Music for the painfully bored.

Yes No

Recording both as a solo artist and in collaboration with Gershon Kingsley, Jean-Jacques Perrey helped popularize electronic music with a series of albums in the 1960s that used Moog synthesizers, the ondioline, and magnetic tape. His work was never intended to be part of the avant-garde, as Perrey himself cheerfully declared in his liner notes.... [+] Read More

Yes No

Long at the vanguard of American electronic music, composer Morton Subnotnick also pioneered the rise of multi-media performance through his extensive work in connection with interactive computer systems. Born in Los Angeles on April 14, 1933, he attended the University of Denver before earning his master's at Mills College in Oakland,... [+] Read More

Yes No

The world's first synthesizer ensemble was formed by David Borden in 1969, initially as a live band to perform their own versions of classics from the classical/minimalist repertoire of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley and Philip Glass. Borden had been working as composer-in-residence for the Ithaca, New York school district when he... [+] Read More

Yes No

In the mid-'60s, Frenchman Jean-Jacques Perrey -- an electronic musician who had helped popularize the Ondioline, a keyboard which produced sounds similar to the violin and the flute -- teamed up with American composer and arranger Gershon Kingsley for a couple albums of then-futuristic electronic pop. Using tape recorders, scissors, and... [+] Read More

Yes No

The English electronic trio Plone formed in 1994 when Mike Bainbridge, Mark Cancellara and Michael Johnston began experimenting with old drum machines, analogue synths and trippy effects. Naming themselves after an imaginary, cartoonlike sound, Plone began supporting likeminded groups such as Pram and Broadcast at gigs in London and their native... [+] Read More

Yes No

Composer, bandleader and inventor Raymond Scott was among the unheralded pioneers of contemporary experimental music, a figure whose genius and influence have seeped almost subliminally into the mass cultural consciousness. As a visionary whose name is largely unknown but whose music is immediately recognizable, Scott's was a career stuffed with... [+] Read More

Yes No

Combining an inclination for melodic '60s pop with an art rock aesthetic borrowed from Krautrock bands like Faust and Neu!, Stereolab were one of the most influential alternative bands of the '90s. Led by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, Stereolab either legitimized forms of music that were on the fringe of rock, or brought attention to strands of... [+] Read More

Yes No

In 1969, engineers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff worked with synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog to develop additional modules for the centerpiece unit of Moog's keyboard empire. The result was T.O.N.T.O. -- the Original New Timbral Orchestra. Built into a collection of gently curving wooden cases, T.O.N.T.O. became the world's largest Moog... [+] Read More

Yes No

Composer Wendy Carlos spurred electronic music to new commercial heights during the late '60s, popularizing the synthesizer with the enormously successful Switched-On Bach album. Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on November 14, 1939, Carlos pursued her M.A. in composition under Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening at Columbia University's famed... [+] Read More

Yes No