Electronic Music in the ’60s

In the 1960s, many psychedelic-era bands experimented with synthesizers and musique concrete’s tape-manipulation techniques – creating new genres with each experiment.

Beaver and Krause took children’s music a step further with their use of bleeps and bloops while Silver Apples and Intersystems took it one step further.

The birth of the Moog

Robert Moog pioneered electronic music before iPods and smartphone apps existed with his pioneering synthesizers, enabling musicians to sonically express themselves and spawning movements such as progressive rock, disco, Detroit techno and New York hip-hop. His legacy still resonates today!

At age 19, Robert Moog created his first instrument: a Theremin. Later he established R.A.Moog Co with his father to produce kits for Leon Theremin’s more expensive Theremin instrument and other electronic instruments. These were originally offered as cheaper alternatives.

The Moog first found success when Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach – her electronic representation of “let them eat cake”. With its strobing proto-techno cuts and futuristic chorus lines, Switched-On Bach signaled that the Moog was here to stay.

In the 1970s, progressive rock bands such as Yes, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk used Moog’s bold tones for their sound, as well as avant garde composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Riley and Morton Subotnick who used it.

Giorgio Moroder and other funk and disco musicians made the Moog famous. More recently, artists like Brian Eno and Bjork have employed it to explore new sonic possibilities.

Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff established Tonto’s Expanding Head Band in 1963 – one of the key forces driving British electronic music during the 60s. Both musicians with backgrounds in jazz and blues combined Moog modules, ARP sequencers and keyboard controllers into an expansive multi-synth that could be played simultaneously by both men, setting the scene for progressive rock and industrial music genres.

Fifty Foot Hose

Fifty Foot Hose was an early proponent of electronic instruments in rock music. Bandleader Tedeschi first experienced Edgar Varese’s Poeme Electronique at the Phillips Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958, which set his imagination afire with all things electronic – “it sent chills down my spine and raised hairs on the back of my neck”, according to Tedeschi himself. Soon thereafter, Fifty Foot Hose adopted both synthesizer and Theremin instruments – producing an instrument “ready to explode musically.”

They combined rhythm & blues and gospel-influenced songs with synthesizer-sounds such as squeaks, bubblings and noises reminiscent of Theremin explosions to produce an engaging collection of experimental psychedelic pop filled with all of the expected sonic fireworks of Moog-wielding freak-out bands.

Cauldron, Fifty Foot Hose’s 1968 album released under their own name, tends to go under-appreciated even among die-hard Moog fans. But this album belongs to an exclusive subset of acid-era albums that combined electronic instruments and musique concrete tape-manipulation techniques – such as United States of America’s self-titled release; Silver Apples’ An Electric Storm; Lothar and the Hand People Presenting Lothar and the Hand People; etc.

The album is an impressive showcase of studio techniques and dexterities: pop constructions collide with bursts of nasty interference; filtering turns drum patterns into doo-wop; orchestral arrangements become audible chaos; seventh circle nonsense drifts away, all evidence of creative minds at work.

Imagine, for a moment, that all this experimentation had been integrated into mainstream rock genres such as jammed-out bluesy boogie ala Canned Heat or Allman Brothers or nasal pseudo-country harmony singing ala CSN&Y etc. Unfortunately, that would likely have resulted in far less interesting or memorable music than the resultant alternative!

Intersystems

At an early stage in electronic music’s development, key milestones took place at technology fairs – events where curious visitors could ogle extravagant inventions and state-of-the-art gadgets. There was also a growing community of composers using analog equipment like oscillators and filters to craft immersive and disorienting soundscapes.

Intersystems from Canada were an example of such an unusual group, producing three albums of droning Moog-play that remain an unforgettable statement of oddness today. Recently, Alga Marghen reissued their 1971 debut Zero Time album which features sampled spoken word and musical rubble mixed with electronic flourishes to form something truly unnerved-sounding and odd-sounding music that delights listeners’ ears with its quirky sounds and electronics thrown in for good measure.

Parker creates an unsettling sense of space and time on this album through his glacially paced delivery, his voice becoming an abstract drone floating across each track. On Ghost, atonal sweeps and rumbles appear designed as a backdrop for Parker’s slurred narrative; further expanding this ethereal soundscape on Revelation of the Birds where Parker’s gravelly vocals become lost within a swirling mass of synthesized droplets and splashes.

Intersystems were masters of the Moog, yet also experimented with various instruments and techniques – from adding pick-ups and distortion effects to drums; to adapting electronic instruments like the harpsichord and violin (heard with beautiful wavering effect on their album’s title track) in stunning fashion. Thus they should be counted among the first generation of musicians who ventured outside traditional musical forms that gave rise to synth rock, psychedelic rock and other such “future pop” genres.

Intersystems continued to push boundaries in subsequent years, working with orchestral players on an opera version of Brokeback Mountain and recording 1976’s essential percussion composition Pastoral Symphony for John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Though their unusual use of acoustic instruments and Moog synthesizers may have given birth to an imaginary genre known as Synthedelia, their work stands as an important predecessor of contemporary minimal techno, drone music and ambient genres.

Beaver & Krause

One of the first records to fully explore Moog synthesizer technology, In A Wild Sanctuary is an epic sonic journey combining nature with synthesized sound. Ranging from call-response blues and calliope to an uplifting choir featuring both organ and Hammond piano accompaniment, In A Wild Sanctuary’s soundscape ecology blends bucolic enchantment with foreboding unease as humans grapple with how we relate to nature.

Beaver was a lifelong Republican who specialized in sound effects for movies; Krause had an eclectic folk background and briefly sang with The Weavers before becoming part of Beaver & Krause after meeting on a session for Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman who encouraged them to use their new Moog as an instrument that would appeal to counterculture audiences.

This result is an intriguing album that remains accessible despite all of its experimental elements. “Milkweed Love” begins with a detuned synth drone; proto-techno cut “It Comes On Anyhow” wouldn’t sound out of place on an Chemical Brothers psychedelic juggernaut 20 years later; while twinkling electro-tones of title track point towards 90s IDM music. Yet most of this record remains an aural meditation experience that concludes with Earth becoming like a huge space vessel – leaving most listeners relaxed!

Beaver & Krause’s album may have gone underappreciated since its release, yet it stands as an important milestone in electronic music history. At that time, the Moog was still relatively unfamiliar, so Beaver & Krause’s fusion of natural sounds with synthesized music set an important precedent for future recordings in this genre.

Notably, this list is by no means comprehensive; many excellent albums like Terry Riley’s organ opus A Rainbow in Curved Air were left off, along with rock and pop records that experimented with electronica without crossing over fully into it. Still, we believe the 10 featured here represent an accurate cross section of electronica’s early development.