In the Age of Electro-Everything
Last fall my friend Penelope and I saw 2hollis in concert. We walked in with fairly low expectations, more excited for duo The Hellp as the opener. Once 2hollis’s first song started, the crowd pushed to the front, and the group I was in fell to the floor. Over the course of his ninety-minute set, I lost my shoe, earring, and my bracelet broke off. Penelope lost her favorite necklace. Both of us emerged with bruises whose origins remain unknown. We looked like we came out of a metal pit, not a fairly mainstream hyperpop, cloud rap concert.
There was no rhythm to the pit, no set of pre-determined rules or organization; it was just genuinely your body being crushed by a bunch of jumping young people, from high school to college age. I had a damn blast.
Right now, we live in the age of everything electronic. From books to art, interviews to social lives. It is what I, along with most of my generation, grew up with. Stuck in COVID in 2020 with nothing to do but call my friends on Zoom, or have my grandmother wave at me from across the street when I got into high school. I was bored. I have never really loved to read, so my younger self turned to TikTok and Instagram to fill my time. It worked, and to this day, it still works. Even when I was younger, I would sneak episodes of Liv and Maddie on my Kindle Fire when my parents thought I was doing my math homework.
It has always been about little bursts of energy for me, just a little bit of anything that can keep me entertained. When I think of a genre that has really never left me bored and wanting to skip the button, my honest first thought is hyperpop. Not house or techno, the original EDM, but hyperpop. There is an underlying comfort that I can still hear the familiar drums and bass that make up my favorite bands.
It isn’t even close to my favorite genre of music, yet I can’t help but admit the way that it keeps me enthralled. I think it’s something about the way the music physically jumps—that same restless energy seems to exist in the people who make it too. Throw a stone on any college campus near you (or in Brooklyn), and you can find a hyperpop artist. Anyone can make music with ease, sitting on their bed with an ear for what they like and a laptop open to GarageBand (or the means for an Ableton subscription). If you gave me an hour right now, I could make a song: not saying it would be particularly good, but I could. This open access didn’t exist 20 years ago.
What started with hyperpop has now bled into other genres, and that’s more of what I’m interested in. It isn’t hyper-whatever…, it’s electro-…
In December, I was sitting in the library studying for a final I did not want to take. I chose a random blue album as my study music. “Born 2” by Water From Your Eyes came on. Within a few minutes post-listen, I had walked up to all my friends within my proximity and made them listen to it. To this very second, I have been obsessed with the song. The distinguishably electronic production with pretty melodies and an entrancing guitar: Boom, hi! I was hooked. I have since then spent a few too many hours searching up “electronic” and “(insert any genre)” on Bandcamp to see what comes up.
Country, punk, indie rock, folk, metal, you name it – all genres whose conception was based on the principle of a few people getting into a random basement and playing the instruments they grew up with – usually a guitar, bass, and drums – have an electro sister.
I had a few main criteria for what makes this age truly the “electro-age” in music. When searching, I could only look at bands already in my music library. You can’t make listening habits out of thin air, after all. The artist/band has to be under (or around) 30 years old. I didn’t want to be focusing on some old head who has been playing the synth for 40-odd years. Next is that the band has to have released the music in the past year. And lastly, the electronic elements must be noticeable but not overwhelming, something that still sits within its original genre. I didn’t want the electronic component to be the name of the game, like hyperpop, cloud rap, or house. It didn’t take too long. Within an incredibly short amount of time, by just scrolling through my monthly made playlists, I found the following songs:
Rock: “Midnight Wheels” by Asher White
Punk: “Fits” by Victoryland
Pop: “Born 2” by Water From Your Eyes
Folk: “Witnessing” by Otto Benson
Doom Metal/Shoegaze: “Bodies” by Blackwater Holylight
These are five of many, many more. The trend is everywhere once you start listening for it.
The rise of electronic sound isn’t replacing older genres—it’s rewiring what we know. Technology made music easier to make, but more than that, it reshaped what we expect from art itself: immediacy, intensity, endless motion. Maybe it’s because our lives now unfold on screens—conversation, pictures, and memory filtered through technology—that we are drawn to sounds that reflect that type of technological distortion.
The electro-age isn’t about perfection; it’s about staying alive inside the static and creating an organic flow from what is inherently inorganic. Those glitches, bass drops, and synthetic shimmer all mirror how we live now: constantly connected, constantly moving, and searching for what keeps us human. This is what it means to be human in the age of electro-everything.