclash artists typically use minimal, throbbing beats and bass lines, buzzing synthesizer parts played on low-tech keyboards, vocoders, and often monotone, half-spoken, half-sung vocals. Electroclash is often known as, and confused with, the genre known as electro, the original, Hip Hop-influenced form of the style. The term was invented by DJ Larry Tee, while the 1984 satirical Science Fiction film Liquid Sky is cited as a focal point for the image often adopted by the style. Electroclash developed in parallel with other related EDM-influenced styles of the 1980s, such as the wave of Electropop, Dance-Punk, Bitpop, and Electro House that emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s. The movement reached its highest level of media attention and popularity in the early 2000s and declined in popularity after the mid-2000s.