Electronic Music That Inspired You

[EdwardGivens]

Rather later in life (ca. 1990s) I would listen fairly often to the radio program Hearts of Space (the app today is a paid subscription). The two names I remember are Steve Roach and Patrick O'Hearn. O'Hearn easy to recall as he was Zappa's bass player '76-78 (one of two in later '78). I watched some crime flick this last summer he'd scored, synths blending with regular orch.

I should mention Pauline Oliveros as one very major influence here.

My sister took piano with O'Hearn's mom of all things. He was also in Group 87 with Mark Isham (fabulous in concert) Heard Oliveros at UofO conducting a very cool quasi improvisational piece for orchestra...in 83(?) can't remember the year. It was basically a sonic landscape.

[osiris]

MST3K did a riff about Hearts of Space in the show Pod People.

[harryupbabble]

maybe the theme from midnight express

[jancivil]

I missed Group 87 as it was happening, encountered it at Youtube of course, a few years ago now. Bozzio was in on the things I heard, as well.

How is Isham pronounced, is it Eye-shum or Ish-em. Love his film work especially.

[EdwardGivens]

I missed Group 87 as it was happening, encountered it at Youtube of course, a few years ago now. Bozzio was in on the things I heard, as well.

How is Isham pronounced, is it Eye-shum or Ish-em. Love his film work especially.

You know I'm not sure. The guitarists name is also interesting - Peter Maunu. Never Cry Wolf was a good soundtrack. Bozzio and O'Hearn are on the 1st album. When I saw them live it was Isham and Maunu, a drummer playing an electronic kit, and a percussionist playing scraps of metal junk. Fabulous show. 5 bucks

[BONES]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Gen X lifelong synth enthusiast who never got into Tangerine Dream and/or JMJ. I feel like I should like both of them, but I neither like nor dislike either of them - they just do absolutely nothing for me

Yeah, I'm the same - it's still 70s music, it just happens to be done with synths. Both generally bore me to tears.

I shouldn't leave out Cerrone. gnu above post jarred that memory.

I see what you did there!

I go back and forth with wire, but when they're on they're amazing. The drone 'solo' in A Touching Display is one of my favorite things in any song ever.

Wire have been a huge force for a very long time. I thought they lost their way for a while, after A Bell Is A Cup, but since they got back together in the early noughties, they've been right back into their groove. 154 is all-time Top 5 for me. It is so amazingly creative and it gripped me from the first time I played it, in my room at the Officer Cadet School south of Melbourne. Everyone else really f**king hated it so it was mostly consigned to the cassette player in the car. Interestingly, 43 years later, I'm on holiday in Tasmania and it's on my playlist for this trip, too (along with 12GB of other things, of course).

Anyway, I was never really into electronic music but when I decided I wanted to start making my own music, pretty much all of my favourite bands - Ultravox, XTC (Barry Andrews era),Fischer Z, The Stranglers, Spizzenergi, Yachts, Devo, the Cars, etc. - had keyboard players. Being left-handed, it seems like learning guitar would be too much of a chore so I bought an SH-1000 instead.

If we are talking real influences, though, the things that really shaped the music I make, it would have started with New Order's Movement in 1981, then Cabaret Voltaire's The Crackdown in '83 and Skinny Puppy in '86 (Butes & Remission on a single CD).

Early EBM never really made it down here, so I was flying blind for a few years, until the early 90s, when the EBM scene seemed to explode and we had so much great stuff to draw on. The first time we heard Leaether Strip's Solitary Confinement was a revelatory moment for me. There was so much aggression packed into it, even though it was 100% electronic music (with vocals). It really changed everything for us.

[Aloysius]

Japan
Numan
JMJ
TV Theme Tunes
Probably a lot more

EdwardGivens ... Group 87 ... I like it.

[machinesworking]

Wire have been a huge force for a very long time. I thought they lost their way for a while, after A Bell Is A Cup, but since they got back together in the early noughties, they've been right back into their groove. 154 is all-time Top 5 for me. It is so amazingly creative and it gripped me from the first time I played it, in my room at the Officer Cadet School south of Melbourne. Everyone else really f**king hated it so it was mostly consigned to the cassette player in the car. Interestingly, 43 years later, I'm on holiday in Tasmania and it's on my playlist for this trip, too (along with 12GB of other things, of course).

Anyway, I was never really into electronic music but when I decided I wanted to start making my own music, pretty much all of my favourite bands - Ultravox, XTC (Barry Andrews era),Fischer Z, The Stranglers, Spizzenergi, Yachts, Devo, the Cars, etc. - had keyboard players. Being left-handed, it seems like learning guitar would be too much of a chore so I bought an SH-1000 instead.

If we are talking real influences, though, the things that really shaped the music I make, it would have started with New Order's Movement in 1981, then Cabaret Voltaire's The Crackdown in '83 and Skinny Puppy in '86 (Butes & Remission on a single CD).

Early EBM never really made it down here, so I was flying blind for a few years, until the early 90s, when the EBM scene seemed to explode and we had so much great stuff to draw on. The first time we heard Leaether Strip's Solitary Confinement was a revelatory moment for me. There was so much aggression packed into it, even though it was 100% electronic music (with vocals). It really changed everything for us.

Similar experience for different reasons, I grew up in very very rural Oregon for the 70''s and early 80's. I was lucky enough to have a stepfather that was into experimental pop music at least, so David Bowie was at the top of his list. Lodger struck me, then Devo on TV. I pretty much gobbled up every weird or different act I could find. John Foxx's Ultravox was fantastic, Systems of Romance is amazing. Finally moving to a city I found Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and any Industrial act I could get my hands on. I moved to SF CA and EBM was starting up, so Front 242 etc. The big record was Bites though, and Mind. Not so much for me as the people I was playing with. I forced my bandmate who also played guitar to play keys, because he was a Echo and the Bunnymen style guitar player and I wanted us to be more aggressive than that, so I stuck to guitar. Aggression wise, that would be SPK, with Slogan. First time I heard anything that was that organized, synth only, and violent. Too bad they never matched that again.

We are big fans of similar music it seems, Post Punk, EBM, New Wave, and Industrial. Though I gear towards metal and hip hop too.

[BONES]

I never really liked proper Industrial at all. I think SPK have maybe two decent songs, the rest is meh. Pre-Crackdown Cabaret Voltaire is rubbish, too. The only proper Industrial album I ever liked was Test Dept's Unacceptable Face of Freedom. It's like a more structured and better produced Leichenshrei. The fact that most of those artists ended up doing fairly standard stuff after a few years tells me they knew it was shite, too, but it was the best they could manage at the time.

I'm also pretty fussy when it comes to Skinny Puppy. Bites & Remission are good, and I like a couple of other albums, but most of it isn't great. I think Mind: TPI is very weak and I actually hate Last Rights. We saw them at Wave Gothik Treffen last time we were there and I found it hard to muster any enthusiasm for their set at all. I never used to like the first Nitzer Ebb album, either, but I have come around a bit on that one. Even early F242 was pretty dire and FLA didn't find their mojo until Caustic Grip. Not a Neubauten fan, either, and I've never heard a Laibach song I liked.

I find it impossible to take metal or hip-hop seriously. They mostly make me laugh out loud at their absurdity.

[revvy]

I found a tenner in the street back in the day, and bought the vinyl of UFOF. What a gatefold sleeve that was! Cracking album too.

Hip hop/rap can be wonderful.

[osiris]

I still suffer acid flashbacks every time I hear Trippin' on the Moon.

[machinesworking]

I never really liked proper Industrial at all. I think SPK have maybe two decent songs, the rest is meh. Pre-Crackdown Cabaret Voltaire is rubbish, too. The only proper Industrial album I ever liked was Test Dept's Unacceptable Face of Freedom. It's like a more structured and better produced Leichenshrei. The fact that most of those artists ended up doing fairly standard stuff after a few years tells me they knew it was shite, too, but it was the best they could manage at the time.

Nah, most groups at some point lose any ingenuity and start trying to become more pop. With Cabaret Voltaire, Micro Phonies is their best album to me, extending to Arm of the Lord and back to Living Legends. IMO groups in general have periods where they're creative and have solidified their sound into something coherent, but aren't desperate yet and trying to bland out their sound for the masses. This pattern is pretty consistent, most groups either come out strong with their first record or it takes them one or two records to really get going, then they put out a few great records before doing something stupidly pop that ruins them and makes them a joke of what they were. CV are a great example to me of this, their early stuff is mostly just noise and their later stuff is just dance music, they have a decent middle period.

[seismic1]

The guitarists name is also interesting - Peter Maunu.

The first time I heard him was in '78/'79 on Jean-Luc Ponty's Cosmic Messenger. He only stuck around for that album.

[BONES]

IMO groups in general have periods where they're creative and have solidified their sound into something coherent, but aren't desperate yet and trying to bland out their sound for the masses.

I don't think that's how it goes at all. I don't find much creativity in old Industrial music. They were just doing the best they could with the tools at their disposal. As the tools got better, it allowed them to do what they had probably wanted to do from the get-go. Die Krupps certainly never blanded out and by the release of The Crackdown, the Cabs had ceased being Industrial, long before they went completely to shit. Portion Control never blanded out, either, it just took them 30 years to put out anything worth listening to.

(Cabaret Voltaire's) early stuff is mostly just noise and their later stuff is just dance music, they have a decent middle period.

That's pretty much how I see it and it's the middle period stuff that shows their original intent, I think, and it's better gear that allowed them to realise it. It was the same for me - I did the best I could with the equipment at my disposal, and my limited talent and skill, but it's only really been the last 25 years or so that I've been able to express myself the way I had always wanted to. That makes me realise that the other factor putting pressure on these artists would have been record companies. The Cabs were signed to Virgini and you can bet Virgin wanted to see results.

[BONES]

One band that we should definitely have mentioned by now is Simple Minds. Michael MacNeil's layers of synths pretty much kick-started the whole New Romantic movement (for better or worse) and they've never really been as good without him. I mean, it really doesn't get much better than this, does it?