Indietronica Classics

In his intro for the "article," FACT editor-in-chief Joe Muggs makes an interesting distinction:

Well Indietronica, very pleasantly, isn’t really “a thing”. It’s not a scene, it’s not something with clubs or events dedicated to it, it’s not a marketing bracket or a pseudoacademic category, it’s never anything that people would think to say they’re into. It sometimes feels more an agglomeration of things that have fallen between the cracks of cool, an ad-hoc arrangement of dweebs, dorks and hobbyists all finding quiet corners of the music world where they can get on with their own tinkerings unmolested.

To an extent, "Indietronica" is a catch-all for both electronic music tracks with pop song structures, and, conversely, for indie pop tracks with electronic embellishments, both of which are made by musicians who are largely not within mainstream culture, but its a bit of a critical crutch that this list defines too broadly. Hot Chip and even Caribou definitely fit the mold, as where theres a lot more going on in tracks by clOUDDEAD or Sampha than just Indietronica. The latter belongs in the same electronic singer-songwriter tradition as James Blake (whose also included on the list), while cLOUDDEAD fall into the experimental hip-hop camp. Of course, you could also make the case that the point of bands are to resist easily classification altogether. Regardless, this is a really enjoyable and cohesive set of tracks.