Electro swing is a musical genre combining the influence of vintage or modern swing and jazz mixed with house, hip hop and EDM. Successful examples of the genre create a modern and dance-floor focused sound that is more readily accessible to the modern ear but that also retains the feeling of live brass and the energetic excitement of the early swing recordings.
The mid 90s saw a succession of hip-hop influenced records that sampled vintage swing. Many of these were one-off novelties and would not at the time have been described as electro swing. Lucas With The Lid Off (1994) by Lucas (AKA Lucas Secon) is an early example which had chart success and subsequently featured on UK TV advertising ...
Electro swing is a musical genre combining the influence of vintage or modern swing and jazz mixed with house, hip hop and EDM. Successful examples of the genre create a modern and dance-floor focused sound that is more readily accessible to the modern ear but that also retains the feeling of live brass and the energetic excitement of the early swing recordings.
The mid 90s saw a succession of hip-hop influenced records that sampled vintage swing. Many of these were one-off novelties and would not at the time have been described as electro swing. Lucas With The Lid Off (1994) by Lucas (AKA Lucas Secon) is an early example which had chart success and subsequently featured on UK TV advertising (Weetabix). Others such as Doop (1994) were minor hits, while Jimmy Luxury coined the term swing-hop with the song "Hi-Ball Swing" in (1999). Songs like Mr. Scruff's "Get A Move On" (1999), Jurassic 5's "Swing Set" (2000), Gry and F.M. Einheit's "Princess Crocodile" (2000), and The Real Tuesday Weld's "Bathtime in Clerkenwell" (2003) all built on this sound, each adding new elements. In the 90s, the artists Cajmere produced multiple house hits that were greatly influenced by swing such as "U Got Me Up". Many 'Lounge' and 'Nu-Jazz' tracks also borrowed Swing music elements. This was developed and built on by artists like G-Swing, Waldeck, and Caravan Palace.
"Yes this really is a new genre and an interesting one, for once," said London's Time Out magazine of the genre in early 2010.
Following some success in London, the White Mink club opened the Brighton Festival Fringe in April 2010, before going on to programme stages annually at festivals including Glastonbury (Shangri-La and Dance Village Pussy Parlour), The Big Chill, Paradise Gardens, The Secret Garden Party and Bestival's Club Dada, showcasing artistes such as Caravan Palace, Parov Stelar, G-Swing, Dutty Moonshine, Swingrowers, The Correspondents, Swing Republic, Klischée, and Movits!.
The British 'White Mink : Black Cotton' series was described by Mixmag as "Electro Swing's first landmark moment".[8]
According to Magnetic magazine in April 2016, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland are some of the countries where electro swing has garnered some popularity, and a similar amount of publicity of the genre has yet to reach the United States.[9]
On December 9, 2015, Vice Media's electronic music channel Thump published an article by Angus Harrison with its title calling electro swing the "Worst Genre of Music in the World, Ever." A major criticism in the article included how electro swing nightclubs use the genre's combination of sounds popular in older eras with today's contemporary dance elements as a selling point, even though all other sample-based electronic styles have done the same thing. Harrison labeled electro swing as "the sonic equivalent of "ye olde fashioned barber" in East London," also strongly disliking its image consisting of vintage parts of culture from the 1930s and 1940s awkwardly put together and overly used with modern-day trends. The article garnered extremely negative responses from the electro swing fan base.
