Electronic

Electronic Meditation, Tangerine Dream's debut album, features the lineup of Edgar Froese, Conrad Schnitzler, and Klaus Schulze (his only album with Tangerine Dream). The album is not without its flaws, but it's strong in many ways and shows abundant promise. Wildly experimental timbres, passages, and textures dominate this sound world. Bringing a rock & roll effort to a decidedly avant-garde sound, the album manages to be very accessible and hard to dislike. Of those who were working at the same time, Electronic Meditation is most similar to the music of Pink Floyd and Amon Düül.

Bülent Arel's (1919 Turkey - 1990 USA) work occupies a special place in the history of electronic music because one thing is certain: Arel's work is still fresh, groundbreaking, and it seems always to look out for the next adventure in sound.

Hard as it is to believe, George Harrison, guitar picker, was also an electronic music pioneer, as these two lengthy, abstract tone poems for early-vintage Moog synthesizer reveal…

The electronic music emanating from the Scandinavian region encompasses a vast universe and has a long tradition behind it. In 1964 the electronic music studio EMS in Stockholm opened as a conventional analogue studio, its primary intention being to build the world’s most advanced hybrid studio and to conduct an international research program into sound and sound perception. Since then the Scandinavian electronic music scene has continued to flourish decade upon decade, culminating in the most recent ambient and minimalistic sound shapes. Unexplained Sounds Group, started researching Scandinavian electronic and experimental music in 2015 when it published the Scandinavian experimental underground 015 survey.

Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner have a unique musical companionship. Both artists bred the '80s British music scene into pop candy delight thanks to Marr's charming guitar hooks while fronting the Smiths, and Sumner, whose ingenuous lyrical poetry pushed New Order's dance-oriented sound into the new wave mainstream. But since their musical collaboration began back in 1991, the duo continues to make music for themselves, uninhibited by current norms and marketing success. Twisted Tenderness, the band's third album, is certainly a vast improvement over their sophomore effort, 1996's Raise the Pressure. Twisted Tenderness steps back into Marr's talented guitar work: carefree, a bit rollicking at times, but in classic Electronic fashion…

Both more and less than what a partnership of Sumner and Marr would promise, Electronic's debut has weathered time much better than might have been thought upon its release, but ultimately only half works. When it does, though, it's fantastic, sometimes shifting from okay to fantastic within the same song. Opening number "Idiot Country" is a bit like that - the beginning sounds a little too rushed, Marr's heavy wah-wah riff OK enough but Sumner's semi-rap/semi-sung vocals a bit ham-handed. By the time the full combination of gentle keyboards, crisp rhythms, and the gentle, reflective chorus comes to bear, though, everything feels just great. Perhaps understandably Electronic leans much more toward New Order than the Smiths - Marr had already proven his desire to work in dance-crossover since his previous band's breakup, while Sumner's immediately recognizable, melancholic vocals call to mind New Order's rich history…

Out of the mysterious mind of Andrea Centazzo came Elektriktus. Originally released on the PDU label in 1976, the LP Electronic Mind Waves offers a collection of eight synth-fueled songs that sound very close to what kraut/cosmische heads were doing at the time, think of Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter or Cosmic Jokers, and also other European experimentalists like Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Spacecraft, Didier Bocquet, Seesselberg, F.G. Experimental Laboratory, Roberto Cacciapaglia or Hydrus. Along with Cacciapaglia and Hydrus, Elektriktus shows the most adventurous experimental sounds under a kraut/cosmische music influence to ever come out of Italy…

Electronic-Universe Part I is a landmark electronic ambient album by Software, the German duo associated with the Innovative Communication label and the influential late-era Berlin School movement. Released in 1985, the album blends atmospheric synthesizer textures, sequenced rhythms, cosmic soundscapes, and meditative melodies into a deeply immersive listening experience. Drawing inspiration from space themes and futuristic imagery, the music flows through expansive electronic compositions filled with layered keyboards, digital percussion, and hypnotic melodic structures. Unlike more aggressive synth-driven releases of the era, the album emphasizes relaxation, introspection, and cinematic mood-building while maintaining a sophisticated rhythmic pulse. Tracks such as “Fluting Electronic Universe” and “Surfing Saturn” showcase the duo’s ability to merge ambient electronics with melodic accessibility and progressive structure. The production reflects the evolution of European electronic music during the mid-1980s and remains a respected release among fans of ambient, new age, and classic synthesizer-based compositions.