Synth-Pop and Its Repercussions
Will be published approx. on 12. November 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
979-8-7651-2291-4 (ISBN)
Description
This collection explores synth-pop's sounds and its hooks, new technologies and production techniques, its media and imagery, its ideologies and discourses about art and culture, society and politics.
Synth-pop is a loose rubric that includes DIY electronic music, post-punk and sounds shot through with the tropes of futurism and dystopia during the Cold War and early neoliberalism that Mark Fisher has called "the eerie." Synth-pop also refers to melodic hits and chart toppers such as those by a-ha, Bronski Beat, The Buggles, Eurythmics, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Tears for Fears, Ultravox, Visage and Yazoo. This book covers synth-pop broadly defined, considering everything between its most rough-hewn and naive forms to its glossier, sophisticated incarnations.
This collection follows synth-pop's international circuits, not only in the UK and the US, but in Poland, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Germany, Australia, India, and through migrations and diasporas; and it opens up local, national and transnational developments and influences with critical and interdisciplinary approaches from musicology, media studies and cultural studies, among others. The volume brings together contributions that critically examine synth-pop in relation to the histories of music genres, gender, sexuality, race, class, the human, technology and politics.
Synth-pop is a loose rubric that includes DIY electronic music, post-punk and sounds shot through with the tropes of futurism and dystopia during the Cold War and early neoliberalism that Mark Fisher has called "the eerie." Synth-pop also refers to melodic hits and chart toppers such as those by a-ha, Bronski Beat, The Buggles, Eurythmics, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Tears for Fears, Ultravox, Visage and Yazoo. This book covers synth-pop broadly defined, considering everything between its most rough-hewn and naive forms to its glossier, sophisticated incarnations.
This collection follows synth-pop's international circuits, not only in the UK and the US, but in Poland, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Germany, Australia, India, and through migrations and diasporas; and it opens up local, national and transnational developments and influences with critical and interdisciplinary approaches from musicology, media studies and cultural studies, among others. The volume brings together contributions that critically examine synth-pop in relation to the histories of music genres, gender, sexuality, race, class, the human, technology and politics.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-7651-2291-4 (9798765122914)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Geoff Stahl is Senior Lecturer in Media & Communication at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. His publications include: Poor, But Sexy: Reflections on Berlin Scenes (2014), Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand (2018), Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night (2019), Mixing Pop & Politics: Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century (2022), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music, Space and Place (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Nabeel Zuberi is Associate Professor in Media and Screen Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau /University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Nabeel's publications include Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music (2001), Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand 1 & 2 (2004, 2010), and Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (2014).
Holly Kruse is Professor of Communications at Rogers State University, USA. She is author of Site and Sound: Understanding Independent Music Scenes (2003) and Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing (2016).
Nabeel Zuberi is Associate Professor in Media and Screen Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau /University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Nabeel's publications include Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music (2001), Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand 1 & 2 (2004, 2010), and Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (2014).
Holly Kruse is Professor of Communications at Rogers State University, USA. She is author of Site and Sound: Understanding Independent Music Scenes (2003) and Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing (2016).
Content
Contributor Bios
Introduction: Just can't get enough - Geoff Stahl, Nabeel Zuberi & Holly Kruse
Part 1: Prototypes and precursors
1.Towards tomorrow: Electronic library music in the 1960s and 1970s - Elodie A. Roy
2.Hot Butter covered 'Popcorn': The durability of a plastic pop phenomenon - Geoff Stahl
Part 2: Synthesizing sounds
3.Mad sounds and catchy hooks: How the synth in synth-pop hits gets our attention and sticks in our memory - Jadey O'Regan & Tim Byron
4.'We Came to Dance': Synth-pop and the 12-inch single - Adrian Renzo
5.Constructing new authenticities through synth-pop by music technology: Drum machines and grooves on the grid - Robert Michler
6.Synthestalgia: Ideology and aesthetics of synthesisers in software and hardware recreations - Pat O'Grady
Part 3: Politics
7.Are 'friends' electric: Class, control and technological determinism - Hussein Boon
8.Synth and sedition: Indie pop and post-punk in 1980s Sydney - Gay Breyley & Karen Ansel
9.Spanish synth-pop, radical ideology, and electronic punk: The techno-anarchism of Aviador Dro - Antonio Pineda & Jorge David Fernandez Gomez
10.'Already Dead': Synth-pop, NDW, and new wave in 1980s East Germany - Padraig Parkhurst
11.Black Celebration in red Prague: Depeche Mode in concert, March 1988 - Ondrej Daniel
12.Atomic: Synth-pop and the aesthetics of nuclear armageddon - Stephen Hill
Part 4: Spaces, imaginaries and circulations
13.Gendered spaces of synth-pop: A brief autoethnography - Holly Kruse
14.English imaginative geographies made concrete, 1977-1984: Utopian pasts, alienated presents and synthetic futures - Kevin Milburn
15.Mapping the pop terrain: Visuality, aesthetics, and the 'time-space' of Duran Duran - Alison Blair
16.Polish popular music and synth-pop of the 1980s: Following western trends and styles - Marek Jezinski
17.Ahead of disco: South Asian synth-pop from Birmingham and beyond - Nabeel Zuberi
Part 5: Artists
18.'Mensch, Natur, Technik': Kraftwerk's ecology and their critique of technoscience - George Zoukas
19.Japanese gentlemen stand up please: Yellow Magic Orchestra, techno-orientalism and postmodern culture in Japan: Yellow Magic Orchestra and postmodern culture in Japan - Yoshitaka Mori
20.Problemes d'amour: Alexander Robotnick's Italian post-disco anomaly - Guglielmo Bottin
21.Systematics, Scattered Order, Ya Ya Choral and M Squared: Patrick Gibson's adventures on the Australian fringes of synth-pop, 1979-83 - John Encarnacao
22.Ominous sounds in the silence: ABBA's voyage into synth-pop - Amanda Mills
Index
Introduction: Just can't get enough - Geoff Stahl, Nabeel Zuberi & Holly Kruse
Part 1: Prototypes and precursors
1.Towards tomorrow: Electronic library music in the 1960s and 1970s - Elodie A. Roy
2.Hot Butter covered 'Popcorn': The durability of a plastic pop phenomenon - Geoff Stahl
Part 2: Synthesizing sounds
3.Mad sounds and catchy hooks: How the synth in synth-pop hits gets our attention and sticks in our memory - Jadey O'Regan & Tim Byron
4.'We Came to Dance': Synth-pop and the 12-inch single - Adrian Renzo
5.Constructing new authenticities through synth-pop by music technology: Drum machines and grooves on the grid - Robert Michler
6.Synthestalgia: Ideology and aesthetics of synthesisers in software and hardware recreations - Pat O'Grady
Part 3: Politics
7.Are 'friends' electric: Class, control and technological determinism - Hussein Boon
8.Synth and sedition: Indie pop and post-punk in 1980s Sydney - Gay Breyley & Karen Ansel
9.Spanish synth-pop, radical ideology, and electronic punk: The techno-anarchism of Aviador Dro - Antonio Pineda & Jorge David Fernandez Gomez
10.'Already Dead': Synth-pop, NDW, and new wave in 1980s East Germany - Padraig Parkhurst
11.Black Celebration in red Prague: Depeche Mode in concert, March 1988 - Ondrej Daniel
12.Atomic: Synth-pop and the aesthetics of nuclear armageddon - Stephen Hill
Part 4: Spaces, imaginaries and circulations
13.Gendered spaces of synth-pop: A brief autoethnography - Holly Kruse
14.English imaginative geographies made concrete, 1977-1984: Utopian pasts, alienated presents and synthetic futures - Kevin Milburn
15.Mapping the pop terrain: Visuality, aesthetics, and the 'time-space' of Duran Duran - Alison Blair
16.Polish popular music and synth-pop of the 1980s: Following western trends and styles - Marek Jezinski
17.Ahead of disco: South Asian synth-pop from Birmingham and beyond - Nabeel Zuberi
Part 5: Artists
18.'Mensch, Natur, Technik': Kraftwerk's ecology and their critique of technoscience - George Zoukas
19.Japanese gentlemen stand up please: Yellow Magic Orchestra, techno-orientalism and postmodern culture in Japan: Yellow Magic Orchestra and postmodern culture in Japan - Yoshitaka Mori
20.Problemes d'amour: Alexander Robotnick's Italian post-disco anomaly - Guglielmo Bottin
21.Systematics, Scattered Order, Ya Ya Choral and M Squared: Patrick Gibson's adventures on the Australian fringes of synth-pop, 1979-83 - John Encarnacao
22.Ominous sounds in the silence: ABBA's voyage into synth-pop - Amanda Mills
Index