The Electro revival still hasn't quite become a commercial hit, has it?

examples, please. from my point of view, the "electro revival" came from the ground up, not the other way around. and maybe annie is electro if electro means "overproduced".

Does it appear that, as much as the media wants them to, the kids simply don't want electroclash?

the "kids" don't know what they want and that's fantastic. isn't one of the best things about music and art the quality of surprise? (that's happy surprise, not disappointment)

Maybe it has been a mistake trying to rerun hair metal and electro in the same run, I mean, we all know that it wasn't usual for the same people to like electro/synthpop and hair metal during the 80s, so why should today's kids be any different?

there are way too many assumptions in yr post, geir, and this one is just wrong.

http://www.celebritiesworldwide.com/Images/Richard%20X.jpg

http://www.celebritiesworldwide.com/Images/Richard%20X.jpg

Electroclash didn't 'fail' so much as it naturally ran it's course as an intentional fad with very little if any interest in big commercial success and mainstream resonance. Again this seems pretty obvious, and it was too fast and hard and deliberately 'faceless' to gain widespread popularity, this being it's strength not it's weakness. The same rings true for the likes of Vitalic and Tiefschwarz who many feel are the best producers in hard dance music today but i doubt they do what they do because they want to be millionaires (unlike the pop and rap acts using electro templates to their advantage at the top of the charts).

yep, but they all incorporated electro in the process of becoming extremely popular. to expect electro as an uncompromised form or genre in itself to have the same kind of success is unrealistic, unlikely and just wouldn't work. through pop acts like the ones you mention of course it works better commercially.

But it doesn't. Not really. Worked for a while through Madonna, but Kylie didn't quite get the same success with her most recent album that she did with her more "modern sounding" "Fever" album. And Annie has yet to perform better than 25th in the UK list, in spite of rave reviews and a lot of press coverage (she hasn't even done that well commercially here in Norway, as opposed to Bertine Zetlitz, who has actually managed to achieve huge commercial success with electro, but only in Norway)

FINK ABOUT IT...

i know that i am repeating what has been said upthread -- about how "electro" means different things. besides, as someone else has said, electro (in the 80s hip-hop sense) HAS been revived AND has been commercially successful.

This is Geir-speak for "real music." Don't fall in the trap, people! That said, he's probably just referring to synth-pop, which is funny because I'd imagine a lot of people would let Ciara into that category, which connects to Planet Rock, which connects to actual electro. It's disingenous to claim no connection between genres when it's readily spelled out i.e. Richard X.

'Slow' was a #1 hit for Kylie in the UK, a very minimal electro-pop production. electro stylings incorporated into pop songs has resulted in countless top ten singles this decade inc. and in the past with the likes of 'Flat Beat'.

Albums are a different thing, most fans of the electro sound have never been as interested in albums as they have been in 12" singles, white labels, remixes, the underground scenes, DJ culture etc.

Annie's 'problem' is she's not British and she's over 25, and her people don't really know how to market her (to be fair to them it's bloody difficult not least for the two aforementioned reasons), and it seems the media/market/industry today cannot deal with an act that's from overseas, is a little bit more mature but is touting an electropop album, regardless of it's quality. did Annie ever make it onto Popworld or CD:UK incidentally? if not that's a big factor in her 'failure' here i think (as well as being largely ignored by daytime mainstream radio, like so many artists, esp. those not from either the UK or US and over the age of 25).

-- FRESH ONE (NAHMAT...), March 21st, 2005.

Oh my god guys, did you know that Ali G lurks here?

Well, the two woman who seemed to have succeeded most with the electro/synth sound are indeed both over 40 (or, Kylie may not have turned 40 yet, but she is certainly close)

There are big chunky 80s synths as far as the eye can see but the way in which they're handled is totally different - even on the poppier side of things the house influences are pretty evident. Even big records like Some Girls or Chewing Gum could never have come out in 1986, the approach to texture and build and dynamics is different. Otherwise you end up with a PSB revival which is far from what I hear.

And that's not without even touching on the likes of Tiefschwarz, Vitalic etc where there's a massive slab of acid house there for all to see.

1) a set of particular sounds/timbres
2) an approach to the production style of a song
3) an approach to the musical structure itself
4) a set of signifiers/images/aesthetic attitudes

Their vagueness is a part of their mobility and longevity. But when you try to iron out the differences and one person is using it to refer to def 1 and the other is using def 2 and the other person is using def 3 then discussion gets circular or overheated. You could justifiably use it to refer to certain moments in certain songs by Debby Deb, or Anthony Rother, or Bambataa, or Madonna, or Kraftwerk, or Le Car, or Vitalic, or Moroder, etc etc.

we need names!

And electro's influence has been everywhere in commercial music (i.e. hip hop especially) waaaay before an 'electroclash' existed. It's sort of an unacknowledged influence on pop music.

Just what does 'electroclash' mean anyway? I use it to label karaoke bands like W.I.T., Prance, (insert boring, ironic, artistically bankrupt music here) and anything Larry Tee associated but have never known the real definition. I would never call FdH, The Soft Pink Truth, or Vitalic electroclash cause they transcend that stuff and it just seems inaccurate to me. I've always referred to such artists' music as just plain ol' 'electro' or 'house' even (when appropriate). I'm moving closer and closer to not using genres specific names alltogether, it gets to damn confusing classifying this stuff.

Just what does 'electroclash' mean anyway?

Swayzak 'I Dance Alone', Adult 'Hand To Phone', Miss Kittin 'Frank Sinatra', 'Fischerspooner 'Emerge (Dave Clarke mix)' - defined largely by stark minimalism (what makes Vitalic a little different and a progression/descendant is that there's a lot more going on in his stuff) and monotony yet very powerful...

and if you consider where the term "electroclash" came from, and "Larry Tee associated" then Vitalic is quite strictly electroclash, first EP on Gigolo, what more do you want.

and if you read what I said, I more than implied that electro and electroclash were two different genres. I meant that most other folks make the mistake of thinking that modern pop's electro influence is due in part to electroclash, when it's not.

correct me if I'm wrong (goes without saying on ILM, I guess) but weren't Felix, Adult., The Hacker, et. al releasing stuff before the term 'electroclash' was even coined? The way I see it, they got lumped into the whole thing.

And yes, even if I'm not clear on what 'electroclash' is, I do know that Fischerspooner is definitely it.

you may well reason that they are the reason WHY the term was coined

it's nice to be schooled politely.

This leads to the irony of Felix Da Housecat being a "european" electroclash producer.

"The Message" is OK. Today's Electro (that is, stuff like Kylie and Madonna) has way more in common with synthpop and 80s Eurodisco though.

Well, "Holiday" might have been something that Richard X might have come up with today....