Four progressive electronic musicians

Electronic Realizations still gets quite a bit of play from me...

In the 80's I started listening to EM when Prog was dead (more or less). Vangelis and JM Jarre were the main ones for sure but I did like a bit of Kitaro but all the Silk Road parts whatever was a turn off for me. Vangelis was initially not an electronic artist but actually on the avant side of things. He lived in Paris before moving to London in the mid seventies to build on the success of the likes of Rick Wakeman and Mike Oldfield as instrumental artists setting up a custom studio in Shepherds Bush (it's now gone and has been replaced by a block of falts). One of his first releases recorded there was Heaven and Hell. This was more a prog album than just 'electronic' but after that he explored the genre with Spiral and Albedo 0.39 matching J M Jarre best releases Oxygene and Equinox. In terms of commercial succes they became the Ali v Frasier of Electronic Music. No one except Tangerine Dream were close. Into the 80's they both made some fine albums epecially Soil Festivities and Rendez- Vous. I love both. Latterly they both seem to become less relevant as time went on sadly. I did get to see J M Jarre live a couple of times, once with the laser show which was cool. I would vote Vangelis for these albums:

Heaven and Hell

China

Soil Festivities

Mask

Voices

For JM Jarre I highly recommend

Oxygene

Equinox

Magnetic Fields

Rendez-Vous

Waiting For Cousteau (mainly for the Calypso suite)

Hi,

Per EUROCK, in the old days, it had a lot of Richard's philosophical discussions and they were not exactly a fun read ... sometimes more difficult than enjoyable ... something that most inet'rs today won't bother with, I'm sure, as it has a lot more words and paragraphs than me ... (hehehe!!!) ... but somehow it is connected to his music and albums! And you and I are still trying to figure that out!

Others that might have deserved being in the list for a vote, but I'm not sure how well known, or heard, they are. 

Eduard Artemyev ... at least 40 soundtracks and many of them are really different and how the music is used in a few of the films is really special. Probably thought of as the most important composer of soundtracks in Russian Film. Many of his soundtracks are electronic, and The Stalker soundtrack is insane, though I don't think it is available as a disk ... have to check!

Ralph Lundsten ... Swedish composer of electronic stuff and a massive discography. I managed to get about 5 or 6 of those early albums, and they are a super listen, specially the "Nature Symphony" series which has quite a few albums. He also did some fun stuff ... and you don't want to miss Robbie asking for a date!

Robert Schroeder ... really nice stuff, though later it seems like it became a bit of too much new age. His first album on Klaus Schulze's label was a freak ... it was designed to be played at 45RPM, and I accidentally played it at 33RPM ... only to find, that it made for a really heavy, far out, and totally insane "krautrock" piece of music ... it was fantastic. Forget the faster piece!

Eberhard Schoenner ... not given a lot of credit, but often thought as having been the person to help THE POLICE come together. Andy Summers is in at least one of his early albums (Trance-formation), and Sting sings in a couple of the other albums. In the early days he was better thought of as a keyboards player, but later as a composer, arranger and conductor.

Deuter ... German guy that was associated with a group of people that ended up with a really bad reputation, specially here in Oregon. Has an incredible discography and it is very nice and enjoyable, and not preachy ... it is very meditative which is what the music is designed for, although I'm not sure that most folks can handle that ... you and I don't really listen to music to look for God, so to speak ... we listen to it to flow and live an internal life that otherwise we don't have the rest of the day ... very nice stuff, and it probably would be more appreciated if he did not exactly mention the group, but I think/wonder if they were the folks that provided the money for a lot of his work. 

I likely have more in my collection but have to take a look at it first.

Cheesy name for an album (soundtrack or not).