Dark Waves: The Synthesizer and the Dystopian Sound of Britain (1977-80)

by Neil O'Connor

Overview

Between 1977 and 1980, Britain was a country and culture in flux. The threat of nuclear war, mass unemployment, and strikes made it a particularly gloomy period historically. Within this, a growing number of electronic music acts were using technology and the synthesizer to soundtrack changing times.

Dark Waves: The Synthesizer and the Dystopian Sound of Britain (1977- 80) is the first musicological collection of essays on acts that include Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and The Human League, mapping how the synthesizer spurred toward a fundamental shift in the mechanisms of electronic musicmaking in late 1970s. The volume traces how, along with the musical aesthetics established by both the Punk and Post-Punk movements, the synthesizer led to new and innovative effects, ideas, processes, and musical genres. Dark Waves explores the background, influences, and use of technology and how such developments would result in the more commercial electronically produced sound of 1980s synth pop which, in turn, shaped the sound of electronic music today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538165317
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/13/2023
Series:	Popular Musics Matter: Social, Political and Cultural Interventions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

DR. NEIL O’CONNOR is electronic music producer and academic at DMARC (Digital Media Arts Research Centre), Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Background - Social and Cultural Influences

Chapter 2: The Rise of the Synthesizer in Popular Music

Chapter 3: Cabaret Voltaire and Dadaism

Chapter 4: Throbbing Gristle and Confrontation

Chapter 5: The Normal and J.G Ballard

Chapter 6: Fad Gadget and Concrete Britain

Chapter 7: Afterwards and Influences

Chapter 8: Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Growing up with the music that Neil O'Connor discusses so successfully in this book, I had an inkling that synthesizers were speaking of a greater, subterranean truth than one I could grasp, a truth of impending doom and fragile hope, of blurred distinctions between machines and humans. O'Connor lays out, with love and precision, the hidden contours of this truth, combining meticulous historical detail with canny reflections on how synthesizers defined a generation of music.

Joanna Demers