Post-punk
Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experimental approach that encompassed a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-rock influences.
[7][8][9][10][nb 1] Originally called "new musick", the terms were first used by various writers in the late 1970s to describe groups moving beyond punk's garage rock template and into disparate areas.
[6] Many post-punk artists were initially inspired by punk's DIY ethic and energy,[8] but ultimately became disillusioned with the style and movement, feeling that it had fallen into a commercial formula, rock convention, and self-parody.
[26][8] Artists moved beyond punk's focus on the concerns of a largely white, male, working-class population[27] and abandoned its continued reliance on established rock and roll tropes, such as three-chord progressions and Chuck Berry-based guitar riffs.
[48] Among major influences on a variety of post-punk artists were writers William S. Burroughs and J. G. Ballard, avant-garde political scenes such as Situationism and Dada, and intellectual movements such as postmodernism.
[57] As the initial punk movement dwindled, vibrant new scenes began to coalesce out of a variety of bands pursuing experimental sounds and wider conceptual territory in their work.
[59] In November 1977 Siouxsie and the Banshees' first John Peel Session for BBC radio 1 marked the transition to post-punk when they premiered "Metal Postcard" with space in the sound and serrated guitars,[60] creating a music being "cold, machine-like and passionate at the same time".
[62] John Robb similarly argued that the first Banshees gig was "proto post-punk", comparing the rhythm section Public Image Ltd's Metal Box, which would be released three years later.
[64] In May, Lydon formed the group Public Image Ltd[65] with guitarist Keith Levene and bassist Jah Wobble, the latter who declared "rock is obsolete" after citing reggae as a "natural influence".
[73][nb 8] A variety of groups that predated punk, such as Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, experimented with tape machines and electronic instruments in tandem with performance art methods and influence from transgressive literature, ultimately helping to pioneer industrial music.
[76] In 1979, NME championed records such as PiL's Metal Box, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Gang of Four's Entertainment!, Wire's 154, the Raincoats' self-titled debut, and American group Talking Heads' album Fear of Music.
[77] Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus and the Cure were examples of post-punk bands who shifted to dark overtones in their music, which would later spawn the gothic rock scene in the early 1980s.
[3][48] Midwestern groups such as Pere Ubu and Devo drew inspiration from the region's derelict industrial environments, employing conceptual art techniques, musique concrète and unconventional verbal styles that would presage the post-punk movement by several years.
[84] In 1978, the latter band began a series of collaborations with British ambient pioneer and ex-Roxy Music member Brian Eno, experimenting with Dadaist lyrical techniques, electronic sounds, and African polyrhythms.
[84] San Francisco's vibrant post-punk scene was centered on such groups as Chrome, the Residents, Tuxedomoon and MX-80, whose influences extended to multimedia experimentation, cabaret and the dramatic theory of Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.
Also emerging during this period was downtown New York's no wave movement, as well as a short-lived art and music scene that began in part as a reaction against punk's recycling of traditionalist rock tropes, often reflecting an abrasive and nihilistic worldview.
[86][87] No wave musicians such as The Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, DNA, Theoretical Girls, and Rhys Chatham instead experimented with noise, dissonance and atonality in addition to non-rock styles.
[90] According to Village Voice writer Steve Anderson, the scene pursued an abrasive reductionism that "undermined the power and mystique of a rock vanguard by depriving it of a tradition to react against".
By 1980–1981, many British acts, including Maximum Joy, Magazine, Essential Logic, Killing Joke, the Sound, 23 Skidoo, Alternative TV, the Teardrop Explodes, the Psychedelic Furs, Echo & the Bunnymen and the Membranes also became part of these fledgling post-punk scenes, which centered on cities such as London and Manchester.
[96] Post-punk artists such as Scritti Politti's Green Gartside and Josef K's Paul Haig, previously engaged in avant-garde practices, turned away from these approaches and pursued mainstream styles and commercial success.
[98] Emphasizing glamour, fashion and escapism in distinction to the experimental seriousness of earlier post-punk groups, the club-oriented scene drew some suspicion from denizens of the movement but also achieved commercial success.
Artists such as Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, the Human League, Soft Cell, John Foxx and Visage helped pioneer a new synthpop style that drew more heavily from electronic and synthesizer music and benefited from the rise of MTV.
[101] Other no wave-indebted artists such as Swans, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch, the Lounge Lizards, Bush Tetras, and Sonic Youth instead continued exploring the early scene's forays into noise music's abrasive territory.
[94][page needed] In the United States, driven by MTV and modern rock radio stations, a number of post-punk acts had an influence on or became part of the Second British Invasion of "New Music" there.
[110] They shared an emphasis on energetic live performance and used aesthetics (in hair and clothes) closely aligned with their fans,[114] often drawing on fashion of the 1950s and 1960s,[115] with "skinny ties, white belts [and] shag haircuts".
[127] This scene is rooted in experimental post-punk and often features vocalists who "tend to talk more than they sing, reciting lyrics in an alternately disaffected or tightly wound voice", and "sometimes it's more like post-rock".
