Electronic Music That Inspired You

[PatchAdamz]

Here we are on a synth site..
There must be many musicians here that were inspired by electronic music.

I certainly was in a big way, not just by the music but also by the synthesizers.

What music (Artist) started that fire for you?

[seismic1]

TD

[Dirtgrain]

Yep, Tangerine Dream. Stratosfear and Tangrams I bought when I was 12 or 13. I listened to those albums many times. My mom took a liking to them too.

[cryophonik]

Waaaaaay too many to mention and I can’t pinpoint any one artist, but early on it was 70s Pink Floyd, then Gary Numan, The Cars, New Order, Depeche Mode, OMD, Human League, A-ha, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, When in Rome, Cause & Effect, etc. Later yet, I got more into industrial and derivatives, especially Front Line Assembly, Synaesthesia, Noise Unit, Pro-Tech, Equinox, early Delerium, then VNV Nation, Assemblage 23, Covenant, and probably my all-time fav, Conjure One. I also got very into a range of dance, trance (especially vocal trance), house, and chillout in the early 2000s to present. I’ve basically always been a synth junkie.

[foosnark]

Isao Tomita was the musical giant in my childhood. With a side of Pink Floyd, Wendy Carlos, Alan Parsons Project, even the Beach Boys and Captain & Tenille.

Once I started having my own disposable income and not just wearing out my dad's 8-track collection: Jean-Michel Jarre, TD, and would you believe Spyro Gyra and Skinny Puppy (what a combination) as well as 80s pop and post-punk and 90s industrial/EBM.

[vurt]

radiophonic workshop.

[whyterabbyt]

radiophonic workshop.

yup.

[PatchAdamz]

When I was young I purchased a copy of Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.
This was days after it was released and Floyd wasn't that big yet (at least in PEI Canada).
I hadn't actually heard any of it, I just liked the cover.
From the first heart beat, to the last one on the LP, I just listened.....
Then did the whole LP again.

Later I purchased Brian Eno's Before and After Science, really for the same reason, the cover.
Then the rest of his LP's.

Then this dude who had his own apartment which consisted of a big chair surrounded by quadraphonic speakers (he was 18, I was still very young) gave me a stack of records.

This stack included a few ELP records, bam another light came on.....

Then Yes, Mike Oldfield, Genesis, Walter Carlos, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson (Mellotron), Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tomita, Kraftwerk, Vangelis,ect...

But then one day I walked into a music store.....
My hands landed on a Prophet-5 and stayed there for a very long time...

In fact, they haven't left yet.

[osiris]

For me it was I Feel Love by Donna Summer. I hated disco back in the day but when I heard this on a good sound system it really opened my eyes about what electronic music could do. After that it was Lange from the U.K. I still play 'The Root of Unhappiness' in my car.

[raiderpdog]

for some reason as a kid, I always noticed synth sounds first on cartoons or kids shows, without really knowing what they were or how they made sounds. I just liked hearing weird and different things on the shows. Then also having an older complete Rock and Roll brother who was playing Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk Autobahn, early Devo, in addition to all his heavy rock, I even remember he would play me Because by the Beatles and and I loved that early synth. And at the same time having older sisters who were playing all the disco stuff of the time like Donna Summer, Funky Town, Heart of Glass, again, the synths were the attraction.

Once I was actively starting to make my own music choices MTV had hit very big, so I was immediately into all the early electronic stuff they were playing and just started buying it all. Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, Yaz, Talk Talk, Duran Duran, when the Cure were doing The Walk, Let's Go To Bed, etc. Anything at that time pretty much that I saw, I would seek out.

Then from there it was seeking different stuff. Getting Cabaret Voltaire's Mix Up was pivotal to my listening growth, because it was crude sounding to what I had listened to, and was already several years old, but with patience I listened to it over and over, and their ideas clicked with me, so then finding the early industrial that had already come out, but going back to get it. Plus Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Nizter Ebb, Meat Beat Manifesto, all the industrial stuff was big in my area of Florida. However electronic music has changed over the years, I stay with it, at least finding areas that interest me. In the nineties, stuff like Tortoise, Stereolab, Air, etc interested me as well as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, etc.

Electronic music has pretty much been my first love of music, really. I liked lots of stuff as a kid, and still do, but it was always the one that I felt most was "mine", if that makes sense. Most of the stuff I liked as a kid, I still like, and most all of the stuff has stayed within my collection over the years. I have never really been interested in outgrowing any of my early choices. I just add to everything.

[lotus2035]

The theme tune from Knight Rider and Paul Hardcastle's 19.

[funky lime]

at the tender age of about 14, i discovered cannabis and Squarepusher on roughly the same evening

[cryophonik]

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

[e@rs]

Wish I could say The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Fatboy Slim, Ferry Corsten, Antiloop or Nine Inch Nails, but it was actually 2 Unlimited and DJ Bobo.

[runagate]

justin3am
polyslax
jazzyspoon

Bernie Worrell invented an astonishing cross-section of synth sound design we all still use, though he'd have been an amazing keyboard player using just whatever so that's often overlooked