Glitch (music)

Glitch originated in Germany with the musical work and labels of Achim Szepanski⁴, who later gained popularity through the collaboration with Sebastian Meissner under the moniker "Random Inc."⁵. While the movement initially slowly gained members (including bands like Oval)⁶, the techniques of Glitch later quickly spread around the world as many artists — including bands such as Kid 606 and Autechre — followed suit. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance in 1985. Trumpeter Jon Hassell's 1994 album Dressing For Pleasure — a dense mesh of funky trip hop and jazz — features several songs with the sound of skipping CDs layered into the mix.

Oval's Wohnton, produced in 1993, helped define the genre by adding ambient aesthetics to it⁷. Though the music of Markus Popp's band (Oval) may be the first in which the techniques of Musique Concrete were applied to the subtleties of Ambient, glitch is also informed by techno and industrial music. Turntablist Christian Marclay had been incorporating the use of scratched or otherwise damaged vinyl records into his sets since the 1970s; it is the rapid advance in technology and expansion of thought behind music that has allowed glitch to adopt this "broken" sound and use it as a stylistic marker.

Production techniques

Glitch is often produced on computers using modern digital production software to splice together small "cuts" (samples) of music from previously recorded works. These cuts are then integrated with the signature of glitch music: beats made up of glitches, clicks, scratches, and otherwise "erroneously" produced or sounding noise. These glitches are often very short, and are typically used in place of traditional percussion or instrumentation. Skipping CDs, scratched vinyl records, circuit bending, and other noise-like distortions figure prominently into the creation of rhythm and feeling in glitch; it is from the use of these digital artifacts that the genre derives its name. However, not all artists of the genre are working with erroneously produced sounds or are even using digital sounds.

Sub-genres

Glitch Hop

Glitch hop is a relatively new sub variant of the glitch form, and shares the name click hop, blip hop, downbreaks and break hop. Aside from the obvious lineage of hip hop and glitch this genre tends to borrow from the IDM and minimalist genres as well. The music is marked by the DSP laden sonic tapestry and twitchiness of glitch with a more hip hop style framework. The beat tends to follow hip-hop's break-derived conventions, falling into a range between 85-100 bpm. Instead of using just traditional drum kits, glitch hop's "nerdified drums" are augmented with clicks, bent circuits, and sometimes the cut up vocals of the MC. Swedish producer Andreas Tilliander's landmark Cliphop and Plee albums (released as Mokira by German labels Raster Noton in 2000 and Mille Plateaux in 2002) are considered by some as the blueprints of the genre.

Notable groups of this genre include the L.A.-based production group The Glitch Mob, other artists include Prefuse 73⁸, Machinedrum, Dabrye, Kid 606, Jahcoozi, BreakBeatBuddha and Edit, who published glitch hop tracks as part of larger glitch albums. Cex and MC Lars also sometimes perform glitch hop material. CanopyRadio.tv is a well-known collaborative project that mixes jungle and glitch hop together into podcast form.

Popular Electronica act Autechre also experimented in a more instrumental style of Glitch hop, notably in more recent years.

The Glitch and Shoegaze Overlap

Some artists have mixed the occasionally harsh noise aspects of glitch with what is often referred to as shoegazer music. Artists on labels such as Morr Music fall into this category and maintain a focus on IDM beats and pop rock melodies and song structures. The two-disc Morr Music compilation Blue Skied an' Clear is a perfect introduction to this stylistic overlap; the shoegazer band Slowdive has its songs reworked by Morr artists on the first disc.

The overlap between glitch and shoegazer music also includes some artists that have moved away from the song structures and defined beats mentioned above, favouring more ambient forms. The general shoegazer style of pop rock melodies buried under layers of reverberation and distortion is combined with the precise programming capabilities of digital signal processing. Televise (ex slowdive member Simon Scott), Fennesz and Tim Hecker are three notable artists that have received critical praise for their compositions done in this style. The looped constructions of lovesliescrushing, from about 1992, demonstrated a pre-glitch sound. Later, in 2000, the band ventured into the computer realm by translating their signature four track guitar damage into an iMac to produce glissceule and voirshn, dubbed glitch bliss. The duo Belong has also released music of this nature. In addition to comparing them to other ambient or electronic musicians, reviewers and fans also tend to mention the similarities to My Bloody Valentine (arguably the most highly regarded band of the early 1990s shoegazer movement). The primary point of similarity is the emphasis placed on the texture of the music; it appears to play as important a role as the melodies themselves. Also, see Labradford, The Night Owl Cafe Killers, or Little Glitches for similarly ambient/glitch sounds. Japanese artist World's End Girlfriend often combines glitch beats with elements of Post-Rock music.

Contents

History

Production techniques

Sub-genres

Glitch Hop

The Glitch and Shoegaze Overlap

See also

References

Further reading

External links