OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music 1948-1980

“… Music has been affected no less drastically. As Brian Eno points out in his forward to the recently reissued and expanded OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music 3xCD box set (now with the addition of a DVD, and re-dubbed OHM+), most of what we listen to is electronic in some fashion, contrary to the entire history of music prior to the 1920s. Whether over the radio, stereo, or amplified speaker, electronic music has all but made ‘natural’ sound obsolete. And of course, this says nothing about the musicians who actually use electronics as instruments, manipulating digits, circuits, and bits to make music– music that, for all intents and purposes, would have been as unimaginable as Martian rovers to your grandparents. Lucky for us, three generations into the technological revolution, much of the shock of innovation has given way to something of a learned instinct when it comes to this stuff. The groundbreaking experiments of composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaefer, Pierre Henry, and John Cage have led to an age where blips and beeps are not only taken for granted but form the basis of a musical education that for most people starts in pre-school with such ‘advanced’ learning tools as Simon Says. OHM+, covering electronic music from the 1930s to the 1980s, documents a clear and steady path towards an age when most music simply couldn’t be made without electronic assistance. The characters involved were undoubtedly experimenters working on the edges of both technology and good old human ingenuity. In many cases, their results will sound strange to ears accustomed to more refined uses of the available tools– but in others, the sounds are eerily ahead of their time. Regardless, OHM+ is one of the best documents of its kind, and a model for archival compilations. …”
Pitchfork
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YouTube: OHM – THE EARLY GURUS OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC (COMPLETE)