While early rock was at its height, several composers began exploring electronic music for the first time.
Dockstader made his mark as an electronic music pioneer with 1964’s Quatermass, using vast libraries of source recordings to compose an original work that challenged traditional musical form.
Tangerine Dream
Edgar Froese established Tangerine Dream in September 1967 as the final chapter of a musical career that started with The Ones and continued as part of KONTAKT. At around this same time, Mike Oldfield made waves across Germany’s experimental music scene with Tubular Bells; its groundbreaking composition featured no traditional vocals or drums but instead employed electronic instruments to produce a mass of sound that made its impactful debut during that same month.
Tangerine Dream was one of the defining acts to emerge from this period and, despite some personnel changes over the years, continued releasing albums and performing live concerts until mid-1990. They inspired an immense number of imitation artists worldwide as well as having an enormous effect on instrumental music itself from atmospheric new age and spacey fare to harsh dance music.
Zeit (1972) marked their initial breakthrough. This album marked a dramatic departure from rock-oriented music and could be seen as an attempt at developing an unpulseable musical concept; an aim they would carry forward into subsequent releases such as Phaedra and Rubycon.
As soon as this happened, the original line-up of the band disbanded and Froese began experimenting with solo recordings using electronic instruments. He recorded several tracks which would later form Cyclone; its cover artwork featured scenes depicting storm damage by Froese himself.
Peter Baumann left Tangerine Dream for solo career pursuits in 1978 (he had founded Private Music earlier) and was replaced with drummer Paul Haslinger and keyboardist Johannes Schmoelling; their final album under this period would be 1980’s Optical Race which marked the return of vocals and lyrics in Tangerine Dream records since Force Majeure.
Tangerine Dream, though popular live act, never found great commercial success in the United States. They did however perform on the soundtrack for Koyaanisquatsi film which introduced them to Americans; from hereon out, Tangerine Dream would continue making movie soundtracks throughout their careers.
Brian Eno
Once he established himself as a member of glam rock band Roxy Music in the ’70s, Eno quickly established himself as one of the most influential producers in his era, producing albums by U2, Coldplay and Daniel Lanois among many others. Through his use of noise, delay and echo effects to create ambient soundscapes without obvious melodic structures or melodies, Eno perfected ambient sound concepts such as noise art sonic landscapes which allow users to experience music without any clear musical structure or melody.
Eno began his recording as composition experiments in the early ’60s, producing pieces renowned for their dreamlike qualities that helped to establish him as one of the foremost ambient electronic musicians ever. Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), composed to meet a 13 month deadline and released by major label as an extended ‘classical’ electronic composition is considered revolutionary; featuring a Buchla 100 synth (created by Subotnick and Tape Music Center) alongside tape loops and filters; its themes explore time as experience that would inform much avant-garde electronic music which followed.
After entering the 1980s, Eno gradually transitioned away from his earlier work’s pop structures towards an ambient style reflected by an increasingly subdued look. As well as acting as studio producer he collaborated with notable names like Robert Fripp (as part of Fripp & Eno duo), Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy project and Laraaji.
In 1982, Eno released On Land as an attempt to create an environment in which listeners could become inspired by the sounds of nature. The opening track, In Dark Trees, employs a primitive rhythm generator with guitar overdubs of small unresolved chords over and over; then fades out after two minutes, leaving behind both strange and peaceful sounds in its wake. By moving away from his former bandmates’ more virtuosic, personality-led approach and moving toward music that altered your perception of life altogether, Eno was moving toward music that altered our perception of reality – in essence changing our perception.
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle was one of the premier 60s electronic bands, known for their groundbreaking sound, operating procedures and public image that defied convention and attempted to provoke reaction from their audiences through shocking or provocative activities – from visual imagery ranging from Nazi symbolism and serial killers to pornography. They sought to challenge convention wherever possible while constantly shocking or shocking its audiences with shocking actions or controversial content that included Nazi symbolism, serial killers and pornography.
Throbbing Gristle was one of the most influential groups of their era. Their musical output consisted of a dissonant mixture of grinding drones, tape experiments, and unnerving atmospherics that earned them widespread acclaim at the time. Considered an anti-punk band at that point in history – while punk had relied on more traditional approaches to guitar music and adopted punk’s more conventional approaches via more conventional guitar playing styles as opposed to Throbbing Gristle’s avant-garde style that included noise as well as prerecorded tape samples influenced by William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
As a band, they were as much about image as music – their live shows reflected this with punch clocks timers set for exactly an hour to ensure each show lasted exactly an hour and an halogen light display lighting their stage; taking industrial aesthetics to its logical conclusion.
Throbbing Gristle was one of the world’s most notorious bands during their heyday in the early and mid 1970s, both for their offensive imagery and provocative public personae. Their flyers and exhibitions often caused scandal; one such exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts called “Prostitution” even resulted in legal trouble!
Though Throbbing Gristle never achieved mainstream popularity, their legacy and influence can still be felt today. A whole genre of contemporary electronic music can be traced back to D.O.A (The Second Annual Report). So if this is your first encounter with them, prepare to be fascinated and confused at once! If that has never happened to you before – but also expect something unexpectedly intriguing!
Suicide
Buffy Sainte-Marie made waves when she released Switched-On Bach for the Moog synthesizer in 1978, an adaptation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music for that instrument. Since then she has explored new artistic territory through albums like A Clockwork Orange and The Shining soundtracks as well as avant garde works.
Casual accounts of electronic music tend to leave out the 1960s, citing only later innovations by Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle as examples of its great artists from that era. But several key artists from that decade deserve recognition among electronic music’s greatest. Art Bergmann stands out among them as a talented yet often unheralded figure in rock. His debut album Illuminations contains breathtaking grooves with hydraulic wheezes underpinned by paranoid sixties paranoia; an essential component of its canon; yet an inspiring story of survival as well.