Various Artists
Early Modulations/Vintage Volts
[Caipirinha]
My friends tell me that if I keep looking straight into the past that I might go blind. I just can't help it, my retro vision is rapidly approaching 20-20 and as far as I can tell things just keep getting clearer. Although electronic music has been seeping into commercial performances for nearly three-quarters of a century, it's only in the more recent past that historical examinations of technology-based sound productions have really occurred. That said, it's time to give it up to the Modulations crew for their diligent perusal of the musical mating between man and machine.
Back in the sixties, the art of electronic music depended on parameters of frequency, intensity, and time in conjunction with functions of studio equipment, signal generators, voltage control, modulation, filtering, notation and the synthesis of sound. This heady compilation traces the gradual advancements in electronic music starting with John Cage's firebrand innovations in the late 1930s through Morton Subotnik's synthesized/modular conversions of the late 1960s. While visionaries like Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari and Pierre Schaeffer have yet to be properly recognized for their contributions in electro-acoustic music, recombinant sound and musique concrete, "Vintage Volts" certainly helps set the record straight.
Since sonic instruments like tape recorders and programmable computers were coaxed to generate "music" long before the advent of synthesizers proper, many of the sounds here have an old-fashioned "logic" that is rarely approached with more modern equipment. Is it proto-ambient? Sort of. A sonic predecessor to hip-hop? Sometimes. Can you dance to it? Not hardly. But you can hear the sounds of science taking shape before your very ears. So, let's hear it for electricity and all that it can mean when making new sounds to fill the air.
by Mitch Myers
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.