1. Genre Research

2. “Indietronica (also called Indie
electronic) is a music genre that
combines indie, electronica, rock
and pop music. Typical
instruments used in indietronica
music are the electric
keyboard, synthesizer, sampler,
software synthesizer, MIDI
controller, and drum machine. It is
also closely related to the
relatively less electronic and more
acoustic Chillwave (glo-fi)
movement.”

3. To understand the genre and its key features in more detail, we need to go
back and look at its origins. To do this, we are going to break down the genre
into two and look at the history of both electronic music and then indie rock
individually until they merged in the early 1990’s.
Electro Music
Electro is a genre of electronic dance
music directly influenced by the use of TR-
808 drum machines and funk
sampling. Records in the genre typically
feature drum machines and heavy
electronic sounds, usually without vocals,
although if vocals are present they are
delivered in a deadpan manner, often
through electronic distortion such
as vocoding and talkboxing.
Indie Rock Music
The term indie rock, derived from
"independent," describes the small and
relatively low-budget labels on which it
is released and the do-it-yourself
attitude of the bands and artists
involved. The influences and styles of
the artists has been extremely diverse
including punk, psychadelia, rock and
country.

4. Examples of some electronic instruments
 The Telharmonium-was an early electronic musical
instrument, developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897.. The
tones are "clear and pure”
 The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented
by Laurens Hammond in 1934, In the late 1960s and
throughout the 1970s the distinctive sound of the B-3
organ was widely used in blues, progressive rock bands
and blues-rock groups
 An Electric guitar is a guitar that uses a pickup to convert
the vibration of its strings into electrical impulses.
 The Theremin is an early electronic musical
instrument controlled without physical contact from the
player. Theremins and theremin-like sounds started to be
incorporated into popular music from the end of the
1940s
 A Sound synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable
of producing a wide range of sound. The emergence of
Synthpop, a sub-genre of New Wave, in the late 1970s
can be largely credited to synthesizer technology

5. In the late 1960s, pop and rock musicians,
including The Beach Boys and The Beatles, began
to use electronic instruments, like
the theremin and Mellotron. By the end of the
decade, the Moog synthesizer took a leading
place in the sound of emerging progressive
rock with bands including Pink
Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer,
and Genesis making them part of their sound.
These developments led to the growth
of synthpop, which after it was adopted by the
New Romantic movement, allowed synthesizers
to dominate the pop and rock music of the early
80s. Key acts included Duran Duran, Spandau
Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Talk
Talk and the Eurythmics. Synthpop sometimes
used synthesizers to replace all other
instruments until the style began to fall from
popularity in the mid-1980s.

6.  Following the decline of disco music in the late 1970s, various
funk artists such as Zapp & Roger began experimenting
with talk boxes and the use of heavier, more distinctive beats.
 Electro eventually emerged as a fusion of different styles,
including funk and disco combined with German and
Japanese electropop, in addition to influences from
the futurism of Alvin Toffler, martial arts films, and video game
music.
 The genre's immediate forbearers included Kraftwerk, Yellow
Magic Orchestra (YMO), and Gary Numan.
 In 1980, YMO was the first band to utilize the TR-808
programmable drum machine. That same year, YMO
member Ryuichi Sakamoto released "Riot in Lagos", which is
regarded as an early example of electro music,and is credited
for having anticipated the beats and sounds of electro
 1982, proved a prolific year in electro with releases by artists
including Planet Patrol, Warp 9,Man Parrish,, Grandmaster
Flash and the Furious Five, Tyrone Brunson, The Jonzun
Crew and Whodini.
 By the late 1980s, the genre had parted from its initial funk
influences.

7.  From its inception, one of the defining characteristics of the electro sound was the use
of drum machines, particularly the Roland TR-808, as the rhythmic basis of the track. As
the genre evolved, computers and sampling replaced drum machines in electronic music,
and are now used by the majority of electro producers.
 The Roland TR-808 drum machine hit the market in 1980, defining early electro with its
immediately recognizable sound. The Roland TR-808 has attained iconic status,
eventually being used on more hits than any other drum machine.
 Other electro instrumentation was generally electronic, favoring analog synthesis,
programmed bass lines, sequenced or arpeggiated synthetic riffs, and atonal sound
effects all created with synthesizers.
 Most electro is instrumental, but a common element is vocals processed through
a vocoder. Additionally, speech synthesis may be used to create robotic or mechanical
lyrical conten.
 There are many types of Electro for instance, Detroit techno DJ Eddie Fowlkes shaped a
style called electro-soul in the 1980’s, which was characterized by a predominant bass
line and a chopped up electro breakbeat contrasted with soulful male vocals.

9. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose
members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead
guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer and
occasionally that of keyboard player or other instrumentalist.
(typical rock band example) Led Zeppelin - The
band consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page,
singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John
Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham.

10.  The genre saw its growth in popularity through the
development of the electric guitar in the
1950’s. The use of distortion, pioneered by electric
blues guitarists such as Guitar Slim, Willie
Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was
popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s.
 By the end of 1962, what would become the
British rock scene had started with beat groups like
The Beatles, Freddie and the Dreamers, and The
Hollies. They drew on a wide range of American
influences including soul, rhythm and blues and
surf music.
 Bands like The Animals and The Rolling Stones,
were much more directly influenced by rhythm
and blues and later blues music.
 From here the rock genre expanded dramatically
into many different sub genres for instance,
Grunge, Psychedelic, Blues rock, Folk rock, New
wave, Progressive etc.

11.  In the mid-1980s, the term "indie" began to be used to describe
the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels
themselves. The indie rock scene in the US was anticipated by
the college rock that dominated college radio playlists, which
included key bands like R.E.M. from the US and The Smiths from
the UK. These bands rejected the dominant synthpop of the early
1980s. In the United States, the term was particularly associated
with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the
Pixies, Minutemen, Meat Puppets and The Replacements. A
number of prominent indie rock record labels were founded
during the 1980s.
 The 1990s brought major changes to the alternative rock
scene. Grunge bands such as Nirvana, Pearl
Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains broke into the mainstream,
achieving commercial chart success and widespread exposure.
Punk revival bands like Green Day and The Offspring also became
popular and were grouped under the "alternative" umbrella.
Similarly, in the United Kingdom Britpop saw bands like Blur
and Oasis emerge into the mainstream, abandoning the regional,
small-scale and political elements of the 1980s indie scene.
 As a result of these changes the term "alternative" lost its original
counter-cultural meaning and began to refer to the new,
commercially lighter form of music that was now achieving
mainstream success.
 In the 2000s, the changing music industry, allowed a new wave of
indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success.

12.  The influences and styles of the artists has been extremely
diverse, including punk, psychedelia rock and country. The
terms "alternative rock" and "indie rock" were used
interchangeably in the 1980s, but after many alternative
bands followed Nirvana into the mainstream in the early
1990s, "indie rock" began to be used to describe those
bands, working in a variety of styles, that did not pursue or
achieve commercial success.
 Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of
"varying musical approaches [not] compatible with
mainstream tastes". Linked by an ethos more than a
musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed
a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced
bands, do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to
punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco. Many countries
have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing
with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the
respective country, but virtually unknown elsewhere.
 The term “indie” developed to describe many other
fashionable elements such as clothing and hobbies.

15. Indietronica began in the early 1990s with
bands like Stereolab and Disco Inferno. It took
off in the new millennium as digital technology
developed, with acts including Broadcast from
the UK, Justice from France, Lali Puna from
Germany and The Postal Service, Ratatat,
and BOBBY from the US, mixing a variety of
indie sounds with electronic music, largely
produced on small independent labels. In
Britain the combination of indie with dance-
punk was dubbed new rave in publicity for the
Klaxons and the term was picked up and
applied by the NME to bands including Trash
Fashion,New Young Pony
Club, Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test
Icicles and Shitdisco, forming a scene with a
similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music.

16. There are a number of popular Indietronica playlists on youtube
Lyrics to a popular Two Door Cinema Club song that are typical of the genre
You would look a little better
Don't you know
If you just wore less make-up
But it's hard to realise
When you're sky high
Fighting off the spaceships
And so you're drinking in your room
To make it all go
It didn't end too soon
You've got the next one
You're holding on too long
You've got to let go
Your other love is gone
And you know
It's too late
It's too late
You've got another one coming
And it's going to be the same
I tried to find a quiet place that we could go
To help you make decisions
But I didn't find it easy to tell them apart
With double vision
And so you're drinking in your room
To make it all go
It didn't end too soon
You've got the next one
You're holding on too long
You've got to let go
Your other love is gone
And you know
It's not the same
It's not the same
It's not the same
You're going to tell me that I'm right
You're going to come back down
And find yourself
Where you are again
You didn't know
You didn't know
You didn't know
So don't pretend you saw it now
It's not something you'd want to happen

17. Adam Young
Alt-J
Animal Collective
Architecture In Helsinki
As I
Bag Raiders
Big Scary
Bear in Heaven
Broken Bells
Caribou
Chairlift
Charli XCX
Chrome Sparks
Citizens!
Cornelius
Com Truise
Crystal Castles
Cut Copy
Delorean
Digitalism
Electric President
EIMIC
Electric Guest
Ellie Goulding
EMF (band)
Empire of the Sun
Faded Paper Figures
The Faint
Feathers
Foster the People
Freezepop
Friendly Fires
Grum
Gang Gang Dance
Geographer
Ghostland Observatory
The Glitch Mob
Gold Panda
Grimes
Grouplove
Her Space Holiday
Hot Chip
Human Resources
iamamiwhoami
IAMX
I Am Robot and Proud
I Heart Sharks
Icona Pop
Iris
Is Tropical
I Was A Cub Scout
Justice
Lali Puna
LCD Soundsystem
Letting Up Despite Great Faults
Little Dragon
The Limousines
M.I.A.
M83
Metronomy
MGMT
Miami Horror
Miike Snow
Mkaio
Montt Mardié
Moby
Ms. John Soda
The Naked and Famous
Neon Indian
Niki & The Dove
The Notwist
Passion Pit
Paulson
Patrick Wolf
Penguin Prison
Phantogram
The Postal Service
Purity Ring
Radiohead
Ratatat
Rebecca & Fiona
Röyksopp
Shiny Toy Guns
Shy Child
STRFKR
Teenager
The Feddens
The Knife
The Shoes
This Could Be Yours
Toro Y Moi
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
Two Door Cinema Club
Ulrich Schnauss
Unicorn Kid
Uh Huh Her
Washed Out
The Wombats
The xx
Wikipedia’s list of
notable artists