Glitch | |
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Stylistic origins | |
Cultural origins | 1990s, United Kingdom, Japan |
Typical instruments | |
Subgenres | |
Glitch hop | |
Fusion genres | |
Neurohop |
Glitch hop | |
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Stylistic origins |
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Cultural origins | 1997, United States |
Typical instruments | |
Subgenres | |
Neurohop | |
Fusion genres | |
Neurohop, glitch swing |
Glitch is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the late 1990s. It has been described as a genre that adheres to an "aesthetic of failure," where the deliberate use of glitch-based audio media, and other sonic artifacts, is a central concern.
Sources of glitch sound material are usually malfunctioning or abused audio recording devices or digital electronics, such as CD skipping, electric hum, digital or analog distortion, bit-rate reduction, hardware noise, software bugs, crashes, vinyl record hiss or scratches, and system errors. In a Computer Music Journal article published in 2000, composer and writer Kim Cascone classifies glitch as a subgenre of electronica and used the term post-digital to describe the glitch aesthetic.
The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced to the early 20th century, with Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto L'arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises) published in 1913, the basis of noise music. He constructed mechanical noise generators, which he named intonarumori, and wrote multiple compositions to be played by them; two of which were Risveglio di una città (Awakening of a City) and Convegno di automobili e aeroplani (The Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes). In 1914, a riot broke out at one of his performances in Milan, Italy. Later musicians and composers made use of malfunctioning technology, such as Michael Pinder of The Moody Blues in 1968's "The Best Way to Travel," and Christian Marclay, who used mutilated vinyl records to create sound collages beginning in 1979. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance in 1985, while Nicolas Collins's 1992 album It Was a Dark and Stormy Night included a composition that featured a string quartet playing alongside the stuttering sound of skipping CDs.Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima's electronic soundtrack for the 1994 video game Streets of Rage 3 used automatically randomized sequences to generate "unexpected and odd" experimental sounds.