Le Tigre’s 1999 self titled album (Le Tigre, 1999) used a mix of analog technology: samplers, keyboards, drum machines – as well as MPC and Reason. The ‘glitches’ caused by this technology are in the sound of the record, often characterised as ‘post-Riot Grrrl’ or ‘Electroclash’.
In glitch feminism, a glitch is seen as a rupture or an opportunity for change – rather than a mistake to be edited out in a patriarchal studio setting.
Le Tigre said in an interview in ‘Pink Noises’ (Rodgers, T. 2013):
Johanna Fateman: It really struck us that, when men make mistakes, it’s fetishized as a glitch
Kathleen Hanna: Something beautiful.
Johanna: And when women do it, it’s like . . .
Kathleen: . . . a hideous mistake.
Johanna: Right, it’s not considered an artistic innovation or a statement or an intentional thing.
People with resources, typically white men from the global north, making music with glitches is a way in which the glitch is fetishised – and how the glitch occurs when making something with inexpensive equipment because of the economic context one is making sound in; using “8-bit samples” or second-hand equipment like drum machines for example.
The band also wanted to take matters into their own hands more, by learning ProTools so that they didn’t have to work with an engineer (who was probably a man) who wanted things to be smooth. Kathleen Hanna said that she was interested in “going even more into the glitch theory in the future”. Her “whole first record” as The Julie Ruin was “about the glitch and the mistake and the hiccup, and turning that into art.”
They were also not heavily featured in electronic music magazines of the time (~ 2013). Fateman said in the Pinknoises interview that “If there’s glitches in your music, and that’s what it’s about, then that’s what it’s about. Glitches in your music, and political lyrics – it’s almost like the fact that there’s this content in our music, and the primary content isn’t that it’s electronic music. It’s almost like that’s why it gets ignored.”
References:
Rodgers, T 2010, Pink Noises : Women on Electronic Music and Sound, Duke University Press, Durham. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [16 October 2025].
Le Tigre. Le Tigre. Mr. Lady Records MRLR 07, 1999. [16 October 2025].
Russell, L. (2018). #GLITCHFEMINISM – Legacy Russell. [online] Legacyrussell.com. Available at: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM. [16 October 2025]