Post-Internet Music: Negotiating Queer Identity in the Digital Era

Abstract

My paper investigates an electronic music genre that emerged in the 2010s, in conjunction with the rise of attention to identity politics on mainstream platforms. The genre does not have a definite name; however, attempts have been made by critics (see, for example, Waugh 2017) to categorise it under the umbrella term "post-internet music". Such a label encompasses different and often competing sub-genres, all of which nonetheless share an imbrication in internet discourse: these range from Hyperpop, to ‘Deconstructed Club, to ‘Conceptronica’ (Reynolds 2019). As such, the post-internet genre has three distinguishing features: a) many artists operating within it identify both themselves and their music as queer; b) on the sonic side, the genre often comprises complex sound design, loud mixes, a wide stereo field, organic drum samples, pitched-up vocals, and beats that elude conventional time-signatures, so as to sound "deconstructed"; c) the music often makes overt or subtle reference to internet culture, and the digital domain. I seek to place particular attention to the conjuncture between the genre's sonic properties and its ‘queerness’, arguing that the genre is both enabled by, but also enables, internet-mediated identity categories. In this sense, I question what it means to be queer in the contemporary neoliberal era, how this might historically differ from previous elaborations of queerness, and to what extent electronic music - a genre so entrenched in masculinist narratives of technology - can act as a vehicle for counter-normative expression.