Cyberpunk Music

Music is the hardest aspect of the cyberpunk culture to define because cyberpunk is essentially a literary genre. The closest musical genre is probably the rave culture that combines both the ultra-technological and anarchistic aspects of cyberpunk. The rave movement was born about the same time as cyberpunk, in the early 1980's and is to some extent still vibrant. The raves started as illegal parties in inner city warehouses and were a combination of fast, electronic music and visual stimulations designed to create a kind of sensory overload. (See: Ravers)

There are many descriptions of what cyberpunk music is and how it sounds from a fast, synthesized and sample-oriented forms such as techno, rave and industrial to hard-edged, loud, discordant sounds associated with punk rock. However, critics believe that this type of music has always appealed to the 'low lifes': the people of the street, the outcasts, the criminals, the computer hackers, and the drug addicts which may have been true in the beginning is now completely false. More and more 'normal' people or really those who grew up in the early 1980's now listen to it as those who grew up in the 1960's listen to their music.

Here are some groups to help start your Cyberpunk music collection:

Sex Pistols

Nitzer Ebb

Front 242

Front Line Assembly

Skinny Puppy