Electronic rock


Electronic rock is a music genre that involves a combination of rock music and electronic music, featuring instruments typically found within both genres. It originates from the late 1960s, when rock bands such as the United States of America, White Noise, and Gong began incorporating electronic instrumentation into rock music. Other early acts to blend synthesizers and musique concrète's tape music techniques with rock instrumentation included Silver Apples, Fifty Foot Hose, Syrinx, Lothar and the Hand People, Beaver & Krause and Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Many such 1960s acts blended psychedelic rock with avant-garde academic or underground influences.
In the 1970s, German "krautrock" bands such as Neu!, Kraftwerk, Can, and Ash Ra Tempel challenged rock boundaries by incorporating electronic instrumentation. Since the late 2000s, electronic rock has become increasingly popular. Electronic rock acts usually fuse elements from other music styles, including punk rock, industrial rock, hip hop, techno, and synth-pop, which has helped spur subgenres such as indietronica, dance-punk, and electroclash.

Characteristics

Being a fusion of rock and electronic, electronic rock features instruments found in both genres, such as synthesizers, mellotrons, tape music techniques, electric guitars and drums. Some electronic rock artists, however, often eschew guitar in favor of using technology to emulate a rock sound. Vocals are typically mellow or upbeat, but instrumentals are also common in the genre.

Subgenres and other terms

The term "progressive rock" was originally coined in the 1960s for music that would otherwise be described as "electronic rock," but the definition of "prog" later narrowed into a specific set of musical conventions - as opposed to a sensibility involving forward-thinking or experimental approaches.
Electronic rock is also associated with industrial rock, synth-pop, dance-punk, indietronica, and new wave, with electroclash, new rave, post-punk revival, post-rock, considered as subgenres. Sometimes, certain other electronic subgenres are fused with rock, like trance and techno, leading to the use of the terms trance rock and techno rock, respectively.
Heavy metal, a major subgenre of rock, is sometimes mixed with electronic and its subgenres, inspiring terms such as electronic metal, electronic dance metal, trance metal and techno metal.
Like heavy metal, punk rock has been mixed with electronic music as well, creating subgenres like synthpunk and dance-punk.