Electronic music

I actually heard it yesterday and liked it a lot. Her best so far IMHO.

Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 is excellent. It’s a large number of short electronic pieces that are all interesting in different ways. Chris Carter was formerly of Throbbing Gristle - this is much less extreme than TG but thoroughly engaging

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Another artist with a wide range of output.

This is a good introduction to the wonderful world of Four Tet

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Intelligent dance music:-

Boards Of Canada
Aphex Twin
Autechre
Global Communication

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Looking at some of the suggestions there is such a range of musical styles present it makes me think…What is ‘electronic’ ? If its the use of synths and drum machines then does Martial/Industrial/EBM/Darkwave count?

Laibach
Front 242
Throbbing Gristle
VNV Nation
Witch of the Vale.

Although these bands rely heavily on electronic effects for their sound they are a mile away from ambient, drone, glitch styles or Stockhausen’s compositions for example. Electronic is such a broad church as to be meaningless I think when classifying bands. Thats not ment as a criticism of the OP’s opening post, just an observation on the difficulty in making any suggestion.

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Anna Meredith’s album, Varmints does include some acoustic instruments but the opening track Nautilus, for example, is a synthesiser-based roller coaster and a great system workout.

Roger

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Gerriet Sharma The IKO Story. Electro-accoustic loudspeaker ambisonics. He is live at the Dome, Birmingham University Sat 15 Feb. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/lcahm/departments/music/events/2025/spring-25/15feb-beastdome

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Here’s Gerriet Sharma in Cologne which might give an idea of what to expect.

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Yes “electronic music” clearly means different things to different people. In my case I don’t really think of the use of synthesisers instead of more traditional instruments as electronic music, rather electronic music conjours up aural images of unique sounds, like synthesisers were when first produced …the VCS3 I used on an electronic music evening class had no keyboard, so wasn’t playable in discrete notes on an equal temerament scale!

The first single I cut with a friend when I was 17 featured my home made synthesiser … loosely modelled on the PE Minisonic… it could never stay in tune, and the logarithmic VC circuitry wasn’t great… so notes were nt accurate … but it had lots of twiddly knobs… so it was used as a tonal noise and texture maker, with recorded Chinese percussion cut into tape loops on an Akai 4 track… (this was before electronic samplers were readily available) …. Needless to say the single wasn’t a hit… although it sounded very ‘analogue’ and organic.
My friend however went on to become quite a successful alternative music musician with now many released albums.

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I agree. I was thinking today after posting, that if a reasonably recognisable version of a tune could be made via acoustic instruments then its not truly ‘electronic music’ rather just using electronic instruments as a short cut.

You could easily end up with a list of over 1,000 albums.

Here’s something more recent:

Tunisian DJ and producer Deena Abdelwahed’s album Jbal Rrsas.
Has a similar effect on me as when I first listened to the debut albums of Underworld and Leftfield—pushing the boundaries of what electronic music can achieve.

This is the opening track.
Play it loud.

Pitchfork’s 50 best IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) albums is a useful guide for discoveries from the last 30 years. The intro explains what IDM is.

Funny how threads often turn on definitions; no idea if this this counts:


Both composed (created?) in the 50s so no synthesiser involved.

Roger

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Wendy Carlos, a lead in west coast / subtractive synthesis… with her various interpretations on this album using Moog synthesisers of the late 60s.
Quite incredible for its time, 1968, and still a good listen. Her way of being anti-establishment by playing Bach… genius.

And The Well Tempered Synthesizer in 1969.

If you listen carefully it’s super impressive how she played with the dynamics… to make it sound more analogue and interesting… not an easy feat back then. Track 14 on TWTS has Carlos describing her experiments and methods using the primitive synthesizers.

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Thank you everyone, certainly plenty of artists to explore
Thanks
Gary

3 albums turned me on to electronic music back in the 70’s, Switched on Bach (which I still have on original vinyl), Kraftwerk Autobahn and Tomita Snowflakes are Dancing. They still all hold up today. Edit, 4 actually - Tangerine Dream Ricochet

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Me too for the first two… Autobahn, Switched-On Bach, and then also Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene… I found them mesmerising…

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Yes I forgot about Oxygene!

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and another seminal album from back then which got played to death chez Hollow was Rick Wakeman 6 Wives of Henry V111