The widespread electrification of music during the 1950s led to a multitude of artistic concepts – in- and outside the confines of academia and institutional studios. 44 minutes of fieldwork and funny sounds with Alireza Mashayekhi, Delia Derbyshire, Else Marie Pade, İlhan Mimaroğlu and others.
Featured cover art: İlhan Mimaroğlu – Face The Windmills, Turn Left
Otto Luening – Low Speed
the first all electronic music concert in the US, premiered at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art (1952, Ellipsis Arts)
Daphne Oram – Ursa Major (Sun Mix)
sounds from the graphic and photoelectric production system Oramics, invented by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop co-founder herself. It allowed for changes in pitch control and timbre without specialist knowledge (1962, Young Americans)
Richard Maxfield – Pastoral Symphony
Sixties music before the Sixties had really started, from New York City (1960, New World Records)
Tom Dissevelt – Fantasy In Orbit: Tropicolour
Dissevelt’s music captured the time’s space mood so convincingly that Stanley Kubrick considered him for the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1963, Basta)
Tod Dockstader – Two Fragments From Apocalypse: Second Fragment
discarded material from the main work, but saved from ending up in the bin (1961, Starkland)
Alireza Mashayekhi – Shur, Op.15
highly conceptual electronic music, connecting Persian musical traditions and noise, realized in the Netherlands at the University of Utrecht (1966, Sub Rosa)
Gerald Strang – Composition 3
revolutionary sound solutions, made entirely with a computer, and presented at the ICA exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968 (1966, ICA)
Enore Zaffiri – Pr/5.a
musical perspectives based on a structuralist principle derived from Euclidean geometry (1965-1968, Die Schachtel)
Axel Meijer – Werkstuk-1964
timeless sonic invention from Utrecht (1964, Composers’ Voice)
İlhan Mimaroğlu – Bowery Bum
form, content, and sound source of the piece are based on a drawing by Jean Dubuffet (1964, Finnadar Records)
Delia Derbyshire – Blue Veils And Golden Sands
soundtrack for a BBC documentary on the Tuareg, based on the tempo of camels walking (1967, Silva Screen)
Else Marie Pade – Syv Cirkler
inspired by a composition based on the stars and their movements, experienced by Pade at the planetarium during the World Exhibition in Brussels (1958, Important Records)
