China Records

Art pop is a strand of pop music that treats the pop song as a canvas for high-concept ideas, experimental techniques, and cross-media aesthetics. It marries accessible melodies and hooks with the visual culture of art schools, the conceptual rigor of the avant-garde, and the studio-as-instrument ethos. Sonically, art pop favors eclectic instrumentation (synths, orchestral timbres, guitars, found sounds), unusual song forms, and sophisticated harmony. It often employs collage, musique concrète–like textures, and theatrical vocal delivery while still keeping a pop-facing surface. Beyond sound, art pop is deeply visual and conceptual: albums are framed as coherent artworks, stagecraft and video are integral, and lyrics tend toward intertextuality, character work, irony, and social commentary. The result is pop that is both immediate and idea-driven.

Electronic is a broad umbrella genre defined by the primary use of electronically generated or electronically processed sound. It encompasses music made with synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, computers, and studio/tape techniques, as well as electroacoustic manipulation of recorded or synthetic sources. The genre ranges from academic and experimental traditions to popular and dance-oriented forms. While its sonic palette is rooted in electricity and circuitry, its aesthetics span minimal and textural explorations, structured song forms, and beat-driven club permutations. Electronic emphasizes sound design, timbre, and studio-as-instrument practices as much as melody and harmony.

Folk is a song-centered acoustic tradition rooted in community storytelling, everyday life, and social history. It emphasizes clear melodies, simple harmonies, and lyrics that foreground narrative, protest, and personal testimony. As a modern recorded genre, folk coalesced in the early-to-mid 20th century in the United States out of older ballad, work song, and rural dance traditions. It typically features acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica), strophic song forms, and participatory singing (choruses, call-and-response).

Glam rock is a style of rock music that emerged in the early 1970s, defined as much by its flamboyant image and theatricality as by its sound. Artists embraced androgynous fashion, glitter, makeup, platform boots, and bold stage personas, using spectacle to amplify simple, catchy, riff-driven songs. Musically, glam rock fuses the drive of 1950s rock and roll with hard rock crunch, bubblegum pop hooks, and a sense of artful provocation. Songs often feature stomping, chant-ready rhythms, big choruses, guitar riffs, handclaps, and shout-along refrains. Lyrically, it leans into themes of fantasy, fame, gender play, street romance, and campy drama, blurring the line between pop accessibility and avant-garde performance.

Hard rock is a loud, riff-driven style of rock music built around heavily amplified electric guitars, a powerful rhythm section, and assertive vocals. Songs typically center on memorable, blues-based guitar riffs, strong backbeats, and energetic, often shouted or belted choruses. The genre emphasizes power, groove, and visceral impact over intricate harmony or extended improvisation. Distortion, power chords, pentatonic melodies, and call‑and‑response between vocals and guitar are core traits, while lyrical themes often explore rebellion, lust, swagger, escape, and cathartic release.

Sleaze rock is a raw, streetwise branch of glam-influenced hard rock that mixes blues-based riffs, punk energy, and a swaggering, decadent attitude. It favors crunchy guitar tones, raspy vocals, and big gang-chorus hooks over glossy pop sheen. Emerging from the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, it differentiated itself from radio-friendly glam metal by sounding dirtier, groovier, and more dangerous—closer to barroom boogie and punk grit than to polished arena pop. Lyrically it leans into hedonism, nightlife, street romance, and excess, while visually embracing leather, denim, scuffed boots, and a rebellious persona.