Madchester Essentials

Madchester Essentials

The post-industrial city of Manchester was a breeding ground for the darkest, doomiest punk to come out of the late ’70s. But one of its biggest proponents—the Factory Records label—would go on to open The Hacienda, the club that shifted the city’s musical energies toward acid-house escapism. And by the late ’80s, the city’s rock and rave legacies converged into the sound of Madchester, an ecstasy-induced fusion of streetwise grit and piano-gilded grooves. Its reign lasted only a few years, but the hazy-headed rush of The Stone Roses and organ-pumped jams of The Charlatans reintroduced a brash swagger to UK rock that set the stage for Britpop.

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