Coldwave Music Guide: History and Sounds of Coldwave

Coldwave is a type of punk rock music that was popularized in Europe in the late 1970s. As a music genre, coldwave is characterized by its minimal use of synthesizers and guitar, gloomy tone, and slower rhythms.

The name “coldwave” refers to its detached and depressive sound and is derived from the term new wave, which encompasses the collective sound of most electronic music and punk music styles in the 1970s. Coldwave would later be considered a subgenre in the category of minimal wave or minimal synth, and it is a very close cousin to darkwave, goth rock, and death rock.

Coldwave was born out of the experimental sounds of 1970s post-punk:

• Origins in post-punk: In the 1970s, punk began to shift away from its rock roots as new avante garde punk bands entered the scene. This post-punk movement introduced new electronic sounds as basic synthesizers became more widely available.
• Coldwave in the UK: In the late 1970s, the term coldwave was starting to be used to describe the gloomy and minimal style of the new music entering the punk scene. Kraftwerk’s minimalist Trans-Europe Express album was released in 1977, and in that same year, Siouxsie and the Banshees introduced their own cold and simple sound.
• Coldwave in France, Belgium, and Poland: In the early 1980s, a new scene of French, Belgian, and Polish artists began to emerge. French bands like Marquis de Sade, KaS Product, and Asylum Party produced darker sounds with simple synthetics. The French movement was called “la vague froide,” which translates to coldwave.
• Twenty-first century coldwave: While coldwave never quite took off in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the music genre saw a resurgence in the 2000s as record labels like Wierd Records cycled songs back into compilations. Additionally, bands like Xeno & Oaklander and Blacklister brought the sounds of coldwave into the late 2000s.

There are many coldwave artists and bands that defined the punk genre sound:

1. 1. Asylum Party: A French coldwave band that Thierry Sobézyk and Philippe Planchon formed in 1985. The group released albums including Picture One and Borderline.
2. 2. Charles de Goal: French artist Patrick Blain’s project. He was largely anonymous until 1985 when his first coldwave album, Algorythmes, became a major hit.
3. 3. Siouxsie and the Banshees: A British punk band that emerged in 1977 during the height of coldwave. Their first album, The Scream, was a major success; it featured the popular track “Hong Kong Garden.”
4. 4. Joy Division: An English punk rock band formed in 1976 that shifted from traditional punk to the more minimal styles of coldwave. They saw wide success by blending coldwave minimalism with electronic and dance music styles; “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” one of their biggest hits, is a coldwave classic.
5. 5. Kraftwerk: A German synth-pop band that emphasized heavy use of synthesizers and pioneered the coldwave sound with Trans-Europe Express, their minimal and industrial album.
6. 6. Martin Dupont: A French punk group born in the 1980s that pioneered minimal synths with both male and female vocalists. They disbanded in 1988, having defined the sound of the coldwave underground movement.
7. 7. KaS Product: A French music duo with Spatsz and Mona Soyoc, who combined electronic sounds with jazz sensibilities to create a unique sound in coldwave.
8. 8. Norma Loy: A French coldwave band formed in 1981 that produced coldwave music under their own record label, CPM Records. They began as a traditional punk band but transitioned to coldwave during the post-punk era, and they continue to make music today.
9. 9. Opera Multi Steel: Also known as OMS, this French coldwave band formed in 1983. They blended electronic music with Medieval and Renaissance sounds.
10. 10. Xeno & Oaklander: A US punk band formed in 2004 in Brooklyn, New York, that helped create a resurgence in coldwave in the 2000s. They are known for updating the coldwave sounds with analog synths and no post-processing.

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