Glitch: the aesthetics of error and the sound revolution

That flawed sound, cacophony, abrupt cuts, breathy thumps. That auditory dissonance. Changes in rhythm, stridency... impossible to concentrate while listening to it. It wounds the senses but at the same time captivates. Contradiction is written within its drones. It is error as possibility, dissonance as a form of authenticity. Unpresentable, but essential in experimentation, in novelty, in film and soundtracks to create unsettling atmospheres.

To accompany your reading of this post, we've prepared this playlist. Happy listening.

You've probably heard it, but you might not know it yet. Or maybe you do. We're talking about musical glitches. Watch, listen, and read how the implosion of sound becomes a manifestation. Discover how the idea of ​​polish, of perfection, is sometimes displaced by sensory chaos.

What are we talking about?

We present to you a recurring theme in artists, groups, and musical styles that symbolizes experimentation and a desire for innovation, and which has been used by artists from The Beatles to Bowie. Because glitch aesthetics transcend styles. They emerge when the error becomes a language or ceases to be something occasional or exceptional. From now on, when you listen to music, think between the lines. Look for a click you don't fix and turn it into a transition. An interruption that is accepted as a sign. Haven't you heard it before?

Origins of inhabited noise

It goes without saying that the origins of this artistic proposal lie in experimental electronic music. No one would doubt it. But that would be partly untrue. Because to understand its trajectory, one must zoom in a bit on the past.

But let's go further. If we have to trace the prehistory of the glitch movement, we can go back, on the one hand, to Pierre Schaeffer, engineer, musician, and father of musique concrète, who recorded trains, engines, metallic clangs, and fragments of manipulated tapes. On the other hand, to John Cage, an experimental musician who delighted percussionists back in '39. What couldn't they have achieved if they'd had software, digital processing, mixing consoles...

In the early 1990s, we discovered IDM (Intelligent Dance Music). This style of experimental electronic music is characterized by complex compositions, innovative rhythms, and sonic experimentation that departs from the structures of conventional dance music, fusing elements of ambient, techno, and breakbeat.

With roots in the UK and popularized in '93 through an email list (yes, you read that right), it focuses on sound exploration and unique textures, featuring prominent artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre . Boards of Canada were already exploring technical errors, truncated buffers, and micro-cuts as expressive spaces at that time.

Stars in the constellation of error

Without confining ourselves to experimental electronica, we find in other styles mistakes turned into successes. The Beatles ' recordings ( I'm Only Sleeping , 1966, or Revolution 9 , 1968, considered their strangest song. Please listen to it alongside Revolution 1 if you don't want to experience a Clockwork Orange moment) are filled with numerous cacophonies, stylistic errors, and tapes played backward, which only served to help this British group create their sound.

Brian Eno ( Here Come the Warm Jets , 1974) took the idea further: synthesizer errors, amp hum , and tape distortion became part of the texture. He would later define the concept of the " happy accident ," the basis of the entire glitch philosophy: failure as a window to the unexpected.

Artists like David Bowie (The man who sold the world, 1970) or Laurie Anderson ( O Superman, 1981) They constantly experimented with auditory cacophonies that together formed irreverent music.

Markus Popp, known as Oval ( Do While , 1996), took scratched CDs, made them skip, distort, collapse… and recorded those digital errors. He didn't repair them: he edited them into rhythm. And so the click of the digital error—for the first time—became an aesthetic.

From there stemmed everything that would follow: Autechre , Aphex Twin , The Glitch Mob , Fennesz , etc.

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Yes, it's a scattered, plural, infinite genealogy. But within that dispersion, the glitch poses a question: what happens if we stop seeing the error as a failure and instead take it as a particle of meaning?

The Glitch Mob case: from underground beat to show business

The Glitch Mob emerged in Los Angeles in 2006, within the "beat" scene—that hybrid underground vein of hip hop, electronica, and bass. It was originally formed by edIT (Edward Ma) , Ooah (Josh Mayer) , and Boreta (Justin Boreta) , with additional members in its early days. There were other early members: Krady was a member until 2009, when creative differences led him to leave the group.

Although Boreta decided to step away in 2023 to focus on personal projects, they managed to become more than just an “electronic band.” The Glitch Mob built a distinct live identity: they didn't just play their tracks, but performed them as an organic set. In interviews, they recount that in their early days they were DJs with laptops, mixing amongst themselves, but they soon wanted to “play together” and develop mutual improvisations. To do this, they adopted controllers and tools like the Jazzmutant Lemur, tilting them towards the audience so they could see what they were doing. This gesture already revealed their intention: not to hide the mistakes behind a curtain, but to showcase the mechanics of noise.

The album Drink the Sea (2010), an oceanic landscape of digitized textures, fragility and sonic breadth, was a turning point that put the group on the map beyond the underground.

Even with their most stadium-ready format, they blended vocals, conventional structures, and rhythmic aggression on the album Love Death Immortality (2014), which debuted at number 13 on the Billboard 200 and topped the electronic/dance music charts. It's no coincidence that the album title combines three weighty words: love , death , and immortality . An existential tension intertwined with the glitch effect: that which breaks can become symbolic.

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Because what's wrong can be wonderful

The beauty of the glitch isn't pure chaos: it's chaos with habit. It's the design of disorder, the implication of sensors. It may seem uncontrolled, but a plan resides in its imprecision. The wonder lies in that unstable equilibrium. And in a world that demands correction, the glitch is a rebellion. That is to say: it frees us from the mandate to polish and from the algorithm that demands a "final version." Just ask The Beatles.

The glitch movement is neither a fad nor a technical trick. It's a constant that allows us to breathe amidst perfection, amidst the fractured. In every digital break, there's a glimmer of hope that what's wrong can heal. That noise can be translated into beauty. That the unfinished can be our form of eternity. And that's what we hold onto.

Whether you like it or not, mistakes matter as much as successes.

Sources

Google Veo 3. (2025). Glitch. Updated version of the Veo 3 model. Retrieved from https://aistudio.google.com/models/veo-3

The White Stripes. (n.d.). The White Stripes. Photograph in Pantano, Stafford.

Myers, Mitch. (n.d.). Revisions. Cover art by Mitch Myers.

AphexTwin. (1996). Richard D. James Album. WARP Records.

Arvesen, Ralph. (2014). The Glitch Mob performing at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Austin, Texas. Photography by Ralph Arvesen.

The Beatles. (1966). Revolver. Cover designed by Klaus Voormann.

Bowie, David. (1970). The Man Who Sold the World. Cover made by Keith MacMillan. Philips Records.

Eno, Brian. (1974). Here Come the Warm Jets. Cover designed by Carol McNicoll.