the.com/electronica
Dance music that left the club and went to go read in bed.
means A broad umbrella term for electronic music made more for listening and atmosphere than for pure dance-floor function.
from Built straight from 'electronic' plus the music-genre suffix '-ica' (the same pattern as 'exotica'), the term rose in the 1990s when labels and journalists needed a catch-all for synth-and-sampler music drifting from clubs into home stereos and record-store 'electronica' bins.
- origin
- catch-all term invented by record stores, not musicians
- 90s boom
- marketed as the next grunge, never quite was
- key trait
- beats you nod to, not beats you mosh to
- spiritual home
- headphones on a train, not a warehouse rave