Bandcamp / Buy For those in the know, commercial âelectronicaâ was always a sham: a marketing scheme masquerading as a genre that haphazardly threw together artists and scenes which often had little to do with one another. Originally used in the early 1990s to describe a wide swath of experimental techno, the term was quickly co-opted by the American music industry, which hoped to capitalize on the success of European artists like Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, the Prodigy, and the Chemical Brothers and break the sound into the U.S. pop charts. (The fact that these artists were all riffing on styles that had originated years earlier in Black and brown communities in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York makes the electronica push feel like a particularly egregious act of cultural erasure.) In retrospect, it might seem absurd, but for countless young listenersâmany of whom likely first encountered this music via their local alternative-rock radio stationâelectronica was a gateway into a whole new world, or at least a new sound palette. One of those listeners was Mike Silver, a Montreal native who would eventually go on to make music of his own as CFCF.