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Music CD - Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music Special Edition 3CD + DVD
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Music CD: Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music Special Edition 3CD + DVD
List Price: $44.98
Our Price: $19.99
Your Save: $ 24.99 ( 56% )
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Manufacturer: Ellipsis Arts
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Valse Sentimentale - Clara Rockmore
2. Oraison - Ens D'Ondes De Montreal
3. Etude Aux Chemins De Fer - Pierre Schaeffer
4. Williams Mix - John Cage
5. Klangstudie II - Herbert Eimert/Robert Beyer
6. Low Speed - Otto Luening
7. Dripsody - Hugh Le Caine
8. Forbidden Planet: Main Title - Louis Barron/Bebe Barron
9. Elektronische Tanzste: Concertando Rubato - Oskar Sala
10. Poem Electronique - Edgard Varese
11. Sine Music (A Swarm Of Butterflies Encountered Over The Ocean) - Richard Maxfield
12. Apocalypse-Part 2 - Tod Dockstader
13. Kontakte - James Tenney/William Winant
14. Wireless Fant - Vladimir Ussachevsky
15. Philomel - Milton Babbitt
16. Spacecraft - MEV
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0052296369026
Label: Ellipsis Arts
Manufacturer: Ellipsis Arts
Number Of Discs: 4
Publisher: Ellipsis Arts
Release Date: 2005-10-25
Studio: Ellipsis Arts
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Total Package
Comment: I recently purchased Ohm, the early gurus of electronic music, and I am very immpressed. By far the most important criteria for judgment must be the quality of the cleaning up of early recordings. Every track on all three CDs has a low noise floor, which has been achieved without the loss of palpability or dynamic range that is so common with the usual cleaning processes. The other stand out feature is that this is the complete package; 114 page booklet with great art work, 13-16 tracks on each CD and a 20 track DVD. The whole lot is so well put together that I am proud to own it. Only one track each from the 30's and 40's, and heaps from the 50's and 60's. I'm glad I bought this.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: An Audio Encyclopedia of Early Electronic Experiments
Comment: I enjoyed listening to the CD and watching the videos. Some of the selections, however, were not quite what I would call musical quality, but were interesting sound samples. I was glad that I heard them, but once heard they would not be something I would want to listen to as music or for a background when reading a book. Some tracks had a very good ambient environmental quality that would be good for creating a warm background, meditating or deep listening. Some showed that synths could do classical very well compared to the older instruments. As a collection, they were not categorized so that all the ones that would make ambient listening are grouped together, so I plan to do a mix of my own from this collection. It is PBS special quality as far as the DVD presentation, though some of the selections seemed more about the animation than the music in the background. I was very impressed with the presentation on STRIA and tried to find more on the internet afterwards. The idea of the a new musical scale from the phi ratio seems exciting to me. Clara on the Theremin, both on the DVD and on the CD was impressive and shows how well the Theremin can replace a violin. Having done a lot of healing work, it would be nice for violinists to know this option, because it is easier on their bodies. The neck kinking and tight shoulder throws the body out of balance a lot and sometimes leads to headaches or even migraines. It would be interesting to see a Theremin tweaked slight more to make it even sound more like a violin, but it is close already. All in all, I enjoyed the old collection and can organize the selections on my own from what they have given.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great collection of important works
Comment: This is an excellent collection of pre-1980s electronic music. It probably goes without saying, but just to be clear, the music here is part of the academic/experimental music tradition and more popular forms of electronic music such as Kraftwerk or Jean-Jacques Perry are not represented here.
There is a great selection of composers here from early musique concrete pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer to technical innovators like John Chowning to unclassifiable geniuses like Iannis Xenakis. There are a few curious omissions such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, but the curators explain in the extensive liner notes that they were not able to acquire the rights to many works that they wanted to include.
Ohm is particularly useful for a broad overview of the development of electronic music. I carry it to my Intro to Sound Synthesis class everyday to play examples for my students. It's pretty handy in that way.
My biggest criticism is that many of the selections are excerpts. While it's great to have some 42 works all in one place, it's a shame to modify a composition without the composer's input or consent. It would be difficult to include the entire work in some cases such as "Philomel," which is a little over 20 minutes (if memory serves) and you may not mind having excerpts. It does make extended listen a bit easier. Since not everyone is used to hearing this sort of electronic music, these highlights may actually make the music slightly more accessible.
The DVD has a variety of material. There are quite a few "visualizations" created recently for early works. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this. I really think, for example, Xenakis should have signed off on the project before they superimposed some visual material on his "Bohor". I can't really see what this adds, as many of these visualizations end up looking similar to the iTunes visualizer.
There are some very interesting interviews with pioneers such as Milton Babbitt and Clara Rockmore. Those are probably the most interesting parts of the DVD. There are also a few live performances. These range from a beautiful performance from Rockmore on her thermin to a bizarre performance piece featuring Alvin Lucier and his amplified brainwaves.
The set includes a nice booklet with some great information. It's perfect for someone unfamiliar with electronic music and will give them a good feeling for what it's all about. You get some historical context, some composer background, and brief descriptions of the work and why it is important.
Overall, I highly recommend this. For the beginner, this is an easily accessible introduction. For the expert, this is a handy summary of early work in the field and one that you can easily recommend to students.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Worth the dough
Comment: Yeah, it's costly, yeah, it quickly skims over 40+ years of electronic music, but its an excellent sample of the range of early uses and experimentations with electronics for creation of challenging and rigorous music. With 3 CDs and a DVD, plus a pretty thick (for a CD set) insert, I thought this was certainly a decent value. While certainly not encyclopedic, this set seems like a good starting point for exploring early electronic music.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not your grandson's electronic music.
Comment: For those who are unacquainted, this set is the gateway into an entirely new experience of sound. Few listeners, and likely not many practitioners, for that matter, of dance, techno, and trance fully appreciate the extent to which "electronic music," as we know it, was borne from the world of avant-garde classical music...
...and don't expect a killer drum and bass rhythm section on any of these pieces. As you'll soon learn from listening to this box set and reading the ample liner notes (with intro by Brian Eno, no less), the origins of electronic music were anything but simple, or dull. The set takes off by introducing a couple standard-ish classical pieces which put to use some of the first electronic instruments invented. The theremin and ondes martinot (a small keyboard-based instrument which was a distant precursor to the synth) are featured in the first two tracks, respectively, and after that the set moves into some of the different movements and styles developed throughout the middle part of the 20th Century.
Track three is by Pierre Schaeffer. For all you dance and techno buffs out there, this was the first man ever to loop a track, play a track back in reverse, or use a host of other effects which are all common tools for musicians of today. His "Etude Aux Chemins de Fer," or "Railroad Study," is a field recording of various train sounds which was manipulated by Schaeffer in his Paris studio. He developed this method of documenting found sounds and applying various effects to them, dubbing it "Musique Concrete." The process caught on fast. John Cage uses the same method in "Williams Mix," but organizes the sounds in random, rapid succession according to complex principles of chance. This piece is absolutely jarring. Another amazing example of musique concrete is Hugh le Caine's "Dripsody," a virtuosic piece composed from the repetition and manipulation into different pitches of the sound of a single drop of water.
Before entering the age of synthesizers, there is some fine tape-music in the form of Varese's "Poeme Electronique," a fantastically subtle blend of found sounds and instruments grossly manipulated by tape cuts, as well as Richard Maxfield's "Sine Music," a sort of pointillist tape piece which rearranges the sound of a sine wave.
Shortly following the era of musique concrete, synthesizers were being brought into development. One of the first synth pieces on the Ohm set is an excerpt from Milton Babbitt's "Philomel," a complex serialist work scored for female voice and the Mark II synthesizer, (one of the earliest ever developed, to which Babbitt had sole access for a time). "Cindy Electronium" by Raymond Scott is another highlight, which uses Scott's own "Electronium," a "spontaneous composing and performing machine," as he described it, developed half a century ago. As you will notice when hearing this track, the Electronium was capable of producing electronic sounds which sounded as modern as anything churned out by the electronic musicians of today. Also provided in the synth category is a sample of Morton Subotnick's infamous "Silver Apples of the Moon," one of the most popular electronic pieces ever recorded.
The later tracks on this box set delve into digital computer pieces and soundscapes. Paul Lansky's "Six Fantasies" is a rather haunting piece for robotic-sounding voices harmonically enriched using early computer technology, and David Behrman's "On the Other Ocean," is a brilliantly thought-out improvisation between a solo cellist and a computer program written by Behrman himself, which reacts to the soloist's performance. The four or five tracks rounding out the set can be considered some of the earliest forms of New Age, as these artists used combinations of the earlier techniques to make some of the first intentionally ambient and hypnotic music.
The DVD included in this box is a nice supplement to the musical content. One can actually see a few of these artists at work, or being interviewed in person. The vintage Behrman performance, as well as an edit of the stunning light and dance piece by Max Mathews (which I really wish was longer) are two of the best segments.
To me, the most fascinating aspect of all of this music is not only the lack of conventionally-produced sound, but also in many cases the complete abandon of traditional compositional form. In 90-95% of the pieces, there exists either no recurring themes, introductions, crescendos, counterpoint, etc., or there exists merely a complete distortion of these standards. This music truly represents everything new and revolutionary we have come to expect from the beginnings of the postmodern era.
The Ohm box set serves as a fantastic historical document and THE definitive entrance point for anyone interested in the origins of electronic music. The fact that edits are occasionally used can be a bit frustrating (the original versions of many of these pieces are loooooong), but some of this music is not available anywhere else, and let's face it: after being infected by the incredible sounds encased here, you'll be searching for all of the artists' original albums, anyway.
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Editorial Reviews:
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OHM+ : the early gurus of electronic music Special Edition 3CD + DVD Leaps in technology: oscillators, generators, vacuum tubes, amplifiers, transistors, magnetic tape, integrated circuits, and the microchip— inspired new instruments: the telharmonium, theremin, ondes martenot, electronic sackbut, clavivox, electronium, moog synthesizer, and computers— and artists everywhere hungry for new modes of expression. This collection is a humble but bold attempt to give form to the wonderful, multi-directional, inevitable birth of electronic music. "Many of the ideas in this collection have now been so completely assimilated into popular listening that it may sometimes be hard to remember how surprising it all was on first outing. Some of it still sounds pretty exotic. These CDs are important as part of the story of how we got to where we are now-the cultural conversation so far-and as a still fruitful repertoire of future possibilities." —from the Foreword by Brian Eno Three CDs—42 original music tracks from 1948-1980 112 Page Book—extensive artist interviews, commentaries, and archival photographs Special Edition DVD—over two hours of rare performances, interviews, animations, and experimental video.
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