Electro

early 1980s · New York City (Bronx), United States, with a parallel Detroit strand

Early 1980s Bronx sound fusing Kraftwerk's synth-pop with funk and the Roland TR-808, later splitting into Detroit's techno-bound strand and West Coast electro-funk (Sound on Sound, DJ Mag).

The sound

Kraftwerk's stiff synth-pop melodies fused with funk breaks and the Roland TR-808, run through vocoders until the whole thing sounds like a robot trying to dance.

Listen for: The gap between the mechanical drum grid and the human vocoder voice. That's the whole tension of the genre in one sound.

Things to know

  1. Afrika Bambaataa's 'Planet Rock' (1982) layered the melody of Kraftwerk's 'Trans-Europe Express' over the TR-808 bass pattern of Kraftwerk's 'Numbers,' and was recorded for roughly $900 in a single session at Intergalactic Studios.

  2. The vocoder-processed vocals on 'Planet Rock' ran through a Lexicon PCM41 digital delay and a Sony reverb unit to get their tight, phased, robotic texture.

  3. Cybotron's 1983 album 'Enter' marked a deliberate break from electro's hip-hop roots: Juan Atkins described the intent as wanting to 'clear out the old program' for something more radical and futuristic, a shift that points straight at Detroit techno.

  4. Detroit techno pioneer Derrick May described the Kraftwerk-and-funk fusion at electro and techno's root in a much-quoted line: it's 'like Kraftwerk and George Clinton trapped in a synthesizer in an elevator.'

Key tracks

Family tree

  • Italo Disco / Synth-pop: Electro's founding record is basically a Kraftwerk rework. For "Planet Rock" in 1982, Afrika Bambaataa and producer Arthur Baker laid the melody of "Trans-Europe Express" over the synth-bass pattern from "Numbers," then ran it through the TR-808 and the funk of the Bronx. NPR calls the result the Rosetta Stone of electro. The genre was built directly on top of the synth-pop lineage, on purpose.
  • Techno: Juan Atkins is the hinge here. Cybotron's "Clear" was still fairly straight-up electro, but by the 1983 album "Enter" Atkins was deliberately moving away from the hip-hop side toward something colder and more futuristic. Derrick May described the result as Kraftwerk and George Clinton trapped in a synthesizer in an elevator. Electro is the missing link between the two, not a vague influence.

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