Experimental Electronica : Reading and Listening Guide

1. From your reading, what were “chill-out” rooms? What is their relationship with ambient music?

2. Listen to Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds.” • How was Orb’s one constant member, Alex Patterson, influenced by Brian Eno? • What does this recording retain from house and techno music? • How does “Little Fluffy Clouds” compare with hardcore music, such as “Injected With a Poison,” which was being made during the same period?

3. Listen the “Xtal” by Aphex Twin. • What did Richard James (Aphex Twin) do in his early years that was similar to John Cage? • Prendergast sets Aphex Twin’s music alongside that of Stockhausen and Reich. What about Aphex Twin’s music does Prendergast think is significant? What do you think? • “Xtal” is classified as “intelligent techno” to differentiate it from hardcore. How does it differ from the hardcore you have heard? Which is more danceable music?

4. Listen to the four IDM recordings and read the two Internt-based articles on IDM • What does “IDM” stand for? • What is one objection many people have had to the term “IDM”? • How is IDM influenced by avant-garde classical composers, such as Stockhausen and Schaeffer? • How is IDM produced and performed today? • What kind of generation gap might you expect between fans of hardcore and IDM? • What English independent record label was influential in releasing some of the earliest IDM recordings?

5. Compare “Xtal” by Aphex Twin and “Don’t Talk” by Fennesz. • How would you describe the sound in each recording? • Which draws more from the classical avant-garde, such as Stockhausen and Schaeffer? • Which sounds more like Brian Eno’s music? (Even if the artist claims never to have heard Eno.) • What does each draw from house and techno? • Which is more emotional? In what way? • Which do you enjoy more? Why?

6. “Don’t Talk” by Fennesz is a cover of a Brian Wilson recording. Do you hear much of the Beach Boys in the Fennesz version? How so?

7. Stockhausen frequently is cited as an influence on electronic artists, particularly those associated with IDM and glitch music. “Stockhausen vs. the Technocrats” is a revealing interchange between Stockhausen and three electronic composers. In a few words, what do they think of each other? What do you think are the reasons for their differences?

January 24, 2010 1 8. Listen to “Line Extension” and “Raute” and read the Internet-based articles on glitch music • Why is this music called “glitch music”? • What does glitch music have in common with IDM, such as Autechre’s “Acroyear2”? • How does glitch music rely on computers?

9. In “The Aesthetics of Failure,” Cascone calls glitch music “post-digital.” • Why does he call the aesthetics of glitch music, the ”aesthetics of failure”? • What does he mean by “post-digital”? • What does Cascone describe as being “background” in our modern age? • Why does Cascone say that glitch music is the first electronic music to truly expand on the work and ideas of Cage, Stockhausen, and Futurists, such as Russolo? • How did the glitch aesthetic develop in earlier sub-genres of electronic dance music? • What does Cascone means when he says that “The medium is no longer the message in glitch music: the tool has become the message”?

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