Other Contemporary Artists

Around the late 60’s early 70’s other electronic artists were emerging into the mainstream such as the French composer Jean Michel Jarre and the self-taught and talented Greek composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathenassiou, otherwise known as Vangelis. Jarre’s first risky but biggest ground-breaking hit, his first successful album was Oxygen, a magnificent electronic journey, released in 1976 and composed entirely in his makeshift home studio. This album release was a gamble by the label Disques Dreyfus who signed Jarre, as this sort of music had not yet gained mainstream popularity, and the titles of the tracks Oxygen 1-6 was never before seen in popular music.

Jean Michel Jarre, 1979 Place De La Concorde-Photo Douglas Doig

Vangelis who was to become known for composing film scores such as the score to the films Blade Runner, and Chariots of Fire among others, produced his first album away from his band Aphrodite’s Child. Fais que ton rêve soit plus long que la nuit - (Make your dream be longer than the night), was his first release in France and Greece in 1971. The album contained news snippets, field recordings and protest songs and was produced around the time of student riots in France in 1968.

Vangelis, Circa 1984.

Around the same time emerged the German electronic ensemble Tangerine Dream. Foundered by Edgar Froese, these three artists helped to pioneer the space music scene. The band has seen various line ups over the years, Forese being the only permanent member up into the twenty-first centaury. The band had a big impact on the German music scene known as Kosmische (Cosmic). They later signed to Richard Branson’s fledgling label Virgin. Their first release was called Electronic Meditation, released in 1970 on the label Ohr. These artists and others including Tomita began to emerge and define a new genre of what was termed space music by some. Tomita was even noted as saying on the back of his album Kosmos, that he tried to envision what some classical pieces would sound like being renditioned in outer space.

Tangerine Dream, Royal Albert Hall 1975.

The late 1970’s saw the emergence of the Japanese electronic composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sakamoto was a singer, actor and music producer and was a member of the band the Yellow Magic Orchestra, (who’s member Hideki Matsutake was an assistant of Tomita’s.) Sakamoto released the experimental album Thousand Knives in 1978. Sakamoto was famous later on for composing the electronic score to the David Bowie film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, concerning British prisoners of war in a Japanese concentration camp during World War Two. Sakamoto was classically trained and began experimenting with synthesizers, (including the Moog,) whilst at university. He has stated that he was incredibly influenced by Claude Debussy.

 

Ryuichi Sakamoto, 25^th April 2017.

Tomita speaks of his assistant Matsutake-

“Yes. I was becoming increasingly busy around then, so I had Matsutake manage me at a music production company he was working for back then. When I started to understand which cords to connect to create the right sounds, I decided I'd let some younger guys try it, so I invited Matsutake. With Moog, you have to keep the power on all day for it to work properly, so when I wasn't using it, I'd let others use it. I would use it from 8 PM to 4 AM, and then there would be a group using it from 4 AM to noon, and then another group would come in and play around with it until 8 PM. The reason I didn't teach him how to use it is because it would be pointless if he imitated what I did and created the same sound. Because I didn't interfere with what he was doing, the Yellow Magic Orchestra project that Matsutake was involved in developed their own sound different from mine, and eventually, they gained much more success than I did.” (Tomita)[1]

Brian Eno is an electronic artist who first began to experiment with tape machines in the early 1970’s whilst at college. Earlier he designed his own tape delay using two tape machines with a single reel of tape. Eno studied painting and experimental music at Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960’s. Between 1971-73 he became a member of the glam rock band Roxy Music. He operated the mixing desk and used the VCS3 synthesizer and tape machines for the band. In 1973-77 he created four solo albums electronically which he termed Pop Art. One of these albums was Here Come the Warm Jets.1973. Eno is well known for producing ambient music (which he termed), such as his album Ambient 1 Music for Airports 1978. Eno has worked with many artists over the years such as Robert Fripp of King Crimson, David Bowie, U2, Coldplay and David Byrne of Talking Heads. He also produced artists such as John Cale and Talking Heads. Eno has influenced many electronic artists since including the likes of electronic musician and producer William Orbit.

Brian Eno, Air Studios London 1973

This point in time with space music or as it has come to be known, electronica; is a stark contrast to the early experiments in electronic music, with the likes of Shaffer and his music concrete. Some compositions of this time were heavily influenced by classical music and serialist pieces and it seems fitting that Tomita went on to emulate such composers as Debussy and Wagner electronically. It seems that art is mimicking art.

“In the same 1955 issue of the journal die Reihe that featured Eimert’s thoughts, Pierre Boulez offered a cautionary tale of composers gone astray in the electronic music studio, their once-fixed audio limitations having become unlimited, leading to the “negative cliché” of special effects gone mad.  The underlying message? The taste that governs the writing of traditional music can well serve the composer of electronic music. By its nature as a music using a new medium, the composing and performing of electronic music will naturally lead to new sounds, techniques, and styles of music. In 1969, looking back at the decade of the Sixties, no less a musical figurehead than composer Igor Stravinsky commented that the most telling index of musical progress in the 1960s:”- [was] not in the work of any composer . . . but in the status of electronic music . . . the young musician takes his degree in computer technology now, and settles down to his Moog or his mini-synthesizer as routinely as in my day he would have taken it in counterpoint and harmony and gone to work at the piano.” (Holmes, pp.334/335.)[2]

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[1] 2012, Isoa Tomita, Moog Reverie, Accessed on 25/10/2019

[2] Holmes, T. (2008). Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (Vol. 3rd ed). New York: Taylor & Francis [CAM].