The story of electronic music and composition has, in recent decades, become a significant musical legacy. Seen by many as a novelty for a long time, the synthesiser and drum machine derived pop of the late 1970s and early 1980s finally landed the squeals and squelches of solder and circuit y in the mainstream, validating an extensive period of painstaking research and experimentation dating back to the late 19th Century. The connect ion between Edgard Varese, La Roux, Brian Eno, The Human League and The Plastic Cow Goes Moo is a complex and solder-heavy one.
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Drew Daniel creates an exploded view of the album's multiple agendas: a series of close readings of each song, shot through with a sequence of thematic entries on key concepts, strategies, and contexts. Learn More
London, 1966: Paul McCartney met a group of three electronic musicians called Unit Delta Plus. McCartney was there because he had become fascinated by electronic music, and wanted to know how it was made. He was one of the first rock musicians to grasp its potential, but even he was notably late to the party. Learn More
David Bowie first came to notice with the 1969 song "Space Oddity," after which he promptly vanished from the public eye, immersing himself in a long period of musical experimentation and reemerging in 1972 as the glam rock androgyne Ziggy Stardust. Learn More
In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape. Learn More
Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. But, believe it or not, they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality. Learn More
The undisputed king of pop-culture parody, “Weird Al” Yankovic has sold more comedy recordings than any other artist in history, receiving three Grammy Awards (and 14 nominations) in the process. Learn More