Electronic Music Appreciation Topic

As I read over this thread, I happen to be listening via headphones to Jessica Rylan's Interior Designs CD from Important Records.



Just thought some of you might want to know.

The sticker blurb on the disc says Interior Designs is Rylan's "first officially published instrumental work for synthesizer," and that "these compositions re more 'classic' in nature than her work as Can't. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros, Eliana Radigue, Iannis Xenakis and especially Thomas Lehn, Rylan confidently takes her place among these monumental artists with this collection of strikingly original pieces recorded on a Serge Modular as well as analog synthesizers Rylan built herself."

Well, this stuff may be "classic" in nature, but Mozart wouldn't recognize it. Alas, poor Mozart missed out hearing Jessica Rylan. But I haven't. And you needn't, either!

My latest serious listening session (me, my listening room, my stereo rig, darkness and quiet ... and my music [to fill the quiet]) comprised two works. The first was Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard's intriguing Symphony No.3, Collages, a work dating from around 1961 when it received its first performance in London, and a piece, to quote from the 1994 liner notes of David Drew, which "is singled out among Gerhard's orchestral and instrumental music by its incorporation of electronic tape," a technique Gerhard gained familiarity with from an acquaintance, Edgar Varese, with whom he had been on friendly terms in Spain in the 1930s. Gerhard takes the textural fusion of electronics and orchestra to further depths than did Varese in his own Déserts. It's a good listen, and remains maybe my favorite of the four (all of them interesting) Gerhard symphonies.

Some of you readers of this particular thread may not be hard-core "classical music" listeners, and Gerhard ranks as a "classical music" composer, albeit of the post-modern persuasion. But this is a piece you may well enjoy if you are a fan of experimental tape/electronic works. Yes, the orchestra uses standard instruments (often in non-standard ways), but a plethora of intriguing electronic sounds swirl around, bounding in and out of the orchestral fabric, floating, carousing, attacking from various angles (just like a ... a collage!) throughout the 20 minute work. Again, it's a good listen -- both edgy and relaxing, sometimes at the same time. But then, Gerhard is a master. I would hope that this Symphony No.3 might draw some of you into the modern/post-modern/contemporary vein of "classical music" if you are not yet already there. If you are there and have yet to experience the Gerhard Third, what are you waiting for?

I continued my listening session by following up with Part I (approximately 30 minutes) of My Cat Is An Alien's Leave me in the black No-Thing, a intense amalgamation (Isn't that somewhat like a collage?) of guitars (one electric cosmic guitar and one electric astral guitar), electronics and percussion, all skillfully, and improvisationally, handled by the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. (And look! Another connection. Two Roberto's!) This stuff rocks the ears, to be sure.

Though some may term this "noise music", tonight I like to think of it in the more cultured, and musical term "sound sculpture." The brothers Opalio (whose band's name I prefer in the Italian: Il Mio Gatto e' un Alieno) transcend both popular and "classical" musics to hone into a range that rather defies categorization. Thus, "sound sculpture." But it makes a fitting coupling with Roberto Gerhard's Third Symphony.

When might these two artists meet again in my listening room? Possibly one day soon I'll take up Gerhard's most intriguing dramatic cantata based on the Albert Camus novel, The Plague. Part II of Leave me in the black No-Thing may well prove complimentary to that profoundly moving walk on the dark side.

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Not exactly electronic music, that. But it pricks the same nerve endings.

From one of dark ambient's biggest names: Lustmord - Dark Matter




I doubt the idea is entirely new, but the results are nice enough, if a bit boring.

"This project is derived from an audio library of cosmological activity collected between 1993 and 2003. It was gathered from various sources including NASA (Cape Canaveral, Ames, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arecibo), The Very Large Array, The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and various educational institutions and private contributors throughout the USA. While space is a virtual vacuum, it does not mean there is no sound in space. It exists in space as naturally occurring electromagnetic vibrations, many well within the range of human hearing while others exist at different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and these can be adjusted with software to bring them within our audio range. The recordings of these interactions in space come from several different environments including radio, ultra violet, microwave and X-ray data and within these spectra a wide range of sources including interstellar plasma and molecules, radio galaxies, pulsars masers and quasars, charged particle interactions and emissions, radiation, exotic astrophysical objects, cosmic jets and flares from magnetars. Conceived and Produced by B.Lustmord. Recorded in Los Angeles October-December 2015."

KICK Cycle (I; II; III; IIII)

Arca’s ambitious musical cycle concludes with four albums spanning reggaeton, club experiments, and tender synth lullabies. It’s a slippery, unwieldy, mind-bending collection of sound design that drives home the ur-theme of all her music: transformation.

Arca’s music refuses to be contained. From the very beginning, it has thrived on its intractability. Her first two EPs, 2012’s Stretch 1 and Stretch 2, oozed beyond category, harbingers of an elasticity then creeping into the fringes of electronic music. The Venezuelan-born electronic musician was equally cavalier about format: On the 2013 mixtape &&&&& and 2016’s Entrañas, she strung together bewildering assemblages of rhythms and textures into maze-like 25-minute suites; on 2020’s @@@@@, she mapped an even more labyrinthine path through a single-track collage more than an hour long. Later that year, she used an AI to generate 100 versions of her song “Riquiquí.” (source)


This is some of the best new music (of any genre) I've come across. Arca defies categorization - but is incredibly inventive in what ever she does.

https://soundcloud.com/arca1000000%2Fjoya