Indie Sleaze & disintegrating digital memory
Or how all our old pics vanished
If you’re of a certain age and a teensy bit ‘online,’ you’ll have spotted the return of the Indie Sleaze aesthetic in recent years.
Also known as the Landfill Indie era in the UK, this was a period from the mid-2000s to the early-2010s where indie music was suddenly Cool™.
It was a time when guitars got their sexy back, and every other band had a “the” in its name.
You know, like The Strokes or The Kooks or The Rapture or The Libertines or The Bravery or The Klaxons or The Rakes or The Fratellis or The Hives or… well, you get the picture.
Quick side note: The nerd that makes up a huge part of my personality wants to kick back against the categorisation of that whole musical era as Indie Sleaze/Landfill Indie because there were so many bands in that period that were pumping out truly transcendent tracks.
Just consider groups like Wild Beasts or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or TV on the Radio or Animal Collective — I could go on and on, but that’s missing the point of the piece. Still, there was nothing I could do to stop myself.
Anyway, let’s get back to it.
Indie Sleaze wasn’t just about music — fashion played a huge role too.
Think of how Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse dressed, wearing clothing that blended a thrift store aesthetic with classic rock signifiers, a sort of reimagining of a past they hadn’t lived through.
As someone who was a teenager and young adult in this time, it feels strange that the era was only officially named in 2021, something done by an Instagram account of the same name.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently off about this. Eras like the punk and hippy movements don’t abruptly start on one day and stop on another. Instead they blur into reality and it’s only afterwards they appear as a definitive period.
There was something I found surprising though: after recently flicking through the indiesleaze Instagram account, I realised that period is a digital black hole.
From the mid 2000s I was going out, hitting up gigs, and making questionable fashion decisions — yet there are very few photos or videos of me in that era that survive.
The reason? The move from analogue to digital media.
To return to talking about poorly defined eras, there’s a period from around the late 90s to the mid 2010s where people stopped using film and began using digital cameras, but cloud services and backup hygiene weren’t common.
Take me as an example.
At my parents’, I still have some old analogue photos I took when I was in primary school in the 90s, yet I only have a smattering of digital pics until 2012, the time I started using iCloud.
Whether they’re on forgotten phones, stolen laptops, or broken hard drives, almost all my old photos are gone.
I’m certain most people are in this predicament.
We made the switch to digital too early and without proper thought, meaning we didn’t have an eye on maintaining memories that were stored in a new format.
For some this may mean missing pictures of children, long-lost friends, or — most importantly of all — evidence you dressed like a prick in the Indie Sleaze era.
Yes, there’s something to be said about being part of the last generation to grow up without the constant glare of social media, but I think it’s a little worse to have so little photos to show of your youth.
As much as I have my suspicions about cloud services (giving huge tech companies access to important moments in my life gives me an intense ick), there’s no doubt they’ve kept my pictures safe from my general incompetence.
Sorry to break the trend, but yeah, things are better now. This system is, overall, pretty good.
And maybe, just maybe, I should be thankful my family and friends don’t have easy access to photos of every awful outfit I wore during my teenage years.
So I guess, thank you, disintegrating digital memories?
