Indie music scene

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An independent music scene is a localized independent music-oriented (or, more specifically, indie rock/indie pop-oriented) community of bands and their audiences. Local scenes can play a key role in musical history and lead to the development of influential genres; for example, no wave from New York City, United States; Madchester from Manchester, England; and grunge from Seattle.

Contents

Indie scenes are often created as a response to mainstream or popular music. These scenes are created in opposition of mainstream culture and music and often contribute to the formation of oppositional identities among individuals involved in the scene. [1]

Notable scenes

Asia

Japan

The Japanese indie music scene began gaining mainstream success in the late 1990s with the so-called "indie boom". [2] Musicians involved with this scene, referred to as "individual producer-composers," included Haruomi Hosono, Oyamada Keigo (also known as Cornelius), and Oda Tetsuro. Cornelius pioneered an indie music movement called Shibuya-kei and released songs that gained international success, such as the Pizzicato Five. [3] Supercar's 1998 debut album, Three Out Change, [4] has been described as having "almost foundational importance to 21st-century Japanese indie rock." [5]

A Japanese protectionist licensing policy prevents indie music from being sold via major media distribution networks. [6] Indie records are only sold in small retail stores that import foreign records, which are not part of the industrial channels. This relegates Japanese indie music to the context of a global scene. [7]

Current Japanese indie bands include The Pillows, [8] Asian Kung-Fu Generation [9] ,Straightener, [10] Sakanaction, Acidman, fujifabric, and Beat Crusaders.

South Korea

The indie scene in South Korea is sometimes referred to as "K-Indie", a neologism derived from K-pop. [11] The center of the Korean indie scene is the Hongdae area. [12] Korean indie has gained international exposure via YouTube. Bands and artists include The RockTigers, 10cm, Yozo, Jang Jae-in, Jang Jae-in, Hyukoh, and Jannabi.

Australasia

Australia

New Zealand

North America

Canada

United States

Europe

Hungary

The Hungarian indie scene is mainly active in the capital city, Budapest. In the early 2000s, Hungary's indie revival included Ligeti's The Puzzle from Kaposvár. In 2006 Amber Smith's album RePRINT was released by the German label Kalinkaland Records. In 2007, The Moog's Sold for Tomorrow was released by the US label MuSick Records. Other indie bands include EZ Basic, The KOLIN, Supersonic, The Poster Boy and Dawnstar.

Sweden

A number of Swedish indie musicians have become famous internationally, mostly singing in English. The Cardigans gained early success in the mid-1990s. Some notable acts include: The Sounds, Lykke Li, Robyn, The Tallest Man on Earth, The Hives, Eskobar, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Kent, First Aid Kit, Air France, Jens Lekman, The Knife, Shout Out Louds, The Radio Dept., Fever Ray, The Tough Alliance, and Life on Earth.

United Kingdom

  • One of the first scenes recognized as being associated with the term 'indie music' rather than post-punk, new wave or new music [35] was C86, named after the release of the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME compilation featuring Primal Scream and other bands. [36] The significance of C86 is recognized in the subtitle of its 2006 extended reissue: CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop . C86 was a document of the UK indie scene at the start of 1986, and it gave its name to the indie pop scene that followed, which was a major influence on the development of indie music as a whole. [37] Significant record labels included Creation, Subway and Glass. [38]
  • The shoegazing scene of the late 1980s was named for band members' tendency to stare at their feet and guitar effects pedals onstage rather than interact with the audience. My Bloody Valentine and others created a loud "wash of sound" that obscured vocals and melodies with long, droning riffs, distortion, and feedback. [39] Within the same decade, labels such as Cheree Records and Ché Trading amalgamated into an entity that the industry now refers to as Rocket Girl, which has since contributed significantly. [40]
  • The end of the 1980s saw the Madchester scene. Based around The Haçienda, a nightclub in Manchester owned by New Order and Factory Records, Madchester bands such as Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses mixed acid house dance rhythms, Northern soul and funk with melodic guitar pop. [41]
  • The Britpop scene developed in the early 1990s as part of a larger British cultural movement called Cool Britannia. In the wake of the musical invasion into the UK of American grunge bands, British bands positioned themselves as an opposing musical force. Influenced by the key British band of the 1980s, the Smiths, and adopting the unashamed commercial approach to which the C86 bands had seemed sometimes ideologically opposed, Britpop acts such as Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp referenced British guitar music of the past and aimed at writing about British topics and concerns. [42] Commentary on Britpop noted a north–south divide, with The Good Mixer pub in Camden Town strongly identified with the Britpop scene in the south, though Oasis were signed to Creation Records in nearby Primrose Hill. [43]
  • Trip hop is a genre of electronic music that originated in the early 1990s in Bristol. The most notable artists are Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead.
  • Thamesbeat [44] [45] was an early 2000s scene based around Eel Pie Island in London featuring acts like Jamie T, [46] Larrikin Love and Mystery Jets.
  • In Liverpool, a 'cosmic Scouse' scene (sometimes referred to as 'Scallydelica' [47] [48] [49] ) developed in the 2000s with neo-psychedelia acts like the Coral, [50] [51] record labels like Deltasonic and Skeleton Key [52] and events like the annual Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia (also known as PZYK). [53] [54] [55] Sometimes the scene would be expanded to include acts such as the Bees and the Earlies under the 'Shroomadelica' definition [45]

Related Research Articles

Britpop was a mid-1990s British-based music culture movement that emphasised Britishness. Musically, Britpop produced bright, catchy alternative rock, in reaction to the darker lyrical themes and soundscapes of the US-led grunge music and the UK's own shoegaze music scene. The movement brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the larger British popular cultural movement, Cool Britannia, which evoked the Swinging Sixties and the British guitar pop of that decade.

Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent record labels, by the 1990s it became more widely associated with the music such bands produced.

<i>NME</i> British music, film, gaming, and culture website

New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "rock inkie", the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication, before becoming an online brand which includes its website and radio stations.

Alternative rock is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge subgenre in the United States, and the Britpop and shoegaze subgenres in the United Kingdom and Ireland. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock.

Twee pop is a subgenre of indie pop that originates from the 1986 NME compilation C86. Twee pop gets its name from the aesthetic of twee, which is known for its simplicity and childlike innocence. Some of its defining features are boy-girl harmonies, catchy melodies, and lyrics about love. For many years, prominent independent record labels associated with twee pop were Sarah Records and K Records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madchester</span> Musical and cultural scene in late-20th-century Manchester

Madchester was a musical and cultural scene that emerged in the English city of Manchester during the late 1980s, closely associated with the indie dance movement. Indie dance blended indie rock with elements of acid house, psychedelia, and 1960s pop.

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1980s built on the post-punk and new wave movements, incorporating different sources of inspiration from subgenres and what is now classed as world music in the shape of Jamaican and Indian music. It also explored the consequences of new technology and social change in the electronic music of synthpop. In the early years of the decade, while subgenres like heavy metal music continued to develop separately, there was a considerable crossover between rock and more commercial popular music, with a large number of more "serious" bands, like The Police and UB40, enjoying considerable single chart success.

Grebo was a short-lived subculture and broadly-defined subgenre of indie rock centred around the Midlands, particularly Stourbridge and Leicester. Musically, the genre incorporated elements of electronic, punk rock, folk and hip hop music into indie rock. The scene occupied the period in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United Kingdom before the popularisation of Britpop and grunge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British rock music</span> Rock music from the United Kingdom

British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by the Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the world.

Indie pop is a subgenre of alternative rock and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and subsequently generated a thriving fanzine, label, and club and gig circuit. Compared to its counterpart, indie rock, the genre is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free. In later years, the definition of indie pop has bifurcated to also mean bands from unrelated DIY scenes/movements with pop leanings. Subgenres include chamber pop and twee pop.

Manchester's music scene produced successful bands in the 1960s including the Hollies, the Bee Gees and Herman's Hermits. After the punk rock era, Manchester produced popular bands including Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths and Simply Red. In the late 1980s, the ecstasy-fuelled dance club scene played a part in the rise of Madchester with bands like the Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays. In the 1990s, Manchester saw the rise of Britpop bands, notably Oasis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Independent music</span> Music produced without commercial record labels

Independent music is a broad style of music characterized by creative freedoms, low-budgets, and a do-it-yourself approach to music creation, which originated from the liberties afforded by independent record labels. Indie music describes a number of related styles, but generally describes guitar-oriented music straying away from mainstream conventions. There are a number of subgenres of independent music which combine its characteristics with other genres, such as indie pop, indie rock, indie folk, and indie electronic.

Baggy is a British alternative dance genre popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and generally associated with the Northern UK's Madchester scene. The style saw alternative rock bands draw influence from psychedelia as well as dance music.

<i>Sounds</i> (magazine) UK weekly music magazine (1970–1991)

Sounds was a UK weekly pop/rock music newspaper, published from 10 October 1970 to 6 April 1991. It was known for giving away posters in the centre of the paper and later for covering heavy metal and punk and Oi! music in its late 1970s–early 1980s heyday.

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1990s continued to develop and diversify. While the singles charts were dominated by boy bands and girl groups, British soul and Indian-based music also enjoyed their greatest level of mainstream success to date, and the rise of World music helped revitalise the popularity of folk music. Electronic rock bands like The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers began to achieve a high profile. Alternative rock reached the mainstream, emerging from the Madchester scene to produce dream pop, shoegazing, post rock and indie pop, which led to the commercial success of Britpop bands like Blur and Oasis; followed by a stream of post-Britpop bands like Radiohead and The Verve.

British pop music is popular music, produced commercially in the United Kingdom. It emerged in the mid-to late 1950s as a softer alternative to American rock 'n' roll. Like American pop music it has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, as well as that of the Singles Chart usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilising key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. From the British Invasion in the 1960s, led by The Beatles, British pop music has alternated between acts and genres with national appeal and those with international success that have had a considerable impact on the development of the wider genre and on popular music in general

Alternative dance is a musical genre that mixes alternative rock with electronic dance music. Although largely confined to the British Isles, it has gained American and worldwide exposure through acts such as New Order in the 1980s and the Prodigy and in the 1990s.

"Velocity Girl" is a song by British alternative rock band Primal Scream, originally released as the B-side to their second single, "Crystal Crescent", in 1986. The song has been noted for its influence in indie pop, with Pitchfork Media saying that it reduced "the pop song to its subatomic essence: quick, breezy, quirky, and above all, exquisitely small". The song was partly inspired by the actress, model and Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick.

<i>C86</i> 1986 compilation album by various artists

C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British independent record labels of the time. As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based music genre characterized by jangling guitars and melodic power pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a pejorative term for its associations with so-called "shambling" and underachievement. The C86 scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK, as was recognized in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue: CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop. In 2014, the original compilation was reissued in a 3CD expanded edition from Cherry Red Records; the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, former NME journalist Neil Taylor.

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