What kind of classic electronic music do you prefer?

[dystonia_ek]

Schaeffer
Dockstader
Xenakis
Ferrari
Bianchi

[foosnark]

I think the limited musical value of e.g. Carlos's efforts are suggested by the number of artists who have tried to copy her - few, if any. It means she didn't inspire anyone. I mean really, really inspire anyone musically (not just in choice of tools). The film music she did seriously harms the otherwise excellent movies. As sound designer, undoubtedly up there, but as a musician... Turned off. Everyone's talking about Turned on Bach as if it was a classic album. It's not. It's a curiosity, worth hearing, but who can be bothered to listen to it much more than once?

For me it's a "classic" only because of timing; I listened to Carlos, Tomita, Alan Parsons Project and Pink Floyd at a young age more than I listened to anything else. And then I grew up to be a complete geek...

TRON stands out in my mind as a memorable soundtrack, though I recently bought the CD and it's just not. I think the use of the music in the arcade game and more recently, the Tron 2.0 game was better.

"Digital Moonscapes" had some good qualities, though overall it was more a curiosity than anything. I think that was the problem. Carlos treated electronic music as a curiosity, an intellectual exercise, like a sociopath might treat a human relationship.

[emdot_ambient]

Although I'm a huge fan of electronic music, I've always found some of the old classic synth albums from artists like Synergy, Wendy Carlos, Vangelis..etc to be quite boring--they are mostly emulation of the a real orchestra with synths or ambient soundscapes, and the composition/orchestration pretty much just follows tradtional stylings.

Well, first, I think that's a pretty broad statement about such a large range of works. I think you're pretty correct about Carlos, but Synergy and Vangelis both produced a wide body of work that doesn't fit your description.

Vangelis was a member of Aphrodite's Child, a prog rock band. He collaborated with the greek band Socrates, produced an album of abstract almost-academic electronica called Beaubourg, did some nearly jazz works, and produced albums of pure synth electronica like Albeto 0.39, Spiral and Heven & Hell--all of which combine a rock sensibility with sequencer and jazz influenced work--before he went off into the later Chariots of Fire fluff.

The kind of electronic music that excited me were the more edgy guys like Kraftwerk, Yellow, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Art of Noise..etc,

So basically you like stuff that's more rock/dance oriented.

...where synths were used more creatively, and the compositions were also more interesting.

Can't say I agree with that. Synergy used synths incredibly creatively. You try programming some of the sounds Larry Fast got out of his old gear and THEN tell me how small his creativity was. The bands you mention used them differently, that's all. And Kraftwerks compositions? Interesting? I love Kraftwerk but they aren't a band I'd point to for interesting composition, unless you find repetition interesting. Yeah, their compositions are interesting from the point of view that they created something that sounded very little like anything else . . . but the same could be said for Synergy or Vangelis.

But as to your question, my tastes are broad and varied (how far back does one have to go to be considered classic?):

Louis and Bebe Barron (Forbidden Planet)
Morton Subotnick (his analog stuff)
Tod Dockstader
Vladimir Ussachevsky
Klaus Schulze ('70's stuff)
Tangerine Dream ('70's stuff)
Edgar Froese ('70's stuff)
Michael Hoenig
Ash Ra Temple
JM Jarre
Tonto's Expanding Head Band
Tim Blake (no singing, please)
Fripp & Eno
Heldon
Autechre
Orbital
Hardfloor

[Amberience]

The Bladerunner soundtrack is indeed one of my all time favourite albums.

[griels]

Jean-Jacques Perry (of 'EVA' fame), Herbie Hancock and Joe Meek.

[Voidoid Surrealist]

Ooh, can we have a shout for the Forbidden Planet soundtrack (I can't remember who did it OTTOMH)... that's some seriously cool shit. Oh, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Bebe and Louis Barron. Ace stuff!

[Voidoid Surrealist]

dystonia & emdot pretty much have my list, but I'll also add
Silver Apples and Messiaen's works for the Ondes Martenot ...

[griels]

The Best Moog Album... Ever?

Via the always wonderful Musicthing.

Kickarse Downloading the lot

[DWb]

Actually, come to think of it, there was a compilation a few years ago called 'Ohm: the early gurus of electronic music', large sections of which were pretty fantastic, albeit in rather obscure ways. Pierre Scaeffer, LaMonte Young, Pauline Olivieros, Holgar Czukay, John Cage and so on and so forth. Vangelis who?

[shamann]

I probably prefer the early electro-acoustic and tape stuff more than the synthesizer stuff:
John Cage, David Tudor, Steve Reich, Alvin Curran, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Hugh Le Caine, etc.

But will add some synth stuff that I like:
Pauline Oliveros, Raymond Scott, Tod Dockstader, Morton Subotnick, The Barrons, Folke Rabe

I prefer not to stick to ideological boxes on the tape/mics versus synthesizers, it's all electronic to me. The best stuff was always all over the map and just really digging sound.

I dig both sides of the coin, the less-pop and the more-pop, although under more-pop I'd take OMD's first album over anything YMO did, Sextant/Herbie Hancock over anything Kraftwerk did, King Tubby or Throbbing Gristle over Art of Noise, early Human League/The Future over Yello, Suicide over Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget over Gary Numan, Giorgio Moroder over Yazoo, Cabaret Voltaire over most of them.

[Wopelka]

am i really the first one to mention Luigi Nono?

[dystonia_ek]

Tod Dockstader

Dockstader used an electronic test-tone generator, the rest was tape collage. He did do some commissioned commercial work using synths later though.

[Voidoid Surrealist]

There's Nono way I could have forgotten him!

[stefancrs]

Albums ( a tad newer than your mentioned albums )

-AK1200 - Prepare for assualt (old school dnb)
-Paul Oakenfold - Tranceport (older trance)
-Kimball Collins - ICU: Generation Trance 2000 (older yet timeless trance - been my fav trance album for 6 years now (a third of my life!))

Wtf? Since when is trance from 2000 old trance? I stopped listening to trance 1996 or something

edit:
One of my fav semi-oldies is "sundown" by the overlords. If going back to the classics I must say that I really like "zoolook" by jarre and "That Total Age" by Nitzer Ebb.

To my moms dissappointment I really liked dads "oxygene" LP, and played it as often as I could.

[shamann]

Dockstader used an electronic test-tone generator, the rest was tape collage. He did do some commissioned commercial work using synths later though.

See, like I said, all fits in the same lump together for me. Early test-tone stuff is all synthesizers to me, and almost all of it made extensive use of tape editing anyway. Even the Barrons' stuff, they'd build the circuits, record the noises, then edit away, slowing down tape, cutting/pasting.