Futurepop

Futurepop is an electronic music genre that has been characterized as a blend of synthpop, EBM and dance beats, based on trance and techno.<ref name="Matzke/Seeliger">Peter Matzke, Tobias Seeliger: "Das Gothic- und Dark-Wave-Lexikon." Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, , p. 230.</ref><ref name="Schmidt/Braun273">Axel Schmidt, Klaus Neumann-Braun: "Die Welt der Gothics. Spielräume düster konnotierter Transzendenz." 2004, . p. 273.</ref> It began to emerge in the late 1990s with artists like VNV Nation, Covenant, and Apoptygma Berzerk. Other leading genre artists were Assemblage 23, Icon of Coil, Neuroticfish, and Rotersand.
Futurepop is mostly associated with the cybergoth subculture. It has become popular in alternative dance clubs, particularly in Germany. Music festivals that feature futurepop bands include Infest, Amphi festival, Wave Gotik Treffen and M'era Luna.
Characteristics.
Futurepop is mainly characterized by its "technoid" and "dance-oriented" pop music structures, catchy melodies, the "pervasive use of trance beats" (mostly at 140 bpm), and an absence of vocal modification. The genre is distinguished from regular trance music by "retaining the lyrical and vocal structure of synthpop". Its "transparent sounds" and "smooth production" style have been considered as being "chart-compatible" and "designed for music clubs".
Tom Shear of Assemblage 23 described the style ironically as "mostly people who can't sing over '90s era trance patches".
Etymology.
Ronan Harris of VNV Nation credited himself with the term "futurepop" during a discussion with Apoptygma Berzerk vocalist Stephan Groth to describe the sounds of their music and similar groups at the time. According to "Sorted Magazine" writer "Girl the Bourgeois Individualist":