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Proto techno

Started by Bhazor, May 23, 2018, 12:30:11 AM

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Bhazor

I've been wanting to get into the very early days of electronic music (60s to early 80s) but have never known where to start. About the only frame of reference I have is vague knowledge of Eno fannying about in his shed and that Popcorn track they used to use to advertise paint, sweets, cars, health insurance, health food, cinema nights, theme parks, clothes, H&M, H&M clothes, H&M summer clothes, H&M sales and probably gravel.

Now I understand theres some synthesizer nerds around these here parts so what would you nerds recommend?

Absorb the anus burn



Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on May 23, 2018, 12:42:31 AM


Chain Reaction is worth the price of entry alone and the track most relevant to this thread. Great recommendation.

hedgehog90

Perrey and Kingsley/Jean-Jacques Perrey
Silver Apples
Moscú está helado by Esplendor Geométrico
Crash Course in Science

purlieu

Tangerine Dream
'Thru Metamorphic Rocks' is definitely about as proto-techno as it gets. The run of albums from Phaedra to Stratosfear is almost flawless, and you can hear them take the accidental experiment of building a track around pulsing synth sequences (as happened on Phaedra) through to it being the basis around which more complex, melodic tracks are built (as on Stratosfear). Their '80s stuff depends on how tolerant you are of '80s digital synths, but I'd say Tangram is an excellent one, and Exit is pretty much the template for most of their '80s film scores, which in their own way helped shape film music for the whole decade.

Ashra
New Age of Earth is like a dreamy, euphoric version of Tangerine Dream's '70s work. Manuel Gottsching's most important work, however, is E2-E4, which pretty much invented house music before it existed. Sampled in many tracks, most notably balearic house classic Sueno Latino, but never bettered.

Jean Michel Jarre
Although he gets a bit of a bad rep for being too sweetly melodic at times, he has some really excellent material. Oxygene is rightfully considered a classic; the driving, rhythmic second side of Equinoxe is excellent. Zoolook is pioneering in its heavy use of samples of the human voice and is bloody great.

Kraftwerk
Say no more. The Man Machine and Computer World are essential.

Cluster
Zuckerzeit and Sowieso are both worthwhile. They have a mellow, rural feel, but are built around synths and drum machines and are both gorgeous.

jobotic

Aquarius Records used to have a fantastic Indian album from the seventies listed, that was basically acid house. It was great. Of course all their reviews have gone now but I'll try and find it.

In addition to the above, of course.

BlodwynPig


purlieu

Quote from: jobotic on May 23, 2018, 10:53:03 AM
Aquarius Records used to have a fantastic Indian album from the seventies listed, that was basically acid house. It was great. Of course all their reviews have gone now but I'll try and find it.

In addition to the above, of course.
Charanjit Singh - Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat. From 1982.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/may/10/charanjit-singh-acid-house-ten-ragas

buzby

Quote from: jobotic on May 23, 2018, 10:53:03 AM
Aquarius Records used to have a fantastic Indian album from the seventies listed, that was basically acid house. It was great. Of course all their reviews have gone now but I'll try and find it.
Edit, beaten by purlieu...
Was it Charanjit Singh's 'Synthesizing: Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat'?
It was one of the first records to feature the TB303, which was synced to a TR808 and Jupiter 8.

The original HMV India pressing of the album goes for £3.5k, though it was rereleased on Bombay Connection in 2010 after it was rediscovered.

jobotic

You're both right, thanks. Sorry for the duff info.

purlieu

On the subject of 'disco beats', Giorgio Moroder should get a mention
Chase is always good fun
And Donna Summer's I Feel Love is one of those 'how the hell did that come from [1977]??' tracks

NoSleep

Raymond Scott is the granddaddy of techno-pop. Since the 1940's he was pursuing his dream of making electronic music, creating along the way the first ever sequencer and apprenticing a young Bob Moog. He later worked in the electronic music department of Motown.

Best place to start is the Manhattan Research Inc. boxed set, cataloguing his experiments and music for ads in the 50's & 60's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SW6qVLSVzw

Adding to that his jazz music from the 30's that was such an inspiration to Carl Stalling (composer for the Warner Bros cartoon studio) Raymond Scott is one of the most heard and influential musicians of the 20th Century and yet nobody knows his name.


Bhazor

Well this got more responses than I expected. Only had a chance to listen to Galaxy My Dear so far but that was great.

steveh

The recent-ish Soul Jazz Records compilation "Space, Energy and Light - Experimental Electronic and Acoustic Soundscapes 1961 - 88" I liked as an introduction to some of the lesser known electronic pioneers.

https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/sjr/product/experimental-electronic-and-acoustic-soundscapes-1961-88

a duncandisorderly

this bit of 'library music' is a decent toe-tapper, & saves me reiterating any of the stuff already posted about TD, schulze & ashra.
also, points if you can remember the tv show that had it as a theme tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpeXBmEiG58

a duncandisorderly

oh, but also, I should be pimping out my own band:

www.radiomassacreinternational.com

:-)

JesusAndYourBush

Pink Floyd's One Of These Days played at 45rpm makes a good techno tune.

sevendaughters

dunno if this answer is TOO on the nose but I think Techno Primitiv by Chris & Cosey is a brilliant piece of work. at 1985 it might not qualify tho.

'Hazey Daze'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO--SVW8wQk

purlieu

Quote from: sevendaughters on May 23, 2018, 02:59:26 PM
dunno if this answer is TOO on the nose but I think Techno Primitiv by Chris & Cosey is a brilliant piece of work. at 1985 it might not qualify tho.
It's a good reminder that Throbbing Gristle should probably get a mention, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqvQOACorAY

Absorb the anus burn

Not the full LP, but there is some primitive techno on here...



The track 'Go' for instance...... Amazingly prescient.

hermitical

Quote from: sevendaughters on May 23, 2018, 02:59:26 PM
dunno if this answer is TOO on the nose but I think Techno Primitiv by Chris & Cosey is a brilliant piece of work. at 1985 it might not qualify tho.

'Hazey Daze'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO--SVW8wQk

I saw a 1984 track mentioned just the other day as proto-techno - Chris & Cosey - Dancing Ghosts

popcorn

Can you all create a Spotify playlist of all these please. Thanks. Hurry up.

wosl

Quote from: purlieu on May 23, 2018, 10:43:11 AMAshra
New Age of Earth is like a dreamy, euphoric version of Tangerine Dream's '70s work. Manuel Gottsching's most important work, however, is E2-E4, which pretty much invented house music before it existed.

You could throw in Schwerer Dino (when it finally gets kicking), a few tracks from Blackouts (e.g. 77 Slightly Delayed, Lotus), the long live version of Deep Distance (quite different in character from the studio version) on Private Tapes Vol. 2, as well as the Goettsching/Michael Hoenig collab Early Water.  E2-E4 is often cited as a hugely influential release, and rightly so, but it irks a bit that a lot of Goettsching's other stuff that at least matches E2-E4 for quality, even if less innovative, sits so much in its shade.  New Age Of Earth is a superbly realised and satisfying album; he's never done anything more breath-robbingly beautiful than Deep Distance (although the middle section of Code Blue from Belle Alliance and parts of Dream, from Dream & Desire, approach it), but that's for another thread.


BlodwynPig

I rate Ashra's Correlations very highly.

Johnny Textface

Quote from: popcorn on May 23, 2018, 04:55:30 PM
Can you all create a Spotify playlist of all these please. Thanks. Hurry up.

That would be really really really great.

the

Quote from: jobotic on May 23, 2018, 10:53:03 AMAquarius Records used to have a fantastic Indian album from the seventies listed, that was basically acid house.

It is good, but it always slightly annoys me when people say it was acid house. The thing that acid brought was sweeping the filter of the 303. Whereas this just uses the 303 as intended (as a monosynth with a pattern sequencer).

Kane Jones

Seconding Harald Grosskopf's Synthesist. Also Wolfgang Reichmann's Wunderbar is a corker too.

purlieu

Quote from: wosl on May 23, 2018, 06:35:34 PM
You could throw in Schwerer Dino (when it finally gets kicking), a few tracks from Blackouts (e.g. 77 Slightly Delayed, Lotus), the long live version of Deep Distance (quite different in character from the studio version) on Private Tapes Vol. 2, as well as the Goettsching/Michael Hoenig collab Early Water.  E2-E4 is often cited as a hugely influential release, and rightly so, but it irks a bit that a lot of Goettsching's other stuff that at least matches E2-E4 for quality, even if less innovative, sits so much in its shade.  New Age Of Earth is a superbly realised and satisfying album; he's never done anything more breath-robbingly beautiful than Deep Distance (although the middle section of Code Blue from Belle Alliance and parts of Dream, from Dream & Desire, approach it), but that's for another thread.
I agree with pretty much all of this, but I didn't want to overload my post with too many albums. I think New Age of Earth is a good start point for Ashra, and E2-E4 is pretty essential for this thread regardless. Blackouts and Correlations are definitely brilliant albums though and worthwhile.

And yes, 'Deep Distance' is one of the most phenomenally beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard.

jobotic

If you put a beat behind the thirty seconds between Some Of Them Are Old and Here Come the Warm Jets by Eno it could be something on Djax Up Beats.