New musick
New musick is a loosely defined style of music and series of articles published in the late 1970s by the British magazine Sounds. New musick was originally coined after a meeting organized by Sounds editor Alan Lewis involving music journalists Jane Suck, Sandy Robertson and Jon Savage in October 1977. The meeting resulted in the group deciding to use "New Musick" as a marketing term for issues in November and December 1977, similar to "new wave", which had previously been used for a series of Sounds articles entitled "Images of the New Wave". The term has been described by Savage as an early label for "post-punk" as well as a subsection of the genre.
New musick was used as a term to describe several experimental, avant-garde and progressive developments being made in punk rock. Drawing influences from disco, dub, reggae, krautrock and electronic music, particularly the use of synthesizers. In November 1977, Sounds published their first issue on new musick which included editorials by Jane Suck and Jon Savage. Writers Simon Reynolds, David Buckley, David Wilkinson, Mimi Haddon and Theo Cateforis retrospectively cited Savage's editorial as the starting point for "post-punk" as a musical genre. The editorial was followed by several new musick articles by other Sounds writers, including Suck, Robertson, Vivien Goldman, Davitt Sigerson, Dave Fudger and Steven Lavers.
The British press quickly adopted the label which sparked ideological conflicts among music critics and the British punk scene regarding new musick undermining the authenticity of the punk ideology. Much of the pushback was rooted in the strong hostility the punk scene held toward electronic music, disco, art and progressive rock, resulting in the scene fracturing into several distinct categories such as "power pop", "mod renewal", "futurist", and "new punk". By the end of the decade, new musick was replaced by "new wave" and "post-punk" interchangeably in the UK.
Etymology
On 26 November 1977, Sounds magazine published an issue entitled "New Musick", the front cover was done by Steven Lavers with editorials by music journalists Jane Suck and Jon Savage. Savage wrote a piece on an emerging scene and style of music known as "new musick", suggesting that punk rock was becoming stagnant and evolving into new, more experimental forms, which he noted as "post punk projections". His editorial stated "New Musick is too many cigarettes, too much depression and too little heart." Savage then remarked:He described the style as exhibiting "more overt reggae/dub influence", sounding "the same/manufactured in a factory," and characterized Subway Sect, the Prefects, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits, and Wire as exploring "harsh urban scrapings/controlled white noise/massively accented drumming". He mentioned acts such as Pere Ubu,Throbbing Gristle and Devo, and stated new musick to be thought of as "texture". He clarified " musick isn't muzak", while citing Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's "Swastika Girls". The Velvet Underground along with Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico were noted as precursors and influences accompanied by a verse from "Gideon's Bible". He described the movement as "Clean teen beat groups cleaning up and minting millions from where the Groovies' left off and starting where the Jam got boring. Synthemesc nouveau pop".
Music journalists Simon Reynolds, David Buckley, David Wilkinson, and Theo Cateforis retrospectively cited Savage's editorial as the starting point for post-punk as a musical genre. During the late 1970s, the terms "new musick", "new wave" and "post-punk" would all be used interchangeably by British music publications. Additionally, the subgenre "cold wave" would also be coined in the November 1977 Sounds "New Musick" article, with members of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, being displayed on the front cover.
Writer Mimi Haddon suggested the term "New Musick" may have referred to the division of Germany into East and West and that the emphasis on "all things German in opposition to “American and rock ‘n’ roll,” that Reynolds identifies may also have inspired the quasi-Germanic spelling of “Musick,” which resembles the German word Musik, as well as the quasi-Germanic capitalization of the words."
Characteristics and influences
Musical style
Music critic Simon Reynolds regarded "new musick" as denoting its own musical style, which he defined as the "industrial/dystopian science-fiction side of post-punk". While Savage suggested new musick could be thought of as a subsection of post-punk. Writer Matthew Worley labelled new musick a soundtrack to "the transition from mid-1970s anger to late '70s alienation". Mimi Haddon describes the term as encompassing the early British punk scene’s interest in Europe along with contemporary German music genres and aesthetics, stating:New musick is primarily defined by an emphasis on electronic music, particularly the use of synthesizers. Along with influences lifted from krautrock, reggae, dub and disco, as well as Giorgio Moroder, David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy and Brian Eno's solo albums, both artists who would briefly be labelled "new musick". Buckley stated new musick was "the first wave of music influenced by Kraftwerk", and regarded "The Model" as being "New Musick, music for a post-industrial computer age, music for the future".
File:Brian_Eno_-_TopPop_1974_08.png|thumb|205x205px|Brian Eno on AVRO's television program TopPop, April 1974
Writers Sean Albiez and David Pattie stated new musick encompassed "the experimenters, avant-garde stylists and post-punk progressives", as well as "Despite the undoubted physicality and emotional content of many New Musick artists, Sounds presented its chosen artists as somehow 'colder' than punk". The style was primarily characterized by "cold" and "bleakness". In January 1978, Kris Needs of ZigZag magazine interviewed Brian Eno and noted "this new Ice Cold Music of the Future craze in Sounds" to describe his music, Eno replied:
Needs would state "Bowie's lumped in it too, and you've linked with Bowie after the last two albums...", with Eno replying "Yes, I'm a bit fed up of it... I'm a bit annoyed at the moment, well not annoyed, just... I'm fed up with myself a bit, that's what it is really." In his 2014 book, Future Days: Krautrock and the Birth of a Revolutionary New Music, writer David Stubbs states:
Stubbs further cites David Bowie as "the precursor of all this".
History
Origins
Around the summer of 1977, according to Simon Reynolds, "punk had become a parody of itself". By October, writers and editors at Sounds echoed similar sentiments, with Savage noting the release of the Sex Pistols' "Holidays in the Sun" signaled that the "death knells were already there", he stated: "We came up with this idea of doing a couple of issues of Sounds around tribal electronic synthetic cut-up music. I think Vivien Goldman had a lot to do with it, and so did Dave Fudger, who were both senior editors on Sounds at the time". Savage stated, "July/August 1977 was exactly the point when UK punk became over-exposed, assimilated and superseded in real time, so the New Musick issue was an important step in our recognition". He remarked:Savage stated Lewis had requested them to come up with an "Images of the New Wave" part 3, which had been a previous series of Sounds articles that used the term "new wave" as a marketing trend. He cited "Magic Fly" by Space and "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer as singles both him and Jane Suck were "obsessed" with. He stated they "made all of us punk rock snobs say 'Oh, my god, disco is fantastic', you know, electronics are the way forward". Savage noted that "punk was old hat" and Sounds writers collectively came up with the idea to celebrate "the new electronic and futuristic music that seemed much more interesting than old pub rockers banging out three chords".
In September 1977, Jon Savage would be attacked by bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel of the Stranglers following the release of his negative review of the band's studio album No More Heroes. In which Savage wrote, "Oh, you guessed: I don't like the album. I've tried very hard but I still think it sucks." He later remarked:
In England's Dreaming, Savage writes the UK punk scene was divided into "arties" and "social realists", stating "The arties had a continued interest in experimentation; the social realists talked about building a 'brick wall' and extolled the virtues of Punk's latest sensation, the ur-Punk Sham 69". Reynolds' 2005 book Rip It Up and Start Again echoed this sentiment, stating:File:Ivan_Kral,_David_Bowie_and_Iggy_Pop_by_Ivan_Kral.jpg|thumb|203x203px|David Bowie and Iggy Pop, while in Berlin, recorded art rock albums, inspired by German krautrockWriter David Buckley states that synthesizers and electronics were initially seen as "punk rock nightmares", with Joe Strummer of the Clash stating on television that the band had no synthesizers. However, this idea later changed, with Buckley arguing that it was Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, particularly the albums Low and "Heroes", that altered the punk scene's negative perception of electronic music. He added, "Sounds was the first British music weekly to realize that punk was exhausted and a dead end". Reynolds argued Bowie's Berlin Trilogy along with Iggy Pop's The Idiot, "signaled a shift away from America and rock 'n' roll toward Europe and a cool, controlled sound modelled on the Teutonic "motorik" rhythms of Kraftwerk and Neu!—a sound in which synthesizers played as much of a role as guitars". He would also describe Brian Eno's solo albums as "proto-New Wave", and that he became "one of the defining producers" of the post-punk era.
Reynolds cited punk rock in the UK as splintering into several different subgenres between 1977 and 1978, with writer Matthew Worley stating that the scene had fractured into various "often competing versions of punk’s creation myth and alternate visions of 'where to now.'" Followed by, "The music press looked to determine new categorizations, some now all but forgotten: 'new musick,' 'power pop,' 'mod renewal,' 'futurist,' and 'new punk.'" Additionally, he labelled new musick "the transition from mid-1970s anger to late '70s alienation". File:Sequential_Circuits_Prophet_5.jpg|alt=A colour photograph of a synthesizer with a keyboard|thumb|The Prophet-5, one of the first polyphonic synthesizers. It was widely used in 1980s synth-pop, along with the Roland Jupiter and Yamaha DX7.|leftAt the time, there was a feeling of renewed excitement regarding what "new musick" or "post-punk" would entail, with Sounds publishing numerous preemptive editorials on the topic. Bands such as Wire would be labelled "New musick", with writer Clinton Heylin retrospectively stating, "They were, for now, England's arch-exponents of New Musick". In March 1978, ZigZag's Kris Needs would interview the band, stating:
Guitarist Graham Lewis would state, "We've been called a Punk band, a New Wave band, and now we're a New Musick band". On 20 May 1978, writer Chris Westwood satirized the growing rise of "new musick" and "cold wave" while reviewing a Wire live concert in Record Mirror: "All adjectives have grown stale: cold, weird, psychotic, so have the labels – New Musick, New Schmusic. Cold Wave, blah blah blah, etc. In fact, writing about Wire is almost a cliché in itself these days, so let's just say that Wire are Wire and leave it at that, eh?". He later parodies Savage's 1977 "New Musick" editorial in the review. Additionally, American groups such as the Residents, Devo and MX-80 Sound would also be embraced as "new musick".
Several other British publications such as Smash Hits, Record Mirror, Melody Maker and NME began to use the term "new musick". Some journalists opted for the term "art punk" to describe artists "too sophisticated" and out of step with punk's dogma, though it was sometimes used by critics as a pejorative. Additionally, there were concerns over the authenticity of such bands in relation to a perceived punk ideology.