The legendary London label announced the news yesterday with a compilation featuring 100 minutes of music from their past, present and future
PC Music, the legendary London label credited with forever changing the sound of pop music, yesterday announced that it’s coming to an end, just as it prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary. “After a decade of activity, 2023 will be PC Music’s final year of new releases,” reads a note on the label’s website. “Following that, the label will be dedicated to archival projects and special reissues. We have an undisclosed number of new albums and singles coming very soon. For now, 10 x 10 minutes of content from the past, present & future. Personal Computer Music forever.”
On a special webpage devoted to PC Music’s 10th anniversary, a 100-minute-long playlist featuring old and new music from its artists is available to stream, with material from Cook, Kane West, Easyfun, Dux Content, Ö, Grrl, umru, Datalord, Caro♡, and Bopples.
In addition to Cook and the artists included on the tenth-anniversary playlist, PC Music’s roster also included Hannah Diamond, Danny L Harle, and Hyd. The late SOPHIE was a frequent collaborator, as well as Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kero Kero Bonito, and Rebecca Black.
Founded by AG Cook in 2013, PC Music is behind the highly experimental strain of experimental pop that has forever altered the global music landscape, serving as one of the main cornerstones to the subgenre hyperpop today. Coming up in London’s electronic music scene, the PC Music sound – with its dizzying mash-up of trashy pop, hardstyle tempos and trance melodies – served as a fresh antidote to the overly-serious club music prevalent across Europe at the time, bridging the gap between the underground and mainstream, and inspiring DIY musicians, mainstream pop stars, EDM festival headliners, and SoundCloud rappers alike.
PC Music’s conceptual ideas on consumerism, digital identity and communities also came at a time when social media was in its infancy – its playful spin on marketing speak and overly-glossed, hyperreal imagery functioned as both a critique and celebration of the contemporary pop horizon. “The attitude that anyone can make music on a laptop with friends, make one hyper-sleek portrait, and declare themselves a pop star was massively influential... Except it was genuinely cheeky when PC Music did it, ’cause it was a marketing-themed game, and not game-themed marketing,” Caroline Polachek told Dazed in 2019.
“PC Music was the first wave of taking shit that was lowbrow and making it highbrow, without being too cool for school,” Skrillex said. “It was so artful, but also disruptive, and it spoke to the weirdos.”
Listen to the 100-minute-long playlist on the official website, and revisit Dazed’s history of PC Music here.