This week we explore the history of electronic music. We don’t have time for a definitive chronicle of the innovations, composers and musicians who shaped what we now call ‘Electronica’ in the early part of the twentieth century so I decided to tell a more personal story about how I came to know about electronic music.
I begin with my earliest memory of a synthesizer and that is the opening theme to Doctor Who (composed by Ron Grainer and realized by Delia Derbyshire)
From there we go to the theme from Forbidden Planet where electronic noises are exploited for their ‘weirdness’. The Monkees used a moog synthesizer for that same sense of weirdness in 1967 but then, in 1968, Wendy Carlos changed everything with the album Switched on Bach which sold in the millions.
We round out the hour by looking at past and present masters of the synthesizer — shining a light on innovators like Stevie Wonder, Vince Clarke (Yazoo), Herbie Hancock and, of course, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream among many others.
I devoted the second hour to one of the principle practitioners of electronic sound, Brian Eno. Starting with the squawks on Roxy Music‘s “Remake/Remodel” and touching on his work with Talking Heads, David Bowie and John Cale.
Questions, suggestions and comments more than welcome: [email protected]