Skweee is a musical style, with origin in Sweden and

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

. Skweee combines simple

synth A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis an ...

/ chiptune leads and basslines with funk, R&B or

soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun '':wikt:soul, soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The ea ...

-like rhythms, overall rendering a stripped-down funky sound. The tracks are predominantly instrumental, though there are exceptions.

Origins

The name "skweee" was coined by

Daniel Savio Daniel Savio (born 6 April 1978), is a Swedish electronic musician, composer and DJ. He is recognized as the originator of the genre term skweee, describing the sparse electronic music style initially released on Scandinavian record label Flogsta ...

, one of the originators of the emerging sound. The name refers to the use of analog synthesizers in the production process, where the aim is to "squeeze out" the most interesting sounds possible. Producers can vary from high-profile to new talent from the Scandinavian

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to ...

environment.

Recognition

Skweeelicious
a blog dedicated to skweee, and community sites such as Myspace an
Nation of Skweee
have played a major role in the distribution of skweee music and public exposure of the genre. The major outlets of skweee music are the Swedish record labe
Flogsta Danshall
and Finnish record labe
Harmönia
Norwegian Dødpop, Canadia
Ancient Robot
US Losonofono, US Titched, US Poisonous Gases, Spanish Lo Fi Funk, Finnish Mässy, and French Mazout have since been added to this family. The preferred media format of skweee enthusiasts is the 7" vinyl record. Early releases were exclusively released in this format. More recently, however, a series of 12" vinyl records, digital releases and CD compilations have been released through these outlets as well. The increasing notability of the skweee genre has resulted in releases such as the ''Eero Johannes'' album on

Planet Mu Planet Mu is an eclectic English electronic music record label created and run by Mike Paradinas. The label started out as a subsidiary of Virgin Records then Paradinas set up the label independent of Virgin. After releasing intelligent dance ...

and the ''Skweee Tooth'' compilation on Ramp Recordings.

Skweee and dubstep

During late 2008 and early 2009, skweee started to influence the sound of

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken be ...

. A thread started on th
dubstepforum
made the scene aware of skweee. Producers such as

Rusko Rusko () is a municipality of Finland. It is located in Western Finland and is part of the Southwest Finland region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density Population densit ...

, Gemmy, Joker, Zomby, Rustie, among others, have given their take on the sound, resulting in several releases on the boundary between skweee and dubstep.

References

External links

Interview with skweee pioneer Pavan

John McDonnell's (''The Guardian'' UK) blog article about skweee

Article in ''Spin'' magazine (April 2009) as a PDF file

Article in ''Clash'' magazine

Article in ''The Wire''

Podcast featuring live recording of Harmönia vs Flogsta battle at the Norberg Festival 2009 and an interview with most of the main artists of these labels
{{nerd music 2000s in music 21st-century music genres Chiptune Electro (music) Electronic dance music genres Finnish music Swedish styles of music