Darkwave and Synth Goth

The term appeared in print in 1977. Sounds magazine ran a feature on Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express and called it "cold wave"—a name for something that hadn't quite crystallized yet. Two years earlier, Kraftwerk had sketched the blueprint with Radio-Activity: frigid melodies, brittle percussion, machines dreaming in minor keys. By 1979, Martin Hannett was stripping rock music to its skeleton at Strawberry Studios in Manchester, producing Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. The Cure's 'A Forest' proved that spartan mood pieces could chart. These weren't called darkwave. They were punk's DIY ethos colliding with newly affordable synthesizers.