Top Electronic Music Albums from the 60s.
February 29th, 2004 by Koldo Barroso
This is the first part of a series of reviews featuring a selection of the top electronic albums from the last 4 decades. When we say "electronic music" we are meaning the term in all it’s extension, which includes all forms of electronic music (dance, synth pop, experimental, avant garde, techno, etc).
The selection of the top albums has been done under the criteria of their influence for the forthcoming generation of electronic artists bringing new forms and musical languages to the audience.
This ranking was hard due to the lack of comercial releases of many of the electronic works, pieces, and experiments during this decade. Many of the best and most important electronic works were never released until decades later, specially because the early electronic music in that era was mainly produced by artists who were working in experimental and media fields. In the case of the experimental field, composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, and Steve Reich, to name a few, who never saw their works comercially released until many years after, despite being the true fathers of electronic music.
In the case of the media field, producers and musicians such as Samuel J. Hoffman, one of the best theremin players, they just let the audience know their music through their numerous works for TV shows, movie soundtracks, etc.
RAYMOND SCOTT - "Shouting Sounds for Baby"
Epic, 1962
Raymond Scott’s unique contribution to the 20th Century Culture is recognized for being the creator of most of the popular TV cartoon sounds and effects including the famous Warner Bros. Released on three long-playing records in conjunction with the Gesell Institute of Child Development, Inc., "Soothing Sounds…" was originally intended to be an “aural toy” for the “feeding, teething, play, sleep and fretful periods” of infants in three distinct age groups.
The album consists of a serie of vibrations, soft synth tones, repetitive melodies, and relatively simple arrangements which create an atmosphere of relaxation. This album is probably the first ambient electronic work ever released, featuring hypnotic and trance inducing melodies, combinations of airy melodies and rhytmic bass lines, experimental arrangements on loop melodies, syncopated rhythm and slightly atonal harmonies, and extremely minimal tracks.
Many of the characteristics of this album where formulated by Brian Eno’s 1975 album "Discreet Music", which based the standars of the modern ambient music, that can be heard today in the recordings of Aphex Twin, Future Sound of London and many other artists.
MILTON BABBITT - "Ensembles for Synthesizer"
Columbia, 1964
Born on 1916 in Philadelphia, Milton Babbitt influenced a wide range of contemporary musicians and is also renowned for his great talent and instinct for jazz and American popular music. In the 50’s Babbitt began working with an RCA synthesizer and has written a large body of electronic music.
This album was recorded at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center between 1962 and 1964 and demonstrates Babbitt’s methods employing the 12 tones of the even tempered scale, and a vast array of pitch, rhythmic, registral, textural, and timbral degrees, which are contained within interrelating collections or ensembles. These ensembles, which differ timbrally, rhythmically, dynamically, registrally and durationally, are yet closely related in the pitch domain. These characteristics suggest yet another pertinence to the title, in the sense of collection, aggregate, and set. Babbitt uses the synthesizer primarily for this ability to move very quickly and accurately among these delineated parameters. The result is a kaleidoscope of electronic timbres.
This album represents one of the first released works of contemporary music from the 60’s, exploring the capabilities of the synthesizer as an expressive, acurate, and versatile tool.
MORTON SUBOTNICK - "Silver Apples of the Moon"
Wergo, 1967
Born in Los Angeles on 1933, Morton Subotnick is one of the United States’ premier composers of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems.
This work which brought Subotnick celebrity was written in 1967 using the Buchla modular synthesizer, an electronic instrument built by Donald Buchla using suggestions from Subotnick and Ramon Sender, and contains synthesized tone colors striking for its day, and a control over pitch that many other contemporary electronic composers had relinquished. There is a rich counterpoint of gestures, in marked contrast to the simple surfaces of much contemporary electronic music. There are sections marked by very clear pulses, another unusual trait for its time; “Silver Apples of the Moon” was commissioned by Nonesuch Records, marking the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium. Subotnick wrote this piece in two parts to correspond to the two sides of an LP.
The record was an American bestseller in the classical music category, an extremely unusual occurrence for any contemporary concert music at the time.
AMM/MEV - "Live Electronic Music Improvised"
Mainstream, 1968
This album is the fussion of the two European early electronic bands: M.E.V. (Musica Elettronica Viva) and A.M.M. This is probably the first album of these characteristics, because electronic music had been a studio product until that time.
Musica Elettronica Viva was a collective of musicians in Rome working in free improvisations of experimental, electronic jazz, and formed at the time by Richard Teitelbaum, Frederic Rzewski, Patricia and Ivan Coaquette, and Alvin Curran. A.M.M. was a free improvisation group in London formed by Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, Christopher Hobbs, Eddie Prevost, and Keith Rowe.
BRUCE HAACK - "The Way-Out Album for Children"
Dimension 5, 1968
Bruce Clinton Haack was born on 1931 in Alberta, Canada. In 1963, he founded the Dimension 5 label along with Esther Nelson, who collaborated on 11 children’s records that combined electronic music, storytelling, and a psychedelic worldview.
This album was pretty much influenced by acid rock from the late 60’s, which they had explored on later releases like "Electric Lucifer". "The Way Out Record for Children" features an “Introduction” to the Dimension 5 gang, and movement songs like “Medieval Dancing.” “School for Robots,” is an ear-body coordination game, features robotic vocals created by Haack speaking in a monotone and tapping his Adam’s apple. The song also reflects Haack’s silly sense of humor in puns like “Greetings, fellow robots. I hope oil goes well with you… Here is your robot music. Do not rust until you can dance to it.”
There is a big dose of instrumental electronic experimentation also in tracks such as “Rubberbands". This album is a precedent to the work of electronic artists from the 70’s such as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan.
JEAN JACQUES PERREY - "The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound"
Vanguard, 1968
Jean Jacques Perrey was one of the great names of space age pop. Inspired by inventor Georges Jenny, Perrey became the greatest proponent of the Ondioline, a tiny keyboard that could produce fascinating flute-like sounds full of vibrato, exporting it to the U.S. and introducing its spacey sound to American pop and sampled by numerous DJs today.
What I have tried to do,” wrote Perrey in the liner notes to this album, “is to bring the electronic sonorities to popular music.” This he accomplished via the ondioline, Moog, magnetic tapes,and other electronic instruments. He also wrote and co-wrote most of the material on this disc, which sounds like nothing so much as late-’60s instrumental “mood” music albums as refracted through a slightly more ambitious, electronic lens.
WALTER CARLOS - "Switched on Bach"
ESD, 1968
Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on 1939, composer Walter Carlos launched electronic music to commercial heights with this album, popularizing the Moog synthesizer and it’s sound, as well as demostrating to a new generation of musicians the posibilities of this instrument. After meeting Robert Moog, Carlos began playing his Moog modular synthesizer."Switched-On Bach" is an interpretation of the legendary composer’s most renowned fugues and movements on the Moog synthesizer. Although this work was recorded in a 8 tracks tape recorder using numerous takes and overdubs, 60-track and 24-track recorders became widely used after the release of the album, beign the concepcion of a new way of production.The record became the first classical record to be certified platinum by the RIAA and earned three Grammy Awards.
Varese Sarabande, 1969
In the late 60’s, American pianist Dick Hyman investigated the earliest periods of jazz and ragtime and researched and recorded the music of some of the first early jazz figures. Hyman experimented with various keyboard instruments, including Baldwin and Lowrey organs. This release was his first with what was then a completely newfangled machine, the Moog synthesizer.
Hyman hits the listener with a few spacier, improvised numbers that come off as very accessible avant-garde music. This album is one of the earliest works focused in the Moog synthesizer before a new generation of rock and electronic musicians would make it popular in the 70’s.
HUGO MONTENEGRO - "Moog Power"
RCA, 1969
Montenegro is one of the great chameleons of space-age pop and his works for numerous Hollywood soundtracks are celebrated. On this album, Montenegro works with his usual group of session musicians covering a series of 1969 vintage pop hits in a slick style, giving a retro/futuristic edge by the use of Moog synthesizer. Hugo Montenegro also penned a nifty original with “Moog Power” , a mostly instrumental tune that uses the Moog to create a thick bottom end to support its funky, jazzy groove. The only track that misfires is “Touch Me,” due to its too-fast tempo and its use of the Moog to create some silly sci-fi laser gun sounds during its verses. Otherwise, Montenegro keeps the songs tight, smooth-sounding, and subtly futuristic. For this record Montenegro did all the writing in only one week. “People already know that the Moog can make odd sounds,” says Hugo. “I was interested in the Moog’s musical values. I wanted to use it as part of an orchestra - and also make commercial sense, if possible.”
VARIOUS - "Electronic Music III"
Turnabout, 1969
The pioneers of 1950s avant-garde electronic music are featured on this collection, an unique sort of sound that greatly influenced the current generation of electronica dj’s. Luciano Berio’s “Thema” features a combination of inventive electronics and opera singer (Berio’s wife) Cathy Berberian reading a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Here, modernism joins the analog space age. Jacob Druckman’s “Animus 1″ is a fine example of proto-glitch, with playful and unsettling sounds animating his very accomplished experimentation. Turkish-American composer Ilhan Mimaroglu takes over the entire Side 2 with his singularly ingenious “magnetic tape” music (7 short sections and 1 longer piano/electronic piece). This LP, along with other similar volumes, are important pieces of music history.
Other essential electronic works written in the 60’s, but not released in the 1960s:
-Karlheinz Stockhausen "Mikrophonie 1"
-Steve Reich "It’s Gonna Rain"
-John Cage "Cartridge Music"
-Pierre Henry "Messe pour le Temps Présent"
-Edgar Varese "Deserts"
-Luciano Berio "Visage"
-Kenneth Gaburo "Antiphony III"
-Lejaren Hiller and Robert Baker "Computer Cantata"
-Ilhan Mimaroglu "Bowery Bum"
-Herbert Brun "Non Sequitur VI"
-Iannis Xenakis "Musiques Formelles"
-Leon Kirschner "String Quartet No. 3"
-Francois Bayle "L’oiseau-chanteur"
-James Tenney "Collage #1"
-Pauline Oliveros "Bye Bye Butterfly"
Some interesting compilations released later:
-Various. "Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music 1948-1980", Ellipsis Arts.
-Institute for Sonology. "Early Electronic Music 1959-1969", Sub Rosa.
-Various. "Early Modulations: Vintage Volts", Caipirinha.