Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The standards of
sound quality
Sound quality is typically an assessment of the accuracy, fidelity, or intelligibility of audio output from an electronic device. Quality can be measured objectively, such as when tools are used to gauge the accuracy with which the device re ...
(
fidelity
Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of ''fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word ''fidēlis'', meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London fin ...
) and music production have evolved throughout the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...
in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music (from "
do it yourself").
Harmonic distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...
and "
analog warmth" are sometimes confused as core features of lo-fi music.
Traditionally, lo-fi has been characterized by the inclusion of elements normally viewed as undesirable in professional contexts, such as misplayed notes, environmental interference, or
phonographic imperfections (degraded
audio signals,
tape hiss
Tape or Tapes may refer to:
Material
A long, narrow, thin strip of material (see also Ribbon (disambiguation):
Adhesive tapes
* Adhesive tape, any of many varieties of backing materials coated with an adhesive
*Athletic tape, pressure-sensiti ...
, and so on). Pioneering, influential, or otherwise significant artists include
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by the ...
(''
Smiley Smile
''Smiley Smile'' is the 12th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on September 18, 1967. It reached number 9 on UK record charts, but sold poorly in the US, peaking at number 41—the band's lowest chart placement to tha ...
'' and ''
Wild Honey''),
R. Stevie Moore (often called "
the godfather of home recording"),
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
(''
McCartney''),
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...
,
Jandek
Jandek is the musical alias of Houston, Texas based lo-fi folk singer Sterling Smith. Since 1978, Jandek has independently released over 45 albums without granting interviews or providing any biographical information, releasing on a self-made lab ...
,
Daniel Johnston
Daniel Dale Johnston (January 22, 1961 – September 11, 2019) was an American singer, musician and artist regarded as a significant figure in outsider, lo-fi, and alternative music scenes. Most of his work consisted of cassettes recorded a ...
,
Guided by Voices,
Sebadoh
Sebadoh () is an American indie rock band formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow, with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989. Barlow co-created Sebadoh as an outlet for hi ...
,
Beck,
Pavement, and
Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg ( ; born June 24, 1978), professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded alb ...
.
Although "lo-fi" has been in the cultural lexicon for approximately as long as "
high fidelity",
WFMU
WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station, licensed to East Orange, New Jersey. Since 1998 its studios and operating facilities have been headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. It broadcasts locally at 91.1 Mhz FM, i ...
disc jockey William Berger is usually credited with popularizing the term in 1986. At various points since the 1980s, "lo-fi" has been connected with
cassette culture, the
DIY ethos of punk,
primitivism
Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate a "primitive" experience. It is also defined as a philosophical doctrine that considers "primitive" peoples as nobler than civilized peoples and was an o ...
,
outsider music
Outsider music (from " outsider art") is music created by self-taught or naïve musicians. The term is usually applied to musicians who have little or no traditional musical experience, who exhibit childlike qualities in their music, or who su ...
,
authenticity,
slacker
A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.
Origin
According to different sources, the term ''slacker'' dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early ...
/
Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years and the late 1970s to early 1980s a ...
stereotypes, and cultural
nostalgia. The notion of "bedroom" musicians expanded following the rise of modern
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrat ...
s, and in the late 2000s, lo-fi aesthetics served as the basis of the
chillwave
Chillwave (originally considered synonymous with glo-fi and hypnagogic pop) is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It loosely emulates 1980s electropop while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia. Common features inclu ...
and
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (often abbreviated as h-pop) is pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise ...
music genres.
Definitions and etymology
Lo-fi is the opposite of
hi-fi.
Historically, the prescriptions of "lo-fi" have been relative to technological advances and the expectations of ordinary music listeners, causing the rhetoric and discourse surrounding the term to shift numerous times. Usually spelled as "low-fi" before the 1990s, the term has existed since at least the 1950s, shortly after the acceptance of "high fidelity", and its definition evolved continuously between the 1970s and 2000s. In the 1976 edition of the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'', lo-fi was added under the definition of "sound production less good in quality than 'hi-fi'". Music educator
R. Murray Schafer
Raymond Murray Schafer (18 July 1933 – 14 August 2021) was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book ''The Tuning of th ...
, in the glossary for his 1977 book ''The Tuning of the World'', defined the term as "unfavourable
signal-to-noise ratio."
There was virtually no appreciation for the imperfections of lo-fi music among critics until the 1980s, during which there was an emergent romanticism for
home-recording and "
do-it-yourself" (DIY) qualities. Afterward, "DIY" was often used interchangeably with "lo-fi". By the end of the 1980s, qualities such as "home-recorded", "technically primitive", and "inexpensive equipment" were commonly associated with the "lo-fi" label, and throughout the 1990s, such ideas became central to how "lo-fi" was popularly understood. Consequently, in 2003, the ''Oxford Dictionary'' added a second definition for the term—"a genre of rock music characterized by minimal production, giving a raw and unsophisticated sound". A third was added in 2008: "unpolished, amateurish, or technologically unsophisticated, esp. as a deliberate aesthetic choice."
The identity of the party or parties who popularized the use of "lo-fi" cannot be determined definitively.
It is generally suggested that the term was popularized through William Berger's weekly half-hour radio show on the New Jersey-based independent radio station
WFMU
WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station, licensed to East Orange, New Jersey. Since 1998 its studios and operating facilities have been headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. It broadcasts locally at 91.1 Mhz FM, i ...
, titled ''Low-Fi'', which lasted from 1986 to 1987.
The program's contents consisted entirely of contributions solicited via mail
and ran during a thirty-minute prime time evening slot every Friday. In the fall 1986 issue of the WFMU magazine ''LCD'', the program was described as "home recordings produced on inexpensive equipment. Technical primitivism coupled with brilliance."
The notion of "bedroom musicians" expanded after the rise of laptop computers in many forms of popular or
avant-garde music,
and over the years, there was an increasing tendency to group all home-recorded music under the umbrella of "lo-fi". "Bedroom pop" loosely describes a musical genre, or aesthetic, in which bands record at home, rather than at traditional recording spaces.
It also has the connotation of DIY.
By the 2010s, journalists would indiscriminately apply "bedroom pop" for any music that sounded "fuzzy". In 2017, ''About.com''s Anthony Carew argued that the term "lo-fi" was commonly misused as a synonym for "warm" or "punchy" when it should be reserved for music that "sounds like it's recorded onto a broken answering-machine".
Characteristics
Lo-fi aesthetics are idiosyncrasies associated with the recording process. More specifically, those that are generally viewed in the field of
audio engineering as undesirable effects, such as a degraded
audio signal or fluctuations in tape speed. The aesthetic may also extend to substandard or disaffected musical performances.
Recordings deemed unprofessional or "amateurish" are usually with respect to performance (out-of-tune or out-of-time notes) or mixing (audible hiss,
distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signa ...
, or room acoustics). Musicologist Adam Harper identifies the difference as "phonographic" and "non-phonographic imperfections". He defines the former as "elements of a recording that are perceived (or imagined to be perceived) as detrimental to it and that originate in the specific operation of the recording medium itself. Today, they are usually the first characteristics people think about when the subject of 'lo-fi' is brought up."
Recording imperfections may "fall loosely into two categories, distortion and noise", in Harper's view, although he acknowledges that definitions of "distortion" and "noise" vary and sometimes overlap. The most prominent form of distortion in lo-fi aesthetics is
harmonic distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...
, which can occur when an audio signal is amplified beyond the
dynamic range
Dynamic range (abbreviated DR, DNR, or DYR) is the ratio between the largest and smallest values that a certain quantity can assume. It is often used in the context of Signal (electrical engineering), signals, like sound and light. It is measured ...
of a device. However, this effect is not usually considered to be an imperfection. The same process is used for the electric guitar sounds of
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm a ...
, and since the advent of
digital recording
In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storag ...
, to give a recording a feeling of "analogue warmth". Distortion that is generated as a byproduct of the recording process ("phonographic distortion") is typically avoided in professional contexts. "Tape saturation" and "saturation distortion" alternately describe the harmonic distortion that occurs when a
tape head
A tape head is a type of transducer used in tape recorders to convert electrical signals to magnetic fluctuations and vice versa. They can also be used to read credit/debit/gift cards because the strip of magnetic tape on the back of a credit card ...
approaches its limit of residual
magnetization (a common aspect of tape recorder maintenance that is fixed with
degaussing
Degaussing is the process of decreasing or eliminating a remnant magnetic field. It is named after the gauss, a unit of magnetism, which in turn was named after Carl Friedrich Gauss. Due to magnetic hysteresis, it is generally not possible to red ...
tools). Effects include a decrease in high-frequency signals and an increase in noise. Generally, lo-fi recordings are likely to have little or no frequency information above 10 kilohertz.
"Non-phonographic" imperfections may involve noises that are generated by the performance ("coughing, sniffing, page-turning and chair sounds") or the environment ("passing vehicles, household noises, the sounds of neighbours and animals"). Harper acknowledges that the "appreciation of distortion and noise is not limited to lo-fi aesthetics, of course, and lo-fi aesthetics ... does not extend to all appreciations for distortion and noise. The difference lies in the ways in which distortion and noise are ''understood'' to be imperfections in lo-fi." He also distinguishes between "recording imperfections" and "sonic imperfections
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
occur as a result of imperfect sound-reproduction or - modulation equipment... Hypothetically, at least, lo-fi effects are created during recording and production itself, and perceptibly remain in master recordings that are then identically copied for release."
Bruce Bartlett, in his 2013 guide ''Practical Recording Techniques'', states that "lo-fi sounds might have a narrow
frequency response
In signal processing and electronics, the frequency response of a system is the quantitative measure of the magnitude and phase of the output as a function of input frequency. The frequency response is widely used in the design and analysis of s ...
(a thin, cheap sound), and might include noise such as hiss or record scratches. They could be distorted or wobbly in pitch."
He offers the following methods for replicating lo-fi sounds: mixing levels so that they are unbalanced; placing obstructions between a
microphone
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publ ...
and the sound sources; placing the
microphone
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publ ...
in an unusual spot, such as in a wastebasket; recording with older, lower-quality instruments or equipment; and highlighting
spill
A spill occurs when the contents of something, usually in liquid form, are emptied out onto a surface, person or clothes, often unintentionally.
Spill may also refer to:
* Oil spill
*Chemical spill
*Data spill
*Leadership spill
*Spill (audio), wh ...
and
sound reflection
Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves. The ' ...
s.
History
1950s–1970s: Origins and influential works
![Beach Boys 1967 (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Beach_Boys_1967_%28cropped%29.jpg)
DIY music predates
written history
Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...
, but "lo-fi" as it was understood after the 1990s can be traced to 1950s rock and roll.
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
writes that the genre's recordings were made "cheaply and quickly, often on substandard equipment. In that sense, the earliest rock & roll records, most of the
garage rock of the '60s, and much of the
punk rock of the late '70s could be tagged as Lo-Fi."
Released in 1967,
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by the ...
' albums ''
Smiley Smile
''Smiley Smile'' is the 12th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on September 18, 1967. It reached number 9 on UK record charts, but sold poorly in the US, peaking at number 41—the band's lowest chart placement to tha ...
'' and ''
Wild Honey'' were lo-fi albums recorded mostly in
Brian Wilson's makeshift home studio; the albums were later referred to as part of Wilson's so-called
Bedroom Tapes.
Although ''Smiley Smile'' was initially met with confusion and disappointment, appreciation for the album grew after other artists released albums that reflected a similarly flawed and stripped-down quality, including
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's ''
John Wesley Harding
''John Wesley Harding'' is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on December 27, 1967, by Columbia Records. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to semi-acoustic instrumentation and fol ...
'' (1967) and
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developmen ...
'
White Album
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
(1968). ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...
'' writer Mark Richardson credited ''Smiley Smile'' with inventing "the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel
Sebadoh
Sebadoh () is an American indie rock band formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow, with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989. Barlow co-created Sebadoh as an outlet for hi ...
,
Animal Collective, and other characters." Editors at ''Rolling Stone'' credited ''Wild Honey'' with originating "the idea of DIY pop".
Writers of ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...
'' credit
Skip Spence
Alexander Lee "Skip" Spence (April 18, 1946 – April 16, 1999) was a Canadian-born American singer, songwriter, and musician. He was co-founder of Moby Grape, and played guitar with them until 1969. In the same year, he released his only s ...
's ''
Oar
An oar is an implement used for water-borne propulsion. Oars have a flat blade at one end. Rowers grasp the oar at the other end.
The difference between oars and paddles is that oars are used exclusively for rowing. In rowing the oar is connecte ...
'' (1969) as "a progenitor of both the loner/stoner and lo-fi movements", adding that the album "would not find a real audience for decades."
In the early 1970s, there were a few other major recording artists who released music recorded with portable multi-tracking equipment; examples included
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
and
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...
. Produced shortly after the Beatles'
breakup, the home-recorded solo release ''
McCartney'' was among the best-selling albums of 1970, but was critically panned. In 2005, after an interviewer suggested that it was "
erhapsone of the first big lo-fi records of its day", McCartney commented that it was "interesting" that younger fans were "looking back at something like that with some kind of respect", before adding that the album's "sort of ... hippie simplicity ... kind of resonates at this point in time, somehow." ''
Record Collector
''Record Collector'' is a British monthly music magazine. It was founded in 1980 and distributes worldwide.
History The early years
The first standalone issue of ''Record Collector'' was published in March 1980, though its history stretches ba ...
''s Jamie Atkins wrote in 2018 that many lo-fi acts had been indebted to the reverb-saturated sound of "
All I Wanna Do" (1970) by the Beach Boys.
''
Something/Anything?
''Something/Anything?'' is the third album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released in February 1972. It was his first double album, and was recorded in late 1971 in Los Angeles, New York City and Bearsville Studios, Woodstock. Three quart ...
'' (released in February 1972) was recorded almost entirely by Rundgren alone. The album included many of his best-known songs, as well as a spoken-word track ("Intro") in which he teaches the listener about recording flaws for an
egg hunt
An egg hunt is an Eastertide game during which decorated eggs or Easter eggs are hidden for children to find. Real hard-boiled eggs, which are typically dyed or painted, artificial eggs made of plastic filled with chocolate or candies, or foil- ...
-type game he calls "Sounds of the Studio". He used the money gained from the album's success to build a personal recording studio in New York, where he recorded the less successful 1973 follow-up ''
A Wizard, a True Star
''A Wizard, a True Star'' is the fourth album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released March 2, 1973, on Bearsville Records. It marked a departure from his previous, ''Something/Anything?'' (1972), with its lesser reliance on straightforward p ...
''.
Musicologist
Daniel Harrison compared the Beach Boys' late-1960s albums to ''Wizard'', a record "which mimics aspects of Brian's compositional style in its abrupt transitions, mixture of various pop styles, and unusual production effects. But it must be remembered that the commercial failure of the Beach Boys’ experiments was hardly motivation for imitation." In 2018, ''Pitchfork''s Sam Sodsky noted that the "fingerprints" of ''Wizard'' remain "evident on bedroom auteurs to this day".
1970s–1980s: Indie, cassette culture, and outsider music
With the emergence of punk rock and
new wave in the late 1970s, some sectors of popular music began to espouse a DIY ethos that heralded a wave of
independent labels, distribution networks,
fanzines and recording studios,
and many guitar bands were formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music instead of having to procure a
record contract
A recording contract (commonly called a record contract or record deal) is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist (or group), where the artist makes a record (or series of records) for the label to sell and promote. Artists ...
from a major label.
Lo-fi musicians and fans were predominantly white, male and middle-class, and while most of the critical discourse interested in lo-fi was based in New York or London, the musicians themselves were largely from lesser metropolitan areas of the US.
![R](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/R._Stevie_Moore_%286141708494%29.jpg)
Since 1968,
R. Stevie Moore had been recording full-length albums on reel-to-reel tape in his parents' basement in
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
, but it was not until 1976's ''
Phonography'' that any of his recordings were issued on a record label.
The album achieved some notoriety among New York's punk and new wave circles.
Matthew Ingram of ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...
'' wrote that "Moore might not have been the first rock musician to go entirely solo, recording every part from drums to guitar ... However, he was the first to explicitly aestheticize the home recording process itself. ... making him the great-grandfather of lo-fi."
Asked if he supported the "DIY/lo-fi pioneer label", Moore explained that his approach resulted from "happenstance" rather than a calculated artistic decision, although he agreed that he "should be recognized as a pioneer".
When a 2006 ''New York Times'' reporter referenced Moore as the progenitor of "bedroom pop", Moore responded that the notion was "hilarious" in light of his "bitter struggle to make a living and get some notoriety, I scoff at it."
In 1979,
Tascam introduced the
Portastudio
The TASCAM Portastudio was the first four-track recorder based on a standard compact audio cassette tape. The term ''portastudio'' is exclusive to TASCAM, though it is generally used to describe all self-contained cassette-based multitrack rec ...
, the first portable multi-track recorder of its kind to incorporate an "all-in-one" approach to
overdub
Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...
bing, mixing, and
bouncing. This technology allowed a broad range of musicians from underground circles to build fan bases through the dissemination of their cassette tapes.
Music critic
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger (born January 19, 1962) is an American author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.
Life and writing
Unterberger attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote for the university newspaper '' ...
cited Moore as "one of the most famous" of the "few artists in cassetteland
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
established a reputation, if even a cult one."
From 1979 until the early 1980s, Moore was a staff member on WFMU, hosting a weekly "Bedroom Radio" show.
Berger's "Low-Fi" program followed thereafter and effectively established lo-fi as a distinct movement associated with the spirit of punk.
JW Farquhar
JW Farquhar is an American musician and singer-songwriter based in Philadelphia. He is known for his 1973 album, ''The Formal Female''. Music critic Ned Raggett called it a "forerunner" to lo-fi and outsider artists including R. Stevie Moore and ...
's home-recorded 1973 album ''The Formal Female'', according to critic Ned Raggett, could also be regarded as a forerunner to "any number of" independent lo-fi artists, including R. Stevie Moore and the underground Texas musician
Jandek
Jandek is the musical alias of Houston, Texas based lo-fi folk singer Sterling Smith. Since 1978, Jandek has independently released over 45 albums without granting interviews or providing any biographical information, releasing on a self-made lab ...
.
![Calvin Johnson-2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Calvin_Johnson-2.jpg)
In 1980, the Welsh trio
Young Marble Giants
Young Marble Giants were a Welsh post-punk band formed in Cardiff, Wales, in 1978. Their music was based around the vocals of Alison Statton along with the minimalist instrumentation of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham. Their early sound was ...
released their only album, ''
Colossal Youth
''Colossal Youth'' is the only studio album by Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants, released in February 1980 on Rough Trade Records. Young Marble Giants were offered the opportunity to record the album after Rough Trade heard just two son ...
'', featuring stark instrumentation, including a primitive drum machine, and a decidedly "bedroom" aura. Davyd Smith of the ''
Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
'' later wrote, "It’s hard to imagine a more lo-fi, unambitious sound." Throughout the following decade, the
indie rock
Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produc ...
spheres of the American underground (bands such as
college radio favorite
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, who were students at the University of Georgia. One of the first alternati ...
), along with some British
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad music genre, genre of Punk Music, punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde s ...
bands, were the most prominent exports of lo-fi music. According to AllMusic, the stylistic variety of their music often "fluctuated from simple pop and rock songs to free-form song structures to pure noise and arty experimentalism."
Similar scenes also developed among DIY cassette-trading
hip-hop and
hardcore punk
Hardcore punk (also known as simply hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier p ...
acts.
One of the most recognizable bands was
Beat Happening (1984–1992) from
K Records
K Records is an independent record label in Olympia, Washington founded in 1982. Artists on the label included early releases by Beck, Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. The record label has been called "key to the development of independent music ...
, an influential
indie pop
Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and su ...
label. They were rarely known as a "lo-fi" group during their active years, and were only noted for their pioneering role in the movement after the term's definition evolved in the mid 1990s.
Elsewhere, WFMU DJ
Irwin Chusid Irwin Chusid (born April 22, 1951 in Newark, New Jersey) is a journalist, music historian, radio personality, record producer, and self-described "landmark preservationist". His stated mission has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history t ...
was responsible for inventing and popularizing the "
outsider music
Outsider music (from " outsider art") is music created by self-taught or naïve musicians. The term is usually applied to musicians who have little or no traditional musical experience, who exhibit childlike qualities in their music, or who su ...
" category — much of it overlapping with lo-fi. Adam Harper credits the outsider musicians
Daniel Johnston
Daniel Dale Johnston (January 22, 1961 – September 11, 2019) was an American singer, musician and artist regarded as a significant figure in outsider, lo-fi, and alternative music scenes. Most of his work consisted of cassettes recorded a ...
and Jandek with "form
nga bridge between 1980s
primitivism
Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate a "primitive" experience. It is also defined as a philosophical doctrine that considers "primitive" peoples as nobler than civilized peoples and was an o ...
and the lo-fi indie rock of the 1990s. ... both musicians introduced the notion that lo-fi was not just acceptable but the special context of some extraordinary and brilliant musicians." Hailing from New Zealand, the
Tall Dwarfs
Tall Dwarfs are a New Zealand rock band formed in 1981 by Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate, who helped pioneer the lo-fi style of rock music. The duo were former members of Toy Love.
The band lacked a drummer, but would use household objects and han ...
' mid-1980s records are credited with anticipating the lo-fi sound. AllMusic wrote that Tall Dwarfs' home-recorded releases presaged "the rise of what was ultimately dubbed 'lo-fi' as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over the course of the decades to follow."
1990s: Changed definitions of "lo-fi" and "indie"
Relation to "alternative" music
![Robert Pollard sxsw 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Robert_Pollard_sxsw_2.jpg)
During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to '
alternative
Alternative or alternate may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki''
* ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film
* ''The Alternative ...
'". Following the success of
Nirvana
( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
's ''
Nevermind
''Nevermind'' is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991, by DGC Records. It was Nirvana's first release on a major label and the first to feature drummer Dave Grohl. Produced by Butch Vig, '' ...
'' (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently, the concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as
Guided by Voices,
Sebadoh
Sebadoh () is an American indie rock band formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow, with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989. Barlow co-created Sebadoh as an outlet for hi ...
,
Beck, and
Pavement, most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with
Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years and the late 1970s to early 1980s a ...
and "
slacker
A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.
Origin
According to different sources, the term ''slacker'' dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early ...
" stereotypes that originated from
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian novelist, designer, and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', popularized the terms ''Generation X'' and ''McJ ...
's novel ''
Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years and the late 1970s to early 1980s a ...
'' and
Richard Linklater's film ''
Slacker
A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.
Origin
According to different sources, the term ''slacker'' dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early ...
'' (both released 1991) which led to the genre being called "
slacker rock
Slacker rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music and lo-fi music that originated in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Definition
The term typically refers to a style that is more laid back and relaxed when compared to re ...
". Some of the delineation between
grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's "
authenticity". Even though Nirvana frontman
Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and
the Shaggs
The Shaggs were an American rock band formed in Fremont, New Hampshire, in 1965. The band was composed of the sisters Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin (vocals and lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (vocals and rhythm guitar), Helen Wiggin (drums) and, later, Rac ...
, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a
sell-out
"Selling out", or "sold out" in the past tense, is a common expression for the compromising of a person's integrity, morality, authenticity, or principles by forgoing the long-term benefits of the collective or group in exchange for personal ga ...
genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.
In April 1993, the term "lo-fi" gained mainstream currency after it was featured as a headline in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''.
The most widely-read article was published by the same paper in August 1994 with the headline "Lo-Fi Rockers Opt for Raw Over Slick". In contrast to a similar story ran in the paper seven years earlier, which never deployed "lo-fi" in the context of an unprofessional recording, writer Matt Deihl conflated "lo-fi" with "DIY" and "a rough sound quality". He wrote:
The main focus in the piece was Beck and Guided by Voices, who recently become popular acts in the indie rock subculture. Beck, whose 1994 single "
Loser" was recorded in a kitchen and reached the ''
Billboard'' top 10, ultimately became the most recognizable artist associated with the "lo-fi" tag. As a response to the "lo-fi" label, Guided by Voices bandleader
Robert Pollard
Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr. (born October 31, 1957) is an American singer and songwriter who is the leader and creative force behind indie rock group Guided by Voices. In addition to his work with Guided by Voices, he continues to have a prol ...
denied having any association to its supposed movement. He said that although the band was being "championed as the pioneers of the lo-fi movement," he was not familiar with the term, and explained that "
lot of people were picking up
ascammachines at the time ... Using a four-track became common enough that they had to find a category for it: DIY, lo-fi, whatever."
At the time, music critic
Simon Reynolds interpreted the seeming-movement as a reaction against grunge music, "and a weak one, since lo-fi is just grunge with even grungier production values."
In turn, he said, lo-fi inspired its own reaction in the form of "
post-rock".
A reaction against both grunge and lo-fi, according to AllMusic, was
chamber pop
Chamber pop (or Chamber rock; also called baroque pop and sometimes conflated with orchestral pop or symphonic pop) is a music genre that combines rock music with the intricate use of strings, horns, piano, and vocal harmonies, and other compo ...
, which drew heavily from the rich orchestrations of Brian Wilson,
Burt Bacharach, and
Lee Hazlewood
Barton Lee Hazlewood (July 9, 1929 – August 4, 2007) was an American country and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer, most widely known for his work with guitarist Duane Eddy during the late 1950s and singer Nancy Sinatra in the 1960 ...
.
Genre crystallization
"Lo-fi" was applied inconsistently throughout the 1990s. Writing in the book ''Hop on Pop'' (2003), Tony Grajeda said that by 1995, ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...
'' magazine "managed to label every other band it featured in the first half
f the yearas somehow lo-fi."
One journalist in ''
Spin'' credited Sebadoh's ''
Sebadoh III
''III'' (or ''Sebadoh III'') is the third album by the American indie rock band Sebadoh. It was released by Homestead Records in 1991.
''III'' was the first full length Sebadoh album to feature Jason Loewenstein, who joined the band's two foundi ...
'' (1991) with "inventing" lo-fi, characterizing the genre as "the
soft rock of punk".
Additionally, virtually every journalist referenced an increasing media coverage of lo-fi music while failing to acknowledge themselves as contributors to the trend.
Several books were published that helped to "canonize" lo-fi acts, usually by comparing them favorably to older musicians. For example, ''Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama'' (1995) contained a chapter titled "The Lo-Fi Top 10", which mentioned
Hasil Adkins
Hasil Adkins (April 29, 1937 – April 26, 2005) was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His genres include rock and roll, country, blues and more commonly rockabilly, and because of his unusual playing and singing style ...
,
the Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The original line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise ...
,
Half Japanese
Half Japanese is an American art punk band formed by brothers Jad and David Fair around 1975, sometime after the family's relocation to Uniontown, Maryland. Their original instrumentation included a small drum set, which they took turns playi ...
,
Billy Childish, Beat Happening,
Royal Trux
Royal Trux was an American alternative rock band active from 1987 to 2001, reuniting in 2015 but disbanded once again in 2019. It was founded by Neil Hagerty (vocals, guitar) and Jennifer Herrema (vocals).
History
While still a teenager, Hagert ...
, Sebadoh,
Liz Phair
Elizabeth Clark Phair (born April 17, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Phair was raised primarily in the Chicago area. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1990, she attempted to start a musical career ...
, Guided By Voices, Daniel Johnston, Beck and Pavement. Richie Unterberger's ''Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More'' and "the community of like-minded critics and fans surrounding him" were especially pivotal in establishing modern notions of the lo-fi aesthetic. According to Adam Harper: "In short, ''Unknown Legends'' bridges the interests of the
980sand the
assette CultureGeneration and those of
he 2000s providing an early sketch, a portent – a 'leftfield blueprint', perhaps – of 00s movements like
hauntology
Hauntology (a portmanteau of ''haunting'' and ''ontology'') is a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost. The term is a neologism first introduced by French ...
and
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (often abbreviated as h-pop) is pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise ...
".
The "lo-fi" tag also extended to acts such as
the Mountain Goats,
Nothing Painted Blue,
Chris Knox
Chris Knox (born 2 September 1952) is a New Zealand rock and roll musician, cartoonist and movie reviewer who emerged during the punk rock era with his bands The Enemy and Toy Love. After Toy Love disbanded in the early 1980s, he formed the g ...
,
Alastair Galbraith, and
Lou Barlow.
"Other significant artists often aligned with 1990s lo-fi," Harper wrote, "such as
Ween
Ween is an American rock band from New Hope, Pennsylvania, formed in 1984 by Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, better known by their respective stage names, Gene and Dean Ween. Generally categorized as an alternative rock band, the band a ...
,
the Grifters,
Silver Jews
Silver Jews were an American indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman alongside Pavement members Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich. Berman was the only constant band member. During the last few albums, Cassie Berman ...
, Liz Phair,
Smog,
Superchunk,
Portastatic
Portastatic is an American indie rock band founded in the early 1990s as a solo project of Mac McCaughan, singer and guitarist of the indie rock band Superchunk. The project has since expanded into a full band, sometimes including Superchunk gui ...
and Royal Trux have been largely omitted owing either to the comparative paucity of their reception or to its lesser relevance to lo-fi aesthetics."
From the late 1990s to 2000s, "lo-fi" was absorbed into regular indie discourse, where it mostly lost its connotations as an indie rock subcategory evoking "the slacker generation", "looseness", or "self-consciousness". ''Pitchfork'' and ''The Wire'' became the leading publications on music, while blogs and smaller websites took on the role previously occupied by fanzines.
2000s–present: Hypnagogic pop and chillwave
![Ariel Pink - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (5626694511)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Ariel_Pink_-_Ariel_Pink%27s_Haunted_Graffiti_%285626694511%29.jpg)
The rise of modern
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrat ...
s dissolved a theoretical technological division between professional and non-professional artists. Many of the prominent lo-fi acts of the 1990s adapted their sound to more professional standards and "bedroom" musicians began looking toward vintage equipment as a way to achieve an authentic lo-fi aesthetic, mirroring a similar trend in the 1990s concerning the revival of 1960s
space age pop
Space age pop is a subgenre of pop and easy listening music associated with Mexican and American composers and songwriters in the Space Age of the 1950s and 1960s. Also known as bachelor pad music or lounge music,''Pulse'' (Monthly music digest o ...
and analog synthesizers. R. Stevie Moore was increasingly cited by emerging lo-fi acts as a primary influence.
His most vocal advocate,
Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg ( ; born June 24, 1978), professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded alb ...
, had read ''Unknown Legends'', and later recorded a cover version of one of the tracks included in a CD that came with the book ("Bright Lit Blue Skies").
At the time of his label debut, Pink was viewed as a novelty act, as there were virtually no other contemporary indie artists with a similar retro lo-fi sound.
Previous lo-fi artists generally rejected the influence of 1980s pop radio that informed most of Pink's sound.
Afterward, a type of music dubbed "hypnagogic pop" emerged among lo-fi and post-
noise musicians who engaged with elements of cultural
nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. The label was invented by journalist
David Keenan in an August 2009 piece for ''The Wire'', which included Pink among his examples.
Pink was frequently referred to as the "godfather" of hypnagogic, chillwave or
glo-fi
Psychedelic music (sometimes called psychedelia) is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and cannabis ...
as new acts that were associated with him (aesthetically, personally, geographically, or professionally) attracted notice from critics. According to ''Pitchfork''s Marc Hogan, each of those tags described what was essentially
psychedelic music.
Adam Harper reflected in 2013 that there was a growing tendency among critics such as Simon Reynolds to overstate Pink's influence by failing to acknowledge predecessors such as R. Stevie Moore and
the Cleaners from Venus'
Martin Newell.
In the late 2010s, a form of
downtempo
Downtempo (or downbeat) is a broad label for electronic music that features an atmospheric sound and slower beats than would typically be found in dance music. Closely related to ambient music but with greater emphasis on rhythm, the style may b ...
music tagged as "
lo-fi hip hop" or "chillhop" became popular among YouTube music streamers. Several of these YouTube channels attracted millions of followers. The foundation of this style came mainly from producers such as
Nujabes
, better known by his stage name , was a Japanese record producer, audio engineer, DJ, composer and arranger best known for his atmospheric instrumental mixes sampling from hip hop, soul, and jazz, as well as incorporating elements of trip hop, b ...
and
J Dilla
J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is ''jay'' (pronounced ), with a now-uncommon vari ...
.
See also
References
Further reading
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lo-Fi Music
Lo-fi music
Indie music
DIY culture
Noise music
Cassette culture 1970s–1990s
1950s in American music
1960s in American music
1970s in American music
1980s in American music
1990s in American music
2000s in American music
2010s in American music
2020s in American music
Outsider music
American styles of music