One artist who embodies this in her everyday practice is Glaswegian Vickie McDonald, who makes bass-inspired, noisy techno as KLEFT, and simultaneously plays in a two-piece punk band Cartilage. When talking about her involvement in the two scenes, she says, “it used to be two separate things, but ... probably since the internet, you get a lot of crossover.” She laughs as she observes, “genre is kind of bullshit really!”

For Vickie, the sonics of techno are where the remaining influences of punk are to be found. “Once you realise what you actually like outside of genres,” she notes, the connections between the two become easier to spot. “For me, I realised that I like certain sounds: distorted sounds, loud sounds, heavy sounds, beats. You get them both in metal, noise and electronic stuff.” This comes across in the violent, arresting sonics of both of her musical projects, and is emblematic of the dramatic rule-breaking mentality that punk engendered. “It doesn’t really change with making punk music or whether I’m making electronic music ‘cos I see them as an extension of my creativity, just in a slightly different direction.”



However, Vickie suggests that it could be the subsistence of punk’s DIY mentality that is what is keeping smaller DJs and producers from achieving wide-spread success in what has become a slick, commercialised industry. “People in electronic music scenes, that tends to be their job. They’re able to make a living off that,” she notes. “Something that I’m noticing, playing in electronic scenes [is an attitude of]: I do everything myself, I don’t have a booker, I don’t have an agent … Having to do everything yourself, turning up to a show where people haven’t had to do everything themselves, is a bit of a difference.”