Glitch is a term used to describe a genre of electronic music that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The glitch aesthetic is characterized by a deliberate use of glitch based sonic artifacts that would normally be viewed as unwanted disturbances reducing the overall sound quality and are thus usually to be avoided in audio recordings.
Sources of glitch sound material are usually malfunctioning or abused audio recording devices or digital technology, such as CD skipping, electric hum, digital or analog distortion, bit rate reduction, hardware noise, computer bugs, crashes, vinyl record hiss or scratches and system errors. In a Computer Music Journal article published in 2000, composer and writer Kim Cascone classifies glitch as a sub-genre of electronica, and used the term post-digital to describe the glitch aesthetic. Another term for Glitch is Clicks & Cuts (sometimes only Clicks) deriving from the Clicks & Cuts Series released by the Mille Plateaux music label, which played a leading role in the development of the genre.
The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced to the early 20th century, with Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto The Art of Noises, the basis of noise music. He also constructed noise generators, which he named intonarumori. Later musicians and composers made use of malfunctioning technology, such as Christian Marclay who used mutilated vinyl records to create sound collages from the mid-1970s. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance in 1985, Storks crafted their sound with noise generators and game fx in 1987, while Nicolas Collins’s 1992 album It Was A Dark and Stormy Night included a composition that featured a string quartet playing alongside the stuttering sound of skipping CDs.
Glitch originated as a distinct movement in Germany with the musical work and labels (especially Mille Plateaux) of Achim Szepanski. While the movement initially slowly gained members (including bands like Oval), the techniques of Glitch later quickly spread around the world as many artists followed suit. Trumpeter Jon Hassell’s 1994 album Dressing For Pleasure — a dense mesh of funky trip hop and jazz — features several songs with the sound of skipping CDs layered into the mix.
Oval’s Wohnton, produced in 1993, helped define the genre by adding ambient aesthetics to it. Though Oval may be the first in which the techniques of Musique Concrete were applied to the subtleties of Ambient, glitch is also informed by techno and industrial music.
The mid-nineties work of Warp records artists Aphex Twin (Richard D. James Album, Windowlicker, Come to Daddy EP) and Autechre (Tri Repetae, Chiastic Slide) were also influential in the development of the digital audio manipulation technique and aesthetic.
Source: Wikipedia