Freakbeat

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Freakbeat is a beat music subgenre that peaked between 1966 and 1970.

The music was typically created by four-piece bands experimenting with newly-emerging studio production techniques. Elements of the freakbeat sound include: muscular productions with strong direct drum beats; loud and frenzied guitar riffs; and extreme effects such as fuzztone, flanging, distortion and compression and phasing on the vocal or drum tracks.

The term was created many years after the fact in the 1980s, by the music writer Phil Smee for a music style that has been described as a missing link between the early to mid-1960s mod R&B scene and the psychedelic rock and progressive rock genres that emerged in the late 1960s. Many freakbeat songs could also be described as garage rock. Freakbeat emerged as guitar-based rock and roll and pop music morphed into rock music and psychedelic rock in the mid to late 1960s.

The freakbeat scene was more prevalent in the United Kingdom than in the United States, and was especially popular in the London suburb of Bexleyheath. Notable freakbeat bands included The Creation, The Move, Fire, and the Wimple Winch. The term is also often used to describe similar music from mainland Europe, particularly Holland, where it also known as Nederbeat.