(((The steampunk hits just keep on coming, ladies and gentlemen.)))
(((Given that the contemporary pop music has financially collapsed, you might as well pack it in and have a techno hoedown in another century,
I reckon.)))
http://www.matrix-online.net/bsfa/website/matrixonline/Matrix_Features_4.aspx
Link: Matrix Online: the news and media magazine of the British Science Fiction Association.
While continuing to pay homage to its literary origins, noughties’ Steampunk has evolved into a veritable subculture in its own right. Dark aesthetics, combined with a flare for antique fashion, laboratorial curiosities, cybernetics, and the reengineering of all manner of rogue mechanicals, were always destined to appeal to the goth, punk, cyber and industrial contingent. But Steampunk has also cast a wider net; its ‘period’-feel seducing anyone with a soft spot for Victoriana and alternative histories.
Fans have now come to embrace Steampunk, or ‘Steam’ as it is sometimes known, (((I love that))) as a culture, a community and a lifestyle. ‘Neo-Victorianism’ infiltrates every aspect of their lives, from fashion to interior design to transport to music. (((Everything Neo-Victorian except voting for Thatcher, I hope.)))
However, while it is fairly easy to label what constitutes Steampunk attire – corsets, petticoats, suits, goggles, laced boots, etc - Steampunk music is less well-defined. Online discussions list artists as varied as NIN for Closer, the train-like beat of the piano giving it a new world feel, Tom Waites for his use of distortion, electronics and accordion, Björk for her fusion of electronica, roaring twenties’ big band sounds and industrialism, and even Queen for their music-hall spirited, A Day At The Races. And while purists cite classical music or early nineteenth century recordings played on a hand-cranked gramophone, most aficionados agree that any modern performer whose music or stage show evokes a sense of the Victorian era can be classified Steampunk. (((This certainly ought to include cotton-chopping Negro slave spirituals, except I don't think you're gonna see a lot of Steampunks dressed up as those guys.)))
Yet even that margin is too small. To do the Steampunk music genre justice, we need to acknowledge a theatrical mélange of artists and artistic styles: gothic, new world, vaudevillian, Brechtian dark cabaret, Eastern European, chamber music, vintage jazz, and more.
Below is a taster of just some of the artists classified Steampunk:
