SYNTHPUNK

'Synthpunk' is a music genre name invented by Damian Ramsey in 1999 as an attempt to retroactively identify a small sub-genre of punk music from 1977-1984 that involved musicians playing synthesizers in place of guitars. The word is a portmanteau of the words "synthesizer" and "punk" (or "punk rock" or "punk music").
The term "synthpunk" was first originated as Damian Ramsey's web domain name hosting for the Synthysteria! web pages that he authored in 1999. These are found at http://www.synthpunk.org.
The web pages document his selected focus on the American synthpunk groups Nervous Gender, The_Units, The Screamers, Tone Set, Our Daughters Wedding, and Voice Farm under one curatorial umbrella. The site gathered text and images of discographies, flyers, interviews, anecdotes, and listed sources from research Damian conducted between 1999 and 2005.

Contents

Characteristics

Characteristics

Due to the predominant use of guitars in punk music's rock music roots, the use of synthesizers was controversial within the punk scene even though the punk music culture collectively embraced an anti-establishment political stance. It was very rare, particularly in America, for punk musicians to use synthesizers or keyboards at all to make punk music, let alone replacing the guitars with them. While the rejection of using guitars was an extension of the logic of punk music's anti-establishment politics, synthpunk bands went farther than many fans were willing to extend that principle, and synthesizer-based punk rock groups had small following as a whole. It is probably due to this issue that the identification of a synthesizer-based, sub-genre of punk rock took so many years to become identified as a collective genre.
Early exponents of synthpunk would be New jersey's Billy Synth or NYC/Boston's Suicide, whose Martin Rev produced as solo lp with a track that includes a young Alien Jorgensen of Ministry. From France "Dr Mix and the Remix" used korg mS-20 era gear to cover tracks by Iggy and the Stooges and trogg like material. Rough Trade era influences included the original"Warm Leatherette" or Robert Rental. One could argue that groups like Lothar and the Hand People predate the synthpunk movement, with tracks like "Machines" or perhaps MC5s "Starship" but all of that is stretching the point and missing the gut feeling of the 1977-1978 punk era. In my town, Victoria, the band Automatic Shock with synare and minimoog found easy acceptance among punks and I saw minimoogs in use at hardcore 81 in vancouver (DOA, Husker Du, Minutemen, black flag)so hard lines are difficult to draw. For me Flipper's sexbomb was a huge breakthrough while I rejected dub by clash. Sorry Clash suck. It worked out differently in different areas. For me the French band Heldon was a serious heavy shot, quite unlike the German space rock, except Conny. Crystal Machine was another, and so was that single Silver Machine by Hawkwind and Roxy Music got heard. The punters fled when lou reed's Metal Machine came out stereo or quad (a strat leaning against an amp recorded at 7 1/2 ips and ring modulated up to double pitch, no relationship between channels). And Fad Gadget was serious, serious stuff to players. The trade mags were useless, they had no idea what was going on. Do history using them and good luck! See other author's lines below.
Synthesizers playing the role of lead and rhythm guitars meant that much of the technique of synthesis relied on making full, harmonic lead timbres, similar to the synthesizer lead roles in some 1970's Progressive Rock and fusion jazz genres.
As yet, there is no information on the technique of synthpunk musicians aside from an article in Keyboard Magazine from 1982 in which the Units are interviewed.