The Original Proto Electronic Prog

Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: What would the opinion on this one be? I can't play the clip at work (so can't give it a refesher play at this moment), but I remember when I picked up the LP of this a few years ago that it just sounded like a series of inane bleeps and bloops and that's about it. Of course, these days my head is wired a lot more for electronic music, and I'm hanging to give it a fresh listen, but I was told at the time I bought it that it was a `seminal and defining electronic release'?

What would the opinion on this one be?



I can't play the clip at work (so can't give it a refesher play at this moment), but I remember when I picked up the LP of this a few years ago that it just sounded like a series of inane bleeps and bloops and that's about it.

Of course, these days my head is wired a lot more for electronic music, and I'm hanging to give it a fresh listen, but I was told at the time I bought it that it was a `seminal and defining electronic release'?

This is electronic music most of the sounds were made using electronic means and realised using tape manipulation.

Edited by EddieRUKiddingVarese - December 13 2016 at 01:10

EddieRUKiddingVarese wrote: Your comment is noted but is incorrect and so is your version of what is electronic prog

Of course, especially if you think an electronic poem constitutes music.  The fact that Varèse is considered a innovator doesn't make "Poème électronique" music.   I've had this circular argument about what is and is not music many times and the notion that any and all organized sound ~ or for that matter disorganized sound ~ is a musical form does not hold up.   That is if we still want to distinguish between something and something else, and give some small amount of credit to those who create both things as separate (though entirely mixable) forms. 

It cheapens both music and sound creation/experimentation; Though the medium used is the same or similar, the form is not--  A man who paints a building using acrylics and brushes and turpentine and primer is not creating art no matter how much one may argue he is.   He may be an artist in his spare time, but the apartment building he just covered in azure blue is not the same as a painting, drawing or illustration, no matter how much we love to insist that all forms of self-expression using the same tools are the same thing.   The housepainter doesn't make his paint or tools, he didn't build the house, he didn't even choose the color.    Similarly Varèse, though certainly an artist/composer, in this case does not make music, he makes something else.

Something else entirely.




Edited by Atavachron - December 13 2016 at 01:03

Killer tunes, man. 

I think I can say with a good amount of certainty that that is not music, and therefore unlikely to qualify as 'electronic prog' or anything other than sound experimentation.