Rock and pop Post-psychedelic era: Progressive rock and hard rock By the end of the 1960s, many rock musicians had returned to the
rootsy sources of rock and roll's origins, leading to what
Barney Hoskyns called a "retrogressive, post-psychedelic music" development; he cited the
country rock and blues/soul-inspired rock of
the Rolling Stones,
The Band,
Delaney & Bonnie,
Van Morrison, and
Leon Russell. At the same time, a more
avant-garde development came with the contingent of artists associated with
Frank Zappa, including
The Mothers of Invention,
Captain Beefheart,
Wild Man Fischer,
The GTOs, and
Alice Cooper. According to musicologist Frank Hoffman, post-psychedelic hard rock emerged from the varied rock scene, distinguished by more "cinematic guitar stylings and evocative lyric imagery", as in the music of
Led Zeppelin,
Black Sabbath, and
Robin Trower. Music scholar Edward Macan notes that the "post-psychedelic hard rock/
heavy metal styles" that emerged had "a weaker connection to the hippie ethos" and "strongly emphasized the
blues progression". Psychedelic rock, with its distorted guitar sound, extended solos, and adventurous compositions, had been an important bridge between blues-oriented rock and the later emergence of metal. Two former guitarists with the
Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and
Jimmy Page, moved on to form key acts in the new blues rock-heavy metal genre,
The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin, respectively. Other major pioneers of the heavy metal genre had begun as blues-based psychedelic bands, including Black Sabbath,
Deep Purple,
Judas Priest and
UFO. According to American academic Christophe Den Tandt, many musicians during the post-psychedelic era adopted a stricter sense of professionalism and elements of
classical music, as evinced by the concept albums of
Pink Floyd and the virtuosic instrumentation of
Emerson, Lake and Palmer and
Yes. "Early-1970s post-psychedelic rock was hatched in small or medium-sized structures", he adds, naming record labels such as
Virgin Records,
Island Records, and
Obscure Records. While some bands such as
Hawkwind maintained an explicitly psychedelic course into the 1970s, most bands dropped the psychedelic elements in favour of embarking on wider experimentation. As German bands from the psychedelic movement moved away from their psychedelic roots and placed increasing emphasis on electronic instrumentation, these groups, including
Kraftwerk,
Tangerine Dream,
Can and
Faust, developed a distinctive brand of
electronic rock, known as
kosmische musik, or in the British press as "Krautrock". Their adoption of electronic synthesisers, along with the musical styles explored by
Brian Eno in his keyboard playing with
Roxy Music, had a major influence on subsequent development of
electronic rock. The incorporation of jazz styles into the music of bands like Soft Machine and Can, also contributed to the development of the emerging
jazz rock sound of bands such as
Colosseum. Another development of the post-psychedelic era was more freedom with marketing of the artist and their records, such as with album artwork. Tandt identifies a recording artist's preference for anonymity in the economic market through the design of record sleeves having limited information about the musician or the record; he cites Pink Floyd's early 1970s albums,
the Beatles' 1968 album (unofficially known as
The White Album), and
Led Zeppelin's 1971 album, for which "there is up to this day no consensus about the title". According to him, post-psychedelic musicians like
Brian Eno and
Robert Fripp "explicitly advocated" this disconnection between the artist and their work or stardom. "In so doing", he adds, "they laid the foundations for a central tendency of
post-punk" in the late 1970s, as evinced by the first four albums by
The Cure (featuring blurry photographs of the band members) and
Factory Records' dark-colored covers with serial numbers. Stoner rock, also known as stoner metal or stoner doom, is a
rock music fusion genre that combines elements of
heavy metal or
doom metal (or both) with
psychedelic rock and
acid rock. The name references
cannabis consumption. The term
desert rock is often used interchangeably with the term "stoner rock" to describe this genre; however, not all stoner rock bands would fall under the descriptor of "desert rock". Stoner rock is typically slow-to-mid
tempo and features a heavily
distorted,
groove-laden
bass-heavy sound, melodic vocals, and "retro" production. The genre emerged during the early 1990s and was pioneered foremost by
Monster Magnet and the
California bands
Fu Manchu,
Kyuss is a diverse style of music that originated in the 1970s as an outgrowth of the British
post-punk scene. Its practitioners drew from the unusual sounds of 1960s psychedelic music, either updating or copying the approaches from that era. Neo-psychedelia may include forays into psychedelic pop, jangly guitar rock, heavily distorted free-form jams, or recording experiments. Some of the scene's bands, including
the Soft Boys,
the Teardrop Explodes, and
Echo & the Bunnymen, became major figures of neo-psychedelia. in concert in Milan in 2012
Madchester was a music and cultural scene that developed in the
Manchester area of
North West England in the late 1980s, in which artists merged
alternative rock with
acid house and
dance culture as well as other sources, including psychedelic music and 1960s pop. The label was popularised by the British music press in the early 1990s, and its most famous groups include
the Stone Roses,
Happy Mondays,
Inspiral Carpets,
the Charlatans and
808 State. The
rave-influenced scene is widely seen as heavily influenced by drugs, especially ecstasy (
MDMA). At that time,
the Haçienda nightclub, co-owned by members of
New Order, was a major catalyst for the distinctive musical ethos in the city that was called the
Second Summer of Love.
Screamadelica is the third
studio album by Scottish
rock band
Primal Scream released in 1991. The album marked a significant departure from the band's early
indie rock sound, drawing inspiration from the blossoming
house music scene and associated drugs such as
LSD and
MDMA. It won the first
Mercury Music Prize in 1992, and has sold over three million copies worldwide.
AllMusic states: "Aside from the early-'80s Paisley Underground movement and the
Elephant 6 collective of the late 1990s, most subsequent neo-psychedelia came from isolated eccentrics and revivalists, not cohesive scenes." They go on to cite what they consider some of the more prominent artists:
the Church,
Nick Saloman's
Bevis Frond,
Spacemen 3,
Robyn Hitchcock,
Mercury Rev,
the Flaming Lips, and
Super Furry Animals.
Hypnagogic pop, post-noise, chillwave, and glo-fi The Atlantic writer Llewellyn Hinkes Jones identified a variety of music styles from the 2000s characterized by mellow
beats, vintage
synthesizers, and lo-fi melodies, including
chillwave,
glo-fi, and
hypnagogic pop. In August 2009, "hypnagogic pop" was coined by journalist
David Keenan to refer to a developing trend of 2000s
lo-fi and
post-noise music in which artists from varied backgrounds began to engage with elements of cultural
nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. By 2010, albums by
Ariel Pink and
Neon Indian were regularly hailed by publications like
Pitchfork and
The Wire. The terms "hypnagogic pop", "chillwave", and "glo-fi" were soon adopted to describe the evolving sound of such artists, a number of which had songs of considerable success within
independent music circles. Originally, it was common for the three terms to be used interchangeably, but chillwave later distinguished itself as a combination of
dream pop,
new age,
muzak, and
synth-pop. A 2009 review by
Pitchforks Marc Hogan for
Neon Indian's album
Psychic Chasms referenced "dream-beat", "chillwave", "glo-fi", "hypnagogic pop", and "hipster-gogic pop" as interchangeable terms for "psychedelic music that's generally one or all of the following: synth-based, homemade-sounding, 80s-referencing, cassette-oriented, sun-baked, laid-back, warped, hazy, emotionally distant, slightly out of focus."
Funk, soul, and hip hop Following the late 1960s work of
Jimi Hendrix,
psychedelia began to have a widespread impact on
African American musicians. Black funk artists such as
Sly and the Family Stone borrowed techniques from psychedelic rock music, including
wah pedals,
fuzz boxes,
echo chambers, and vocal distorters, as well as elements of
blues rock and
jazz. In the following years, groups such as
Parliament-Funkadelic continued this sensibility, employing synthesizers and rock-oriented guitar work into open-ended funk jams.
Psychedelic rap is a
microgenre which fuses
hip hop music with psychedelia. Pioneers included New York's
Native Tongues collective, headlined by
De La Soul,
Jungle Brothers and
A Tribe Called Quest, Though the "trip" in
trip hop was more linked to
dub music than psychedelia, the genre combined psychedelic rock with hip hop.
Cloud rap Cloud rap is a
subgenre of
rap that has several sonic characteristics of
trap music and is known for its hazy, dreamlike and relaxed production style. Rapper
Lil B and producer
Clams Casino have been identified as the early pioneers of the style.
Electronic House, techno, and trance The
rave scene emphasized
house,
acid house and
techno. The rave genre "hardcore" first appeared amongst the UK acid movement during the late 1980s at warehouse parties and other
underground venues, as well as on
UK pirate radio stations. The genre would develop into
oldschool hardcore, which led to newer forms of rave music such as
drum and bass and
2-step, as well as other
hardcore techno genres, such as
gabber,
hardstyle and
happy hardcore. In the late 1980s, rave culture began to filter through from
English expatriates and
disc jockeys who would visit
Continental Europe. American raves began in the 1990s in
New York City. Acid house originated in the mid-1980s in the
house music style of Chicago DJs like
DJ Pierre,
Adonis,
Farley Jackmaster Funk and
Phuture, the last of which coined the term on his "
Acid Tracks" (1987). It mixed elements of house with the "squelchy" sounds and deep basslines produced by the
Roland TB-303 synthesizer. As singles began to reach the UK the sound was re-created, beginning in small warehouse parties held in London in 1986–87. During 1988 in the
Second Summer of Love it hit the mainstream as thousands of clubgoers travelled to mass raves. The genre then began to penetrate the British pop charts with hits for
M/A/R/R/S,
S'Express, and
Technotronic by the early 1990s, before giving way to the popularity of trance music.
Trance music originated in the German
techno and
hardcore scenes of the early 1990s. It emphasized brief and repeated synthesizer lines with minimal rhythmic changes and occasional synthesizer atmospherics, with the aim of putting listeners into a trance-like state. A writer for
Billboard magazine writes, "Trance music is perhaps best described as a mixture of 70s disco and 60s psychedelia". Derived from acid house and techno music, it developed in Germany and the Netherlands with singles including "Energy Flash" by
Joey Beltram and "The Ravesignal" by
CJ Bolland. This was followed by releases by Robert Leiner,
Sun Electric,
Aphex Twin and most influentially the techno-trance released by the
Harthouse label, including the much emulated "Acperience 1" (1992) by duo
Hardfloor. Having gained some popularity in the UK in the early 1990s it was eclipsed by the appearance of new genres of electronic music such as trip hop and
jungle, before taking off again towards the end of the decade and beginning to dominate the clubs. It soon began to fragment into a number of subgenres, including
progressive trance,
acid trance,
goa trance,
psychedelic trance,
hard trance and
uplifting trance. In the 2010s, artists such as
Bassnectar,
Tipper and
Pretty Lights dominated the more mainstream psychedelic cultures. "Raves" became much larger and grew to mainstream appeal.
New rave In Britain in the 2000s (decade), the combination of
indie rock with
dance-punk was dubbed "new rave" in publicity for
Klaxons, and the term was picked up and applied by the
NME to a number of bands. It formed a scene with a similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music, emphasizing visual effects:
glowsticks,
neon and other lights were common, and followers of the scene often dressed in extremely bright and
fluorescent coloured clothing.
Synthedelia Synthedelia is a
fusion genre coined by music journalist
Simon Reynolds to describe a fusion of
psychedelia and early
electronic music that was popular in the American West Coast and East Coast psychedelic scene in the mid-to late 1960s. Originally pioneered by the New York-based
psychedelic rock band
Lothar and the Hand People who formed in 1965, they have been considered the first ever rock band to make use of an electronic instrument, particularly the
theremin. Other notable acts include
Silver Apples,
the United States of America,
White Noise,
Fifty Foot Hose, Intersystems,
Beaver & Krause and
Syrinx. Research has shown that a curated
music playlist can be part of a favourable setting. == See also ==