Ballardian is an adjective derived from the British novelist J. G. Ballard (1930–2009), recorded by Collins English Dictionary for the world of his fiction: modern life turned dystopian, desolate man-made landscapes and the mental states they breed. Novels such as The Drowned World (1962), Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975) explored flooded cities, motorways and tower blocks as landscapes of the psyche.
Few writers have marked music so deeply. Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, began as The Normal with Warm Leatherette, based on Crash, and Joy Division took the title Atrocity Exhibition from Ballard’s 1970 book. The influence reaches drone and bass music too: the Chicago group Locrian dramatised The Crystal World on a 2010 album, The Bug and Dylan Carlson drew on his urban dystopias for Concrete Desert, and Kode9 turned to The Drowned World for his 2015 album Nothing. In music Ballardian describes a mood as much as a literature: concrete, isolation and the steady hum of infrastructure.