Photo by hinnik (CC 3.0) In the late 2010s, there has been an explosion in a new type of pop music. Glitchy, vivid and unashamedly synthetic, upcoming artists like Sophie, Hannah Diamond or more loosely Caroline Polachek, have imbued their pop sound with textures and ideas that couldn’t be further away from pop. Whether the industrial clatterings of bands like Nine Inch Nails or the glitchy, complex “Intelligent Dance Music” of artists like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, the melodies of pop are contorted into something particularly alien. The experimental impulse driving this is certainly nothing new; pop artists have often…

Photo by Greg Neate (CC 2.0) The early ’90s was an odd point of transition for British rock. The larger independent labels like Rough Trade and Factory that had fuelled post-punk were struggling financially and the indie movement was changing. Possibly the last clear development of the experimentation of the late ’70s and early ’80s, however, was “shoegaze”. Named as such by journalists describing the somewhat restrained and inhibited stage presence of artists like My Bloody Valentine, shoegaze comprised a vast amount of influences. You could hear elements of the heavy psych-rock of Hawkwind (or a decade later Spacemen 3),…