Glitch (music)
Glitch is a genre of experimental electronic music that emerged in the 1990s, which is distinguished by the deliberate use of glitches in audio media and other sonic artifacts.
The sounds featured in glitch tracks usually come from audio recording device or digital electronics malfunctions, such as CD skipping, electric hum, digital or analog distortion, circuit bending, bit-rate reduction, hardware noise, software bugs, computer crashes, vinyl record hiss or scratches, and system errors, as well as abstract sound design produced from the intended use of these technologies. Devices that were already broken are often used, while other times devices are broken expressly for this purpose. In Computer Music Journal, composer and writer Kim Cascone classified glitch as a subgenre of electronica and used the term post-digital to describe the glitch aesthetic.
History
The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced to the early 20th century with Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto L'arte dei rumori. He constructed mechanical noise generators, which he named intonarumori, and wrote multiple compositions to be played by them, including Risveglio di una città and Convegno di automobili e aeroplani. In 1914, a riot broke out at one of his performances in Milan, Italy.Later musicians and composers who made use of malfunctioning technology include the 1968 song "The Best Way to Travel", by Michael Pinder of The Moody Blues, and works by Christian Marclay, who began in 1979 to use mutilated vinyl records to create sound collages. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance of 1985, while 1992 album It Was a Dark and Stormy Night by Nicolas Collins included a composition featuring 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.
Glitch music properly originated as a distinct movement in Germany and Japan during the 1990s, with musical works and labels of Achim Szepanski in Germany, and works of Ryoji Ikeda in Japan.
Nuno Canavarro's album Plux Quba, released in 1988, incorporated pristine electroacoustic sounds that resembled early glitch. Oval's album Wohnton, published in 1993, helped define the genre by adding ambient aesthetics.
The earliest uses of the term glitch as related to music include electronic duo Autechre's song "Glitch", released in 1994, and experimental electronic group ELpH's album Worship the Glitch, published in 1995.