What is 'Electronic'?

[CMB1888]

Coil is far less accessible, in most cases, than either of those two musicians.

I finally got around to listening to Coil. I had assumed they were some modern American band but when I listened to them in the car - I thought - well the singer's English and they sound really old-fashioned - a sort of fragmented PiL/Siouxie sort of thing. So when I come home and check on wiki - I'm pretty close - win for me!

I liked them actually but I found some of the 'horror movie' bits a bit heavy-handed and so to me more comical than anything else.

Unkle next - the collaboration with Ian Brown sounds interesting.

[CMB1888]

Unkle was awful

[JonG]

Unkle was awful

I agree for the most part. Did you listen to Rabbit In Your Headlights? It features Thom Yorke on vocals. It is my favorite song by them. A quick google search will give you the video on youtube.

[CMB1888]

Did you listen to Rabbit In Your Headlights? It features Thom Yorke on vocals.

The video is better than the song (which is okay). Thom Yorke's voice is really cool on this though.

[Robi83]

Electronic is my eternal favourite kind of music. Almost every segment of it, but there are exceptations. E.g. I don't like lot of today's techno, house or any other neverending-monotone pieces.

I much more like the individuals.

Although Kraftwerk was the first who got into succes with milestone album(s), starting with Autobahn I think. They are much of robotic, more emphasize on rythms and dinamics.
Then Vangelis came...I do like every of his oldie stuff ; recently he has gone into too classical unfortunately, imho.

But, agreeing with the following statement, there has been one man who revolutionised electronic music, who made EM into more popular scene, who has been experimenting between pop and experimental music. He is Jean Michel Jarre.

Although his first releases came at beginning of 70s, just like Kraftwerk or Vangelis, but still lookong his own style and path, resulting in new sound, new oxygen to the musical world : Oxygene !

And the legendary cover.

[CraigCyril]

[FONT=&quot]Electronic music is a music largely created by disk jockeys with a purpose of creating environment for dance-based entertainment.[/FONT]

[JTRiff]

We are two seconds away from machine-written music, and it will be the main weapon against any real musicians left. Other than properly-connected ones, of course. )

[Jerome]

A couple of people in this thread have mentioned that electronic music is meant to be danced to and that it always has a steady beat and is not composed the same way a normal album is. I disagree completely. In the 60's and 70's, when electronic music first came to the fore, it had nothing to do with dance. Nor did it always have a steady repetitive beat. And it was certainly composed like a traditional album. It is only with the advent of softsynths and sequencing packages that the repetitive dance structure has become the norm. To me the current crop of electronic 'artists' lack imagination. All the tracks are starting to sound the same. If you want to find out about real electronic music you have to go back quite a few decades - explore Jean Michel Jarre, Wendy Carlos & Tangerine Dream. Electronic music can take you on an amazing journey whereas the current trend in the genre becomes boring very quickly. Main reason for this is a complete lack of imagination & creativity. The technology is controlling the musician instead of the other way around. And the reason that electronic artists are composing shorter pieces is twofold. One is sheer laziness. The other is a much shorter attention span brought about by the expectation of instant gratification, the availability of social media and being constantly connected via smartphones etc. Everyone seems to be in a rush to get finished instead of letting the piece develop organically. A dead giveaway is the way some of these electronic tracks finish. There is an awful lot of copy and paste going on until it seems the 'artist' gets bored and just ends it. Or he/she simply can't think of anything original to do. Or how to move from one mood to another (change timing/key/palette etc.) There are some good electronic artists but they are few and far between. And the best ones are the ones that approach composition in a classical sense - separate movements that interlock and develop into a pleasant listening experience. That's my two cents worth anyway. Many will disagree but have a listen to William Orbit's 'Pieces in a Modern Style' - that is the way electronic music is supposed to be.

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here is a short example of someone who knows how to produce both explorative electronic music and the visuals to go with it.
https://youtu.be/ZT058fJQ4tQ