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113-554: The Future Sound of London (often abbreviated FSOL ) is a British electronic music duo composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans . They have been described as a "boundary-pushing" electronic act, covering techno , ambient , house music , trip hop , psychedelia , and dub . While keeping an enigmatic image and releasing music under many aliases, the band found commercial success with singles " Papua New Guinea " (1991) and " Cascade " (1993), and albums Lifeforms (1994), ISDN (1995) and Dead Cities (1996). In recent years,

226-405: A PA system , several turntables, and mixers. The performance did not go well, as creating live montages with turntables had never been done before." Later that same year, Pierre Henry collaborated with Schaeffer on Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) the first major work of musique concrete. In Paris in 1951, in what was to become an important worldwide trend, RTF established the first studio for

339-466: A slide show synchronized with a recorded soundtrack. Composers outside of the Jikken Kōbō, such as Yasushi Akutagawa , Saburo Tominaga, and Shirō Fukai , were also experimenting with radiophonic tape music between 1952 and 1953. Musique concrète was introduced to Japan by Toshiro Mayuzumi , who was influenced by a Pierre Schaeffer concert. From 1952, he composed tape music pieces for a comedy film,

452-465: A common household item, and by the 1920s composers were using them to play short recordings in performances. The introduction of electrical recording in 1925 was followed by increased experimentation with record players. Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch composed several pieces in 1930 by layering recordings of instruments and vocals at adjusted speeds. Influenced by these techniques, John Cage composed Imaginary Landscape No. 1 in 1939 by adjusting

565-591: A fan and asked the band to remix the following Oasis single "Falling Down". The Amorphous Androgynous responded with a 5 part, 22-minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remix, which Noel liked enough to release on its own 12". Noel also invited Cobain to DJ at the afterparty for one of Oasis' gigs at Wembley Arena. The band continue the psychedelic theme to the mixes on their podcast site The Pod Room and on February 2010s Mojo Magazine cover CD. The Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble remixes grow in popularity with commissions from Paul Weller and Pop Levi , and Cobain has suggested

678-447: A full album of remixes and covers will appear on their recently formed Monstrous Bubble label On 6 July 2011 it was announced that Noel Gallagher's second solo album would be in collaboration with The Amorphous Androgynous, and was set for release in 2012. In August 2012, Gallagher mentioned in various interviews that he was considering scrapping the collaborative album with Amorphous Androgynous due to not being completely satisfied with

791-990: A number of musicians, ranging from Neil Rolnick , Charles Amirkhanian and Alice Shields to rock musicians Frank Zappa and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band . Following the emergence of differences within the GRMC (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète) Pierre Henry, Philippe Arthuys, and several of their colleagues, resigned in April 1958. Schaeffer created a new collective, called Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) and set about recruiting new members including Luc Ferrari , Beatriz Ferreyra , François-Bernard Mâche , Iannis Xenakis , Bernard Parmegiani , and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou . Later arrivals included Ivo Malec , Philippe Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle . These were fertile years for electronic music—not just for academia, but for independent artists as synthesizer technology became more accessible. By this time,

904-745: A pair of synthesisers created in collaboration with Digitana, the SX-1 and the HALia, the former being manufactured as of July 2018, the latter still in pre-production. A series of re-recordings of older tracks, combined with new remixes and related material, was released between 2018 and 2021 for Record Store Day, in place of conventional reissues; the reissue series so far features My Kingdom Re-Imagined , Yage 2019 , Cascade 2020 and We Have Explosive 2021 . As well as The Future Sound of London, Dougans and Cobain have also revisited older side-projects. Dougans's solo project Humanoid has been active again since 2014, releasing

1017-939: A place where many no wave artists like Glenn Branca , Lydia Lunch and James Chance performed. Notable Kitchen alumni also include Philip Glass , Laurie Anderson , Rocco Di Pietro , John Moran , Jay Scheib , Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, Peter Greenaway , Michael Nyman , Steve Reich , Pauline Oliveros , Gordon Mumma , Frederic Rzewski , Ridge Theater, The Future Sound of London , Leisure Class , Elliott Sharp , Brian Eno , Arthur Russell , Meredith Monk , Arleen Schloss , Vito Acconci , Keshavan Maslak , Elaine Summers , Lucinda Childs , Bill T. Jones , David Byrne / Talking Heads , chameckilerner , John Jasperse , Bryce Dessner , Nico Muhly , Dave Soldier , Soldier String Quartet , Komar and Melamid , ETHEL , Chris McIntyre, Sylvie Degiez, Wayne Lopes/CosmicLegends, Cindy Sherman , and Swans . Today, The Kitchen focuses on presenting emerging artists, most of whom are local, and

1130-473: A program of video distribution, when video was still considered an experimental form. The Kitchen moved uptown to 512 West 19th Street, a former ice house , to begin the spring 1986 season and subsequently purchased the space in 1987. The inaugural event series in The Kitchen's new home was entitled New Ice Nights . In 1991 The Kitchen held its twentieth anniversary celebration: The Kitchen Turns Twenty with

1243-449: A project for a graphic studio Stakker , which resulted with a single " Stakker Humanoid " that reached number 17 in the UK charts, introducing acid house to mainstream audience. Cobain contributed to the accompanying album Global . In the following years the pair produced music under a variety of aliases, releasing a number of singles and EPs, including " Q " and "Metropolis", later featured on

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1356-688: A public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments." Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds." Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont, at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There,

1469-420: A publishing outlet, with books exploring the artwork and history of the band, each combined with a music package; a series of A6 books entitled The Ramblings of a Madman was also produced, with the accompanying download EPs later repackaged into an album entitled Music for 3 Books . Alongside books, the band have further explored multimedia, including a series of digital artwork releases as NFTs on Foundation and

1582-465: A radio broadcast, and a radio drama. However, Schaeffer's concept of sound object was not influential among Japanese composers, who were mainly interested in overcoming the restrictions of human performance. This led to several Japanese electroacoustic musicians making use of serialism and twelve-tone techniques , evident in Yoshirō Irino 's 1951 dodecaphonic piece "Concerto da Camera", in

1695-484: A retrospective mini-music festival entitled Five Generations of Composers , as well as a re-creation of Jean Dupuy ’s Soup and Tart , entitled: Burp: Soup and Tart Revisited . The Kitchen remains a space for interdisciplinary and experimental work by focusing its programming on emerging artists. In fall of 2011, after seven years as the Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen, Debra Singer handed over

1808-777: A score. In 1955, more experimental and electronic studios began to appear. Notable were the creation of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano , a studio at the NHK in Tokyo founded by Toshiro Mayuzumi , and the Philips studio at Eindhoven , the Netherlands, which moved to the University of Utrecht as the Institute of Sonology in 1960. "With Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in residence, [Cologne] became

1921-454: A significant influence on popular music , with the adoption of polyphonic synthesizers , electronic drums , drum machines, and turntables , through the emergence of genres such as disco , krautrock , new wave , synth-pop , hip hop , and EDM . In the early 1980s mass-produced digital synthesizers , such as the Yamaha DX7 , became popular, and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)

2034-567: A strong community of composers and musicians working with new sounds and instruments was established and growing. 1960 witnessed the composition of Luening's Gargoyles for violin and tape as well as the premiere of Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion. This piece existed in two versions—one for 4-channel tape, and the other for tape with human performers. "In Kontakte , Stockhausen abandoned traditional musical form based on linear development and dramatic climax. This new approach, which he termed 'moment form', resembles

2147-434: A tool for psychic exploration, entertainment, and healing. The pair returned in 2002 with " The Isness " , a record heavily influenced by 1960s and 1970s psychedelia and released under their alias Amorphous Androgynous. It was preceded by Papua New Guinea Translations , a mini album which contained a mixture of remixes of FSOL's track as well as new material from The Isness sessions. The album received mixed press due to

2260-525: A top 10 hit on the UK album chart. The eponymous single featured Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins on vocals. The record introduced an array of exotic, tropical sound samples. Dougans' father's involvement in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop had a heavy influence on Lifeforms . Often asked whether Brian Eno was an influence, Cobain and Dougans said they were about looking to the future not

2373-450: A year-round hive of charismatic avant-gardism." on two occasions combining electronically generated sounds with relatively conventional orchestras—in Mixtur (1964) and Hymnen, dritte Region mit Orchester (1967). Stockhausen stated that his listeners had told him his electronic music gave them an experience of "outer space", sensations of flying, or being in a "fantastic dream world". In

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2486-479: Is alone, a world of mystery and essential loneliness." In Cologne, what would become the most famous electronic music studio in the world, was officially opened at the radio studios of the NWDR in 1953, though it had been in the planning stages as early as 1950 and early compositions were made and broadcast in 1951. The brainchild of Werner Meyer-Eppler , Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert (who became its first director),

2599-407: Is committed to advancing work that is experimental in nature. Its facilities include a 155-seat black box performance space and a gallery space for audio and visual exhibitions. The Kitchen presents interdisciplinary work in music, dance, performance, video, film, visual art, and literature. Looking for a way to present their work to a public audience, Steina and Woody Vasulka rented the kitchen of

2712-468: Is most recognizable in its 4/4 form and more connected with the mainstream than preceding forms which were popular in niche markets. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments . These initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for

2825-417: Is planned as a trilogy, the first volume released for Record Store Day 2022 under the name Rituals . In a move further from traditional structures, several albums have been released under the banner FSOLDigital Presents, including yearly Calendar Albums , presented to subscribers as a track each month, and mix albums as part of the A Controlled Vista and Mind Maps series. FSOLDigital has also been used as

2938-462: Is set for release sometime in 2010, and will be more electronic, mixed by the Future Sound of London. Further mixes in the series are expected in the future, to be curated by related artists, and the band took the concept live with an eleven-hour spot at 2009's Green Man festival, to contain live bands and DJ spots. Noel Gallagher of British rock band Oasis , after hearing the first release, became

3051-465: Is the only salvation now. Dance music taught us how to use the studio in a new way, but we have to now take that knowledge and move on with it. This stuff, electronic music, is not dead. It's a process that is ongoing. We have to take hold of the past and go forward with it... The FSOL moniker re-appeared in 2006 with a piece entitled "A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static", intended as an experiment in 5.1 Surround Sound and created for an exhibition at

3164-701: Is to be realized as a magnetic tape. According to Otto Luening, Cage also performed Williams Mix at Donaueschingen in 1954, using eight loudspeakers, three years after his alleged collaboration. Williams Mix was a success at the Donaueschingen Festival , where it made a "strong impression". The Music for Magnetic Tape Project was formed by members of the New York School ( John Cage , Earle Brown , Christian Wolff , David Tudor , and Morton Feldman ), and lasted three years until 1954. Cage wrote of this collaboration: "In this social darkness, therefore,

3277-678: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts ). In 2021, the Kitchen named Legacy Russell as the institution's next Executive Director and Chief Curator. In 2014, the Getty Research Institute announced its acquisition of The Kitchen’s archives , including 5,410 videotapes and more than 600 audiotapes, as well as photographs and ephemera documenting performances, exhibitions and events staged from 1971 to 1999. Also included in

3390-752: The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1950s. Following his work with Studio d'Essai at Radiodiffusion Française (RDF), during the early 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer is credited with originating the theory and practice of musique concrète. In the late 1940s, experiments in sound-based composition using shellac record players were first conducted by Schaeffer. In 1950, the techniques of musique concrete were expanded when magnetic tape machines were used to explore sound manipulation practices such as speed variation ( pitch shift ) and tape splicing . On 5 October 1948, RDF broadcast Schaeffer's Etude aux chemins de fer . This

3503-498: The Ensemble of electro-musical instruments  [ ru ] , which used theremins, electric harps, electric organs, the first synthesizer in the USSR "Ekvodin", and also created the first Soviet reverb machine. The style in which Meshcherin's ensemble played is known as " Space age pop ". In 1957, engineer Igor Simonov assembled a working model of a noise recorder (electroeoliphone), with

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3616-685: The Environments albums feature a mixture of old demos, recently completed, and new tracks. The band have continued to use the FSOLDigital platform to release side-projects and solo work, under names such as Blackhill Transmitter, EMS : Piano, Suburban Domestic and 6 Oscillators in Remittance, as well as distributing digital releases from other artists, including Daniel Pemberton, Herd, Kettel & Secede, Neotropic, Ross Baker and Seafar; they also continue to update The Pod Room with ISDN transmissions from

3729-522: The Teachings from the Electronic Brain compilation without them, but the duo insisted on taking control of the production of the project. Cobain says that, even with Virgin, the reason they were able to do their own thing and create the music they wanted in the 1990s was because they already had some major hits under their belts such as "Papua New Guinea", "Metropolis" and "Stakker Humanoid" before joining

3842-432: The telharmonium , Hammond organ , electric piano and electric guitar . The first electronic musical devices were developed at the end of the 19th century. During the 1920s and 1930s, some electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions featuring them were written. By the 1940s, magnetic audio tape allowed musicians to tape sounds and then modify them by changing the tape speed or direction, leading to

3955-496: The 'cinematic splice' techniques in early twentieth-century film." The theremin had been in use since the 1920s but it attained a degree of popular recognition through its use in science-fiction film soundtrack music in the 1950s (e.g., Bernard Herrmann 's classic score for The Day the Earth Stood Still ). The Kitchen The first music director of The Kitchen was composer Rhys Chatham . The venue became known as

4068-445: The 1950s and algorithmic composition with computers was first demonstrated in the same decade. During the 1960s, digital computer music was pioneered, innovation in live electronics took place, and Japanese electronic musical instruments began to influence the music industry . In the early 1970s, Moog synthesizers and drum machines helped popularize synthesized electronic music. The 1970s also saw electronic music begin to have

4181-546: The 1990s. Following on from the band's 1997 DJ set of the same name, a series of Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind mix CDs were begun in 2006. The first two were released under the Amorphous Androgynous alias, subtitled "Cosmic Space Music" and "Pagan Love Vibrations", with the first taking over two years to compile, mix and gain sample clearance, both featuring the band's psychedelic influences. A third

4294-569: The 1992 compilation Earthbeat . They were initially signed to the British sub-label of Passion Music, Jumpin' & Pumpin'. In 1991, Cobain and Dougans released their breakthrough single, " Papua New Guinea " on Jumpin' & Pumpin'. The song was based upon a sample from " Dawn of the Iconoclast " by Dead Can Dance and a bassline from "Radio Babylon" by Meat Beat Manifesto . It enjoyed great success, charting at #22 for seven weeks in 1992. The single

4407-679: The Kinetica art museum entitled, appropriately, "Life Forms". The piece contained reworked material from their archives and newer, more abstract ambient music. The piece was coupled with a video called "Stereo Sucks", marking the band's theories on the limitations of stereo music, which was released on a DVD packaged with issue 182 of Future Music Magazine in December 2006 and on FSOL's own download site in March 2007. They also moved into creating their own sounds when they began constructing electronic instruments,

4520-659: The Louisville Symphony and A Poem in Cycles and Bells , both for orchestra and tape. Because he had been working at Schaeffer's studio, the tape part for Varèse's work contains much more concrete sounds than electronic. "A group made up of wind instruments, percussion and piano alternate with the mutated sounds of factory noises and ship sirens and motors, coming from two loudspeakers." At the German premiere of Déserts in Hamburg, which

4633-651: The Mercer Arts Center, in the former Broadway Central Hotel in Greenwich Village, Manhattan . (The Mercer Arts Center was an important venue for music and theater performance in New York City from 1971 to 1973.) The Vasulkas, with help from Andy Mannik, opened The Kitchen as a presentation space for video artists on June 15, 1971. Later that year, the Vasulkas added music to their programming and named Rhys Chatham

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4746-467: The Philips studio in the Netherlands. The public remained interested in the new sounds being created around the world, as can be deduced by the inclusion of Varèse's Poème électronique , which was played over four hundred loudspeakers at the Philips Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World Fair . That same year, Mauricio Kagel , an Argentine composer, composed Transición II . The work was realized at

4859-446: The Poet , a 1959 series of electronic compositions that stood out for its immersion and seamless fusion of electronic and folk music , in contrast to the more mathematical approach used by serial composers of the time such as Babbitt. El-Dabh's Leiyla and the Poet , released as part of the album Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1961, would be cited as a strong influence by

4972-589: The United States following the end of World War II. These were the basis for the first commercially produced tape recorder in 1948. In 1944, before the use of magnetic tape for compositional purposes, Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh , while still a student in Cairo , used a cumbersome wire recorder to record sounds of an ancient zaar ceremony. Using facilities at the Middle East Radio studios El-Dabh processed

5085-454: The United States, electronic music was being created as early as 1939, when John Cage published Imaginary Landscape, No. 1 , using two variable-speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano, and cymbal, but no electronic means of production. Cage composed five more "Imaginary Landscapes" between 1942 and 1952 (one withdrawn), mostly for percussion ensemble, though No. 4 is for twelve radios and No. 5, written in 1952, uses 42 recordings and

5198-577: The WDR studio in Cologne. Two musicians performed on the piano, one in the traditional manner, the other playing on the strings, frame, and case. Two other performers used tape to unite the presentation of live sounds with the future of prerecorded materials from later on and its past of recordings made earlier in the performance. In 1958, Columbia-Princeton developed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer ,

5311-920: The album rather than any potential singles during their time at Virgin. They have been signed to Passion Records sub-label Jumpin' & Pumpin' since they started out. Electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments , circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers ) in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroacoustic music ). Pure electronic instruments depended entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator , theremin , or synthesizer . Electromechanical instruments can have mechanical parts such as strings, hammers, and electric elements including magnetic pickups , power amplifiers and loudspeakers . Such electromechanical devices include

5424-565: The album with a continuation of the Amorphous Androgynous project, Alice in Ultraland . Rumoured to be accompanied by a film of the same title, the album took The Isness ' psychedelic experimentation and toned it down, giving the album a singular theme and sound, and replacing the more bizarre moments with funk and ambient interludes. The album was ignored by the press, but was received more favourably among fans than its predecessor. Unlike The Isness , which featured almost 100 musicians over

5537-401: The albums Built by Humanoid and 7 Songs as well as a string of EPs. Meanwhile, Cobain, in collaboration with Dougans and new co-producer Enrico Berto, began work on new Amorphous Androgynous material, with a double album of versions and remixes of the track "We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal" appearing in 2020. Alongside contributors such as Paul Weller , Ray Fenwick and Brian Hopper ,

5650-545: The alias of their imaginary engineer Yage. Unlike the techno work recorded as Yage in 1992, this new record was darker, more trip hop and world music -oriented and featured ex- Propellerheads member Will White. From 2008, the band showcased a series of radio broadcasts and podcasts called The Electric Brain Storms, originally on stations such as Proton Radio , PBS radio in Australia, and Frisky Radio. The remaining shows appeared on

5763-733: The ancestor of the ORTF . Karlheinz Stockhausen worked briefly in Schaeffer's studio in 1952, and afterward for many years at the WDR Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music . 1954 saw the advent of what would now be considered authentic electric plus acoustic compositions—acoustic instrumentation augmented/accompanied by recordings of manipulated or electronically generated sound. Three major works were premiered that year: Varèse's Déserts , for chamber ensemble and tape sounds, and two works by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky : Rhapsodic Variations for

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5876-457: The band released a new online album as Amorphous Androgynous entitled The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness , which they describe as "A collection of psychedelic relics from The Amorphous Androgynous, 1967–2007". The release retains the sound of their last two psychedelic albums, while expanding on the element of funk first introduced on 2005's Alice in Ultraland . They recorded their following album, The Woodlands of Old , under

5989-480: The band's later psychedelic projects of the following decade, while others appeared on the subsequent album series From The Archives . After a four-year hiatus, rumours of mental illness began to spread. In an interview, Cobain revealed that he had been undertaking spiritual experimentation and had dealt with a bout of mercury poisoning , with over one hundred times the amount deemed to be safe. He gained much from his experience, realising that he could use music as

6102-422: The band's official site. and SoundCloud. The shows featured electronic, krautrock, experimental and psychedelic favourites of the band mixed in with known and unknown FSOL material, including newly recorded tracks, archived pieces, and new alias recordings. Many of the new tracks appeared on the band's Environments series. Cobain has described the new music as having "the introspective, kind of euphoric sadness that

6215-637: The borrowed equipment in the back of Ussachevsky's car, we left Bennington for Woodstock and stayed two weeks. . . . In late September 1952, the travelling laboratory reached Ussachevsky's living room in New York, where we eventually completed the compositions." Two months later, on 28 October, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening presented the first Tape Music concert in the United States. The concert included Luening's Fantasy in Space (1952)—"an impressionistic virtuoso piece" using manipulated recordings of flute—and Low Speed (1952), an "exotic composition that took

6328-412: The composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music (1907). Futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery . They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in

6441-470: The course of it and the various alternative versions and remix albums, Alice in Ultraland featured a fairly solid band lineup throughout, which extended to live shows which the band had undertaken away from the ISDN cables from 2005 onwards. ...song form has just become too limited. And when I say 'psychedelic', it's not a reference to 60s music but to the basic outlook of a child, which we all have. I think this

6554-600: The development of electroacoustic tape music in the 1940s, in Egypt and France. Musique concrète , created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds. Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953 by Karlheinz Stockhausen . Electronic music was also created in Japan and the United States beginning in

6667-597: The development of music technology several decades later. Following the foundation of electronics company Sony in 1946, composers Toru Takemitsu and Minao Shibata independently explored possible uses for electronic technology to produce music. Takemitsu had ideas similar to musique concrète , which he was unaware of, while Shibata foresaw the development of synthesizers and predicted a drastic change in music. Sony began producing popular magnetic tape recorders for government and public use. The avant-garde collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop), founded in 1950,

6780-402: The direction of electronic music. Another associate of Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse , began work on Déserts , a work for chamber orchestra and tape. The tape parts were created at Pierre Schaeffer's studio and were later revised at Columbia University . In 1950, Schaeffer gave the first public (non-broadcast) concert of musique concrète at the École Normale de Musique de Paris . "Schaeffer used

6893-510: The drastic change in sound which was inspired by Cobain's and Dougan's (separate) travels to India and immersion in spiritualism, nevertheless the majority was positive with Muzik magazine offering the album a 6/5 mark and dubbing it "...a white beam of light from heaven..." and other British publications such as The Times , The Guardian and MOJO praising the album and the band's ability to do something so completely different from what they had done before. Three years on, they followed

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7006-499: The duo has become more candid with their fanbase online. Their later work include their series of experimental Environments and Archives albums. Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans met in the mid-1980s while studying electronics at university in Manchester . Dougans had already been making electronic music, working between Glasgow and Manchester, when the pair first began working together in local clubs. In 1988, Dougans embarked on

7119-721: The end of the 1960s, musical groups playing light electronic music appeared in the USSR. At the state level, this music began to be used to attract foreign tourists to the country and for broadcasting to foreign countries. In the mid-1970s, composer Alexander Zatsepin designed an "orchestrolla" – a modification of the mellotron. The Baltic Soviet Republics also had their own pioneers: in Estonian SSR — Sven Grunberg , in Lithuanian SSR — Gedrus Kupriavicius, in Latvian SSR — Opus and Zodiac . The world's first computer to play music

7232-438: The first complete work of computer-assisted composition using algorithmic composition. "... Hiller postulated that a computer could be taught the rules of a particular style and then called on to compose accordingly." Later developments included the work of Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories , who developed the influential MUSIC I program in 1957, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music. Vocoder technology

7345-400: The first in a series of Monstrous Bubble Soundtracks , entitled The Cartel . On Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' album Chasing Yesterday , The Amorphous Androgynous are credited as Co-producers of the tracks "The Right Stuff" and "The Mexican". With the freedom of working independently from a record label, the group have remained prolific, working on multiple projects at once. Since 2014,

7458-493: The first music director. The Kitchen continued their eclectic programming at the Mercer Arts Center until the summer of 1973 when they began planning to move to 59 Wooster Street. On August 3, 1973, the building that housed the Mercer Arts Center collapsed, making this decision final. By 1973, the Vasulkas and Rhys Chatham moved on to other projects and hired a talented arts administrator, Robert Stearns, to take over as executive director. The visual artist/composer Jim Burton became

7571-539: The first programmable synthesizer. Prominent composers such as Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt , Charles Wuorinen , Halim El-Dabh, Bülent Arel and Mario Davidovsky used the RCA Synthesizer extensively in various compositions. One of the most influential composers associated with the early years of the studio was Egypt's Halim El-Dabh who, after having developed the earliest known electronic tape music in 1944, became more famous for Leiyla and

7684-403: The first world tour without leaving a studio. While the 1994 tour focused on creating soundscapes and unreleased material, the 1996 and 1997 shows were more conventional, each offering a different take on music featured on Dead Cities , blending current with occasional unreleased tracks. The final performances included considerable use of live guitar and percussion. These sessions were the basis of

7797-460: The flute far below its natural range." Both pieces were created at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, New York. After several concerts caused a sensation in New York City, Ussachevsky and Luening were invited onto a live broadcast of NBC's Today Show to do an interview demonstration—the first televised electroacoustic performance. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for

7910-410: The free sampling of ISDN . In 1996, the band released Dead Cities which expanded upon these early demos, in a mix of ambient textures and dance music. The new sound was introduced in the lead single " My Kingdom ." The album featured the first collaboration with composer Max Richter , including on a 1997 big beat single " We Have Explosive " that featured manipulated samples of Run DMC . The track

8023-617: The future)." Word quickly reached New York City. Oliver Daniel telephoned and invited the pair to "produce a group of short compositions for the October concert sponsored by the American Composers Alliance and Broadcast Music, Inc., under the direction of Leopold Stokowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After some hesitation, we agreed. . . . Henry Cowell placed his home and studio in Woodstock, New York, at our disposal. With

8136-575: The help of which it was possible to extract various timbres and consonances of a noise nature. In 1958, Evgeny Murzin designed ANS synthesizer , one of the world's first polyphonic musical synthesizers. Founded by Murzin in 1966, the Moscow Experimental Electronic Music Studio became the base for a new generation of experimenters – Eduard Artemyev , Alexander Nemtin  [ ru ] , Sándor Kallós , Sofia Gubaidulina , Alfred Schnittke , and Vladimir Martynov . By

8249-547: The influential manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). Developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified , and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin , ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s. From the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger and Maria Schuppel to adopt them. They were typically used within orchestras, and most composers wrote parts for

8362-467: The instruments. While some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium synthesized the sound of several orchestral instruments with reasonable precision. It achieved viable public interest and made commercial progress into streaming music through telephone networks . Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments. Ferruccio Busoni encouraged

8475-413: The label. Why is it, everybody, from the fucking fish and chip shop to a magazine ends up selling itself, getting the millions and retiring. Why don't people keep going with it, why can't they change it so that it keeps being important to them. Why didn't Anita Roddick keep going with Body Shop , why did it get so alien to her that she had to sell it, why? Surely she's making so many millions she can get

8588-459: The majority have releases through FSOLDigital have been of newly recorded material, with Environment Five being the first in the series to feature all new tracks. Since then, FSOL releases have been less conventional, with Environment Six being split over three volumes, named Environment Six , Environment 6.5 and Environmental , the latter part of a triple LP release called Archived : Environmental : Views . Similarly, Environment 7

8701-607: The mixes. Two songs from the project have surfaced as B-sides to Gallagher's singles in 2012: "Shoot a Hole into the Sun" (based on Gallagher's track " If I Had a Gun... ") was a B-side to the single "Dream On" , and a mix of " AKA... What a Life! " featured on the B-side of " Everybody's on the Run ". However, as the project was shelved in November 2012, the group have returned to original material, releasing

8814-448: The mystery behind the band. The old FSOL material, including the previously unreleased album Environments , along with a selection of newer experiments, the 5.1 experiments and a promise of unreleased Amorphous Androgynous psychedelic material, was uploaded for sale on their online shop, FSOLdigital.com. The FSOLdigital platform has performed very well – we are delighted that people still dig us – we dig you all too. In early March 2008,

8927-431: The new music director. The 1973–1974 season started in The Kitchen's new location at the corner of Wooster and Broome streets in the former LoGiudice Gallery Building. During its time on 59 Wooster Street The Kitchen emerged as New York's premiere avant-garde and experimental arts center. In addition to a performance space, a gallery and video viewing room were established at this location. At new location, The Kitchen began

9040-799: The organization of electronic sounds in Mayuzumi's "X, Y, Z for Musique Concrète", and later in Shibata's electronic music by 1956. Modelling the NWDR studio in Cologne, established an NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo in 1954, which became one of the world's leading electronic music facilities. The NHK electronic music studio was equipped with technologies such as tone-generating and audio processing equipment, recording and radiophonic equipment, ondes Martenot, Monochord and Melochord , sine-wave oscillators , tape recorders, ring modulators , band-pass filters , and four- and eight-channel mixers . Musicians associated with

9153-605: The past. To them, Lifeforms was a new work not just another Eno-type ambient album. That year, the Future Sound of London released a limited-edition album ISDN , which featured live broadcasts made over ISDN lines to various radio stations worldwide to promote Lifeforms , including The Kitchen , an avant-garde performance space in New York, and several appearances on BBC Sessions hosted by John Peel . The shows featured ambient soundscapes with previously released material performed alongside unheard tracks. One performance for BBC Radio 1 featured Robert Fripp . The tone of ISDN

9266-550: The popular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the United States. Experiments with graphical sound were continued by Norman McLaren from the late 1930s. The first practical audio tape recorder was unveiled in 1935. Improvements to the technology were made using the AC biasing technique, which significantly improved recording fidelity. As early as 1942, test recordings were being made in stereo. Although these developments were initially confined to Germany, recorders and tapes were brought to

9379-482: The principle of the theremin . In the 1930s, Nikolai Ananyev invented "sonar", and engineer Alexander Gurov — neoviolena, I. Ilsarov — ilston., A. Rimsky-Korsakov  [ ru ] and A. Ivanov — emiriton  [ ru ] . Composer and inventor Arseny Avraamov was engaged in scientific work on sound synthesis and conducted a number of experiments that would later form the basis of Soviet electro-musical instruments. In 1956 Vyacheslav Mescherin created

9492-413: The production of electronic music. Also in 1951, Schaeffer and Henry produced an opera, Orpheus , for concrete sounds and voices. By 1951 the work of Schaeffer, composer-percussionist Pierre Henry, and sound engineer Jacques Poullin had received official recognition and The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète , Club d 'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française was established at RTF in Paris,

9605-454: The progressive Harvest Records (an arm of EMI ). They also have their own label called Electronic Brain Violence on which off-beat electronic artists such as Oil and Simon Wells (Headstone Lane) have released EPs and singles. Simon Wells also contributed to Dead Cities on the track "Dead Cities Reprise" Nevertheless, Virgin records still controls FSOL's back catalog and was going to release

9718-493: The recorded material using reverberation, echo, voltage controls and re-recording. What resulted is believed to be the earliest tape music composition. The resulting work was entitled The Expression of Zaar and it was presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo. While his initial experiments in tape-based composition were not widely known outside of Egypt at the time, El-Dabh is also known for his later work in electronic music at

9831-539: The reins to former Artforum Editor-in-Chief Tim Griffin . In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded The Kitchen with four feet of water from the Hudson River , causing damage of about $ 450,000. With insurance only covering less than half the loss from the storm, the Kitchen received grants from Time Warner and the Art Dealers Association of America, as well as from nonprofit organizations and foundations (like

9944-546: The release features lead vocals by Peter Hammill , who is also credited on the album cover. Further alias releases have included albums released under the Blackhill Transmitter and Synthi-A names, as well as collaborations with Ross Baker and Daniel Pemberton . Since the millennium, FSOL took a more independent turn with their career, releasing their more psychedelic Amorphous Androgynous on an independent label, The Isness on Artful Records and Alice in Ultraland on

10057-439: The result of which can be heard on the 2007 release Hand-Made Devices . At their website Glitch TV (where the motto is "[A] sudden interruption in sanity, continuity or programme function") they sell and explain their devices such as the "Electronic Devices Digital Interface" glitch equipment. In 2007, the band uploaded several archive tracks online, for the first time revealing much of their unreleased work and unveiling some of

10170-427: The right people that she loves to keep going with the ethos; there's something dangerous there. Cobain has said that FSOL's mentality has always been about making a journey of an album rather than focusing on trying to have hit singles. He said that they had several top 40 singles (and albums) in the 90s because they had enough fans and had built up enough of a reputation to achieve these hits while still concentrating on

10283-482: The speeds of recorded tones. Composers began to experiment with newly developed sound-on-film technology. Recordings could be spliced together to create sound collages , such as those by Tristan Tzara , Kurt Schwitters , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov . Further, the technology allowed sound to be graphically created and modified . These techniques were used to compose soundtracks for several films in Germany and Russia, in addition to

10396-666: The studio included Toshiro Mayuzumi, Minao Shibata, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi , and Toru Takemitsu. The studio's first electronic compositions were completed in 1955, including Mayuzumi's five-minute pieces "Studie I: Music for Sine Wave by Proportion of Prime Number", "Music for Modulated Wave by Proportion of Prime Number" and "Invention for Square Wave and Sawtooth Wave" produced using the studio's various tone-generating capabilities, and Shibata's 20-minute stereo piece "Musique Concrète for Stereophonic Broadcast". The impact of computers continued in 1956. Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson composed Illiac Suite for string quartet ,

10509-546: The studio of Bebe and Louis Barron . In the same year Columbia University purchased its first tape recorder—a professional Ampex machine—to record concerts. Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was on the music faculty of Columbia University, was placed in charge of the device, and almost immediately began experimenting with it. Herbert Russcol writes: "Soon he was intrigued with the new sonorities he could achieve by recording musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another." Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that

10622-571: The studio was soon joined by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig . In his 1949 thesis Elektronische Klangerzeugung: Elektronische Musik und Synthetische Sprache , Meyer-Eppler conceived the idea to synthesize music entirely from electronically produced signals; in this way, elektronische Musik was sharply differentiated from French musique concrète , which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources. In 1953, Stockhausen composed his Studie I , followed in 1954 by Elektronische Studie II —the first electronic piece to be published as

10735-488: The tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation." On Thursday, 8 May 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition , and Underwater Valse . In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in

10848-399: The tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations." The score for Forbidden Planet , by Louis and Bebe Barron , was entirely composed using custom-built electronic circuits and tape recorders in 1956 (but no synthesizers in the modern sense of the word). In 1929, Nikolai Obukhov invented the " sounding cross " (la croix sonore ), comparable to

10961-412: The theremin that could otherwise be performed with string instruments . Avant-garde composers criticized the predominant use of electronic instruments for conventional purposes. The instruments offered expansions in pitch resources that were exploited by advocates of microtonal music such as Charles Ives , Dimitrios Levidis , Olivier Messiaen and Edgard Varèse . Further, Percy Grainger used

11074-403: The theremin to abandon fixed tonation entirely, while Russian composers such as Gavriil Popov treated it as a source of noise in otherwise-acoustic noise music . Developments in early recording technology paralleled that of electronic instruments. The first means of recording and reproducing audio was invented in the late 19th century with the mechanical phonograph . Record players became

11187-400: The two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "Equipped with earphones and a flute, I began developing my first tape-recorder composition. Both of us were fluent improvisors and the medium fired our imaginations." They played some early pieces informally at a party, where "a number of composers almost solemnly congratulated us saying, 'This is it' ('it' meaning the music of

11300-461: The work of Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff continues to present a brilliant light, for the reason that at the several points of notation, performance, and audition, action is provocative." Cage completed Williams Mix in 1953 while working with the Music for Magnetic Tape Project. The group had no permanent facility, and had to rely on borrowed time in commercial sound studios, including

11413-543: Was CSIRAC , which was designed and built by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard. Mathematician Geoff Hill programmed the CSIRAC to play popular musical melodies from the very early 1950s. In 1951 it publicly played the Colonel Bogey March , of which no known recordings exist, only the accurate reconstruction. However, CSIRAC played standard repertoire and was not used to extend musical thinking or composition practice. CSIRAC

11526-570: Was also a major development in this early era. In 1956, Stockhausen composed Gesang der Jünglinge , the first major work of the Cologne studio, based on a text from the Book of Daniel . An important technological development of that year was the invention of the Clavivox synthesizer by Raymond Scott with subassembly by Robert Moog . In 1957, Kid Baltan ( Dick Raaymakers ) and Tom Dissevelt released their debut album, Song Of The Second Moon , recorded at

11639-570: Was always there in the FSOL melodies". From this point, the band have been alternating their focus between different projects. In 2008, Environments II and From the Archives Vol. 5 were released on the band's site, followed by Environments 3 and From the Archives Vol. 6 in 2010; and Environments 4 and From the Archives Vol. 7 in 2012. Whilst the Archives feature old, unreleased material,

11752-415: Was built in 1935. however, after World War II, Japanese composers such as Minao Shibata knew of the development of electronic musical instruments. By the late 1940s, Japanese composers began experimenting with electronic music and institutional sponsorship enabled them to experiment with advanced equipment. Their infusion of Asian music into the emerging genre would eventually support Japan's popularity in

11865-419: Was conducted by Bruno Maderna , the tape controls were operated by Karlheinz Stockhausen . The title Déserts suggested to Varèse not only "all physical deserts (of sand, sea, snow, of outer space, of empty streets), but also the deserts in the mind of man; not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness, aloofness, timelessness, but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man

11978-760: Was darker and more rhythmic than Lifeforms . The band wanted to achieve something epic and grand, but no matter how much technological or personal support they had they never got to truly do what they envisioned. Cobain said that the 90s were a time of frustration because the technology didn't fit the band's ideas. In 1995, the album was re-released with expanded artwork and a slightly altered track list. The band's interests have covered different areas including film and video, 2D and 3D computer graphics , animation in making almost all their own videos for their singles, radio broadcasting and creating electronic devices for sound making. The 1995 edition of John Peel Sessions featured new tracks which moved away from breakbeat and

12091-726: Was developed. In the same decade, with a greater reliance on synthesizers and the adoption of programmable drum machines, electronic popular music came to the fore. During the 1990s, with the proliferation of increasingly affordable music technology, electronic music production became an established part of popular culture. In Berlin starting in 1989, the Love Parade became the largest street party with over 1 million visitors, inspiring other such popular celebrations of electronic music. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music . Pop electronic music

12204-462: Was followed by their debut album, Accelerator , which included "Papua New Guinea" among other new tracks. After a few other releases on Jumpin' & Pumpin', they were signed by Virgin Records , with the free rein to experiment. In 1993, the duo released an ambient album Tales of Ephidrina , the first under the alias Amorphous Androgynous. The focus on texture and mood, while retaining dance beats,

12317-527: Was never recorded, but the music played was accurately reconstructed. The oldest known recordings of computer-generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine from the University of Manchester in the autumn of 1951. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey . The earliest group of electronic musical instruments in Japan, Yamaha Magna Organ

12430-482: Was offered access to emerging audio technology by Sony. The company hired Toru Takemitsu to demonstrate their tape recorders with compositions and performances of electronic tape music. The first electronic tape pieces by the group were "Toraware no Onna" ("Imprisoned Woman") and "Piece B", composed in 1951 by Kuniharu Akiyama. Many of the electroacoustic tape pieces they produced were used as incidental music for radio, film, and theatre. They also held concerts employing

12543-416: Was the first " movement " of Cinq études de bruits , and marked the beginning of studio realizations and musique concrète (or acousmatic art). Schaeffer employed a disc cutting lathe , four turntables, a four-channel mixer, filters, an echo chamber, and a mobile recording unit. Not long after this, Pierre Henry began collaborating with Schaeffer, a partnership that would have profound and lasting effects on

12656-409: Was used on popular soundtracks to Mortal Kombat Annihilation , and the video game WipE'out" 2097 , the latter also including a new track "Landmass." "We Have Explosive" was the band's highest-charting single, and over the course of its five-part extended version included hints of funk . The album was promoted by what the band described as "the fuck rock'n'roll tour" via ISDN, gaining attention as

12769-412: Was well received. The album was released on Quigley, the band's own short-lived offshoot of Virgin. The band begun experimenting with radio performance, broadcasting three-hour radio shows to Manchester's Kiss FM from their studio. In 1993, the band released " Cascade ," a nearly 40 minutes single which made the UK top 30. It was followed in 1994 by the album Lifeforms , released to critical acclaim and

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