The Bassline That Changed the Future

30 Aug 2026 Archive Bülent Arel

Electronic Music Hidden in an Archive

Bülent Arel was one of the composers working at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center during the formative years of American electronic music. Columbia University’s archive still contains tapes, work materials and fragments connected with his electronic compositions, including material associated with Stereo Electronic Music No. 1 and other experiments from the 1960s.

Arel is exactly the kind of figure who makes electronic music history feel incomplete.

The usual story quickly settles around a few famous studios and names. Yet institutions contain shelves of tapes made by composers whose work helped establish the language everybody else later inherited.

Tape music was laborious.

Sound had to be generated, recorded, cut, copied, filtered and physically organised. A twenty-second passage could represent hours of construction.

An archive changes how I hear that history.

The reel is not simply an old recording.

It is evidence of a process in which editing was literally an action performed on material.

Digital production made those gestures invisible.

The tape still shows where the decisions happened.

https://dlc.library.columbia.edu/catalog/10.7916/d8-z89r-xx75

#BulentArel #TapeMusic #ElectronicMusic #MusicArchive

Electronic Music Hidden in an Archive DLC Catalog Channel V materials : [work material] Bülent Arel was one of the composers working at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center during the formative years of American electronic...

30 Aug 2026 Ensemble Midori Takada

One Musician Becoming an Ensemble

Midori Takada recorded Through the Looking Glass as her first solo album in 1983. The four-piece work centres on percussion and uses instruments including marimba, vibraphone and other acoustic sound sources, building an intricate world from layering and repetition rather than from a conventional band. The album later became a highly sought-after recording before being internationally reissued.

What interests me is how little the music behaves like a demonstration of percussion technique.

Takada uses repeated patterns to create space.

A marimba figure may remain simple while another rhythmic layer slowly alters how we hear it. The ear begins noticing relationships rather than individual hits.

It is almost the acoustic equivalent of sequencing.

Except every repetition has passed through a human body first.

That distinction becomes more audible the longer the music continues.

A loop can repeat perfectly.

A performer can repeat with intention.

Those are not quite the same thing.

https://wereleasewhateverthefuckwewantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/through-the-looking-glass

#MidoriTakada #JapaneseMusic #Minimalism #Percussion

One Musician Becoming an Ensemble WRWTFWW Records Through The Looking Glass, by Midori Takada 0 track album

30 Aug 2026 Dub

The Repairman Who Reinvented the Mix

Osbourne Ruddock, better known as King Tubby, began as an electronics and radio repairman in Kingston. His technical knowledge made him valuable to Jamaica’s growing sound-system culture, and by 1964 he was operating Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi. His later studio work helped push the mixing console itself toward becoming a musical instrument.

That shift remains one of the most important ideas in modern production.

Normally a mixer is supposed to balance what musicians have already recorded.

Dub asks a different question.

What happens if the mix is the performance?

Vocals disappear. Drums suddenly remain alone. Echo throws a fragment several seconds into the future. A mistake can become a feature if it sounds good enough to repeat. Scientist later described dub precisely in those terms: engineers reorganising existing recordings into new ones.

The producer no longer stands outside the music making it tidy.

The studio becomes playable.

Much of contemporary electronic production still works inside the space Tubby helped open.

https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/king-tubby/about/

#KingTubby #Dub #JamaicanMusic #StudioAsInstrument

The Repairman Who Reinvented the Mix www.reggaeville.com Biography: King Tubby Reggaeville.com - World of Reggae in One Village

30 Aug 2026 Grandmaster Flash

The Break That Would Not End

Before sampling software could loop a drum break automatically, Grandmaster Flash developed what he called Quick Mix Theory.

He used two copies of the same record on two turntables. When the rhythmic break on one copy approached its end, he switched to the other copy at the beginning of the same break, then reset the first record while the second played. Repeating the process could extend a few seconds of percussion almost indefinitely.

That seems almost obvious now because looping has become a basic software command.

But Flash had to invent the loop physically.

Two records became temporary memory.

The mixer became an editing system.

His hands became the transport controls.

What interests me most is that the technique did not merely reproduce an existing song. It isolated the exact part dancers wanted and changed its duration.

That is already sampling logic before the sampler.

Sometimes an entire technological revolution begins because somebody wants eight seconds of music to last a little longer.

https://invention.si.edu/invention-stories/hip-hop-and-african-american-innovation

#GrandmasterFlash #HipHop #Turntablism #SamplingHistory

The Break That Would Not End invention.si.edu Before sampling software could loop a drum break automatically, Grandmaster Flash developed what he called Quick Mix Theory. He used two copies...

30 Aug 2026 Computer Music

Turning a Mouse Into an Instrument

Laurie Spiegel created Music Mouse in the mid-1980s when personal computers were only beginning to enter ordinary homes. Instead of treating the mouse as a device for selecting menus, she turned its movement into musical control. Moving across the screen could generate melodies, harmonies and arpeggios in real time. In 2026 Eventide released a modern version in collaboration with Spiegel.

I like the conceptual shift more than the software itself.

A computer mouse was designed for pointing.

Spiegel asked what else the gesture might mean.

That is often how genuinely new instruments appear. The technology already exists, but someone stops accepting its intended role.

There is also something important about continuous control here. Clicking a note is one thing. Moving a hand through a two-dimensional space creates relationships between several musical parameters at once.

It makes composition feel closer to drawing.

We talk constantly about interfaces becoming more intuitive.

Music Mouse suggests another possibility: make the interface strange enough that the musician starts behaving differently.

https://www.eventideaudio.com/plug-ins/music-mouse/

#LaurieSpiegel #MusicMouse #ComputerMusic #ElectronicMusic

Turning a Mouse Into an Instrument eventideaudio.com Laurie Spiegel created Music Mouse in the mid-1980s when personal computers were only beginning to enter ordinary homes. Instead of treating the...

30 Aug 2026 Donna Summer

The Bassline That Changed the Future

When Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer made “I Feel Love” in 1977, the idea was to imagine what dance music might sound like in the future. Moroder constructed almost the entire instrumental backing electronically, including bass, kick, snare and hi-hat, creating the mechanical pulse that became the track’s defining feature.

What still surprises me is how little the bassline actually needs to do.

It repeats relentlessly, but the sound is alive because modulation, filtering and the relationship between the electronic pulse and Summer’s voice keep changing our perception of it.

The machine supplies precision. The voice supplies something the machine cannot.

That combination became more influential than either part alone.

Today a sequenced synthesizer bassline is completely ordinary. In 1977, hearing a dance record whose rhythmic foundation sounded deliberately artificial was another matter.

The future Moroder imagined eventually became so familiar that we stopped hearing how strange it once was.

Time – Meet Giorgio Moroder, the Godfather of Modern Dance Music

#GiorgioMoroder #DonnaSummer #IFeelLove #ElectronicMusic

The Bassline That Changed the Future Giorgio Moroder Time - Meet Giorgio Moroder, the Godfather of Modern Dance Music - Giorgio Moroder When Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer made “I Feel Love” in 1977, the idea was to imagine what dance music might sound like in the future. Moroder construc…

29 Aug 2026 Drum Machine Without Samples

A Drum Machine Without Samples

Most drum machines begin with recorded sounds. LumLux Art’s Drum Rack starts somewhere else. Its kick, snare, hi-hat and clap are synthesised directly from oscillators and noise in the browser. There are no drum samples hiding underneath the interface.

That becomes most visible in the kick. Instead of reducing it to a few familiar controls, Drum Rack exposes the pitch envelope itself. Nodes can be moved, added and curved while a waveform display redraws the result. The kick is constructed from three layers: a short noise click for attack, a pitched body and a sine-based sub layer.

What interests me is that this turns a small drum machine into something closer to a lesson in sound design.

Changing a sample usually means selecting another recording. Here, changing the envelope changes the physical behaviour of the sound being generated. A steep pitch fall gives the kick a different sense of attack from a slow one. Harmonics, decay, sub level and drive then reshape the same underlying synthesis rather than disguising it with another preset.

The sequencer follows a similar idea. Individual hits can have their own level, timing nudge and repeated strikes, so a rhythm does not have to remain perfectly attached to the grid. Patterns can also move between 4/4, triplets, 3/4 and odd meters such as 5/4 and 7/4. WAV and MIDI export let the results leave the browser and continue inside a DAW.

Perhaps the most interesting limitation is also the simplest one: only four voices.

In a world of enormous sample libraries and plug-ins with thousands of presets, Drum Rack asks what can happen when there is less to choose from and more to shape.

Sometimes designing the drum is more interesting than finding one.

Drum Rack

#DrumRack #DrumSynthesis #Sequencer #SoundDesign #WebAudio

**A Drum Machine Without Samples** Lumlux Art Drum Rack - Lumlux Art Pass it on No install needed — it runs in any browser. Send to a friend Drum Rack is on the App Store The iPhone version is live. The same drum machine you just played, running natively on your phone. Free, no ads, no account, nothing collected. Android version coming soon Drum Rack is in…

29 Aug 2026 Impossible Tasks Remedios Varo's

Remedios Varo Built Machines for Impossible Tasks

Remedios Varo’s paintings are filled with devices that almost look functional.

Wheels turn. Pipes connect rooms. Figures operate strange apparatus. Architecture behaves like machinery. Scientific instruments seem to have been designed for purposes that remain just outside ordinary logic.

A 2026 exhibition at Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Moderno brought together paintings, drawings, photographs, books and notebooks from the museum’s Remedios Varo collection. The material showed how carefully constructed this apparently dreamlike world actually was. The exhibition emphasised characters engaged in activities somewhere between scientific discovery and mystical ritual.

That combination is what keeps the paintings from becoming simple fantasy for me.

The impossible is presented with technical seriousness.

A machine may perform an absurd task, but somebody has still designed the gears.

Varo understood something that science fiction and experimental design repeatedly rediscover: an invented world becomes convincing when its objects obey internal rules.

You do not need to explain what the machine does completely.

You need to make it look as though somebody could.

That small difference gives imagination engineering.

https://www.gob.mx/cultura/articulos/remedios-varo-habitantes-de-lo-insolito

#RemediosVaro #Surrealism #MexicanArt #Painting

Remedios Varo Built Machines for Impossible Tasks gob.mx Remedios Varo: Habitantes de lo insólito La exposición dedicada a Remedios Varo llega al Museo de Arte Moderno con un recorrido por su universo creativo, del 19 de marzo al 5 de julio de 2026.

29 Aug 2026 Drawing the Soundtrack With

Drawing the Soundtrack With a Pen

Norman McLaren discovered that sound on film did not necessarily have to be recorded with a microphone.

Optical film sound converts visual information on the soundtrack area of a film strip into audio. McLaren realised that if the system was reading shapes, he could create those shapes himself. He drew and scratched patterns directly into the optical soundtrack area and produced synthetic sounds without first generating them acoustically. The National Film Board’s Pen Point Percussion demonstrates exactly how the process works.

I love the directness of this.

Normally sound becomes an image only after software analyses it as a waveform or spectrum.

McLaren could move in the opposite direction.

Draw the image.

Hear what it sounds like.

That collapses animation and electronic composition into the same physical material.

A mark can simultaneously belong to cinema and music.

For contemporary audiovisual artists this remains a surprisingly useful idea. We often synchronise completed audio and completed visuals afterwards.

McLaren’s process suggests something deeper.

Design one system capable of generating both.

When sound and image share a source, synchronisation stops being an effect.

It becomes part of their anatomy.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/pen_point_percussion/

#NormanMcLaren #VisualMusic #ExperimentalFilm #OpticalSound

Drawing the Soundtrack With a Pen National Film Board of Canada Pen Point Percussion Norman McLaren explains how he makes synthetic sound on film. With an oscilloscope he first demonstrates what familiar sounds look like on the screen; next, how sound shapes …

29 Aug 2026 Abstract Art

Alma Thomas Painted While Music Played

Alma Thomas spent decades teaching art before her most recognisable abstract paintings emerged after retirement. By then she was already in her seventies.

Her mature paintings use repeated blocks and strokes of colour separated by narrow areas of exposed canvas. The Smithsonian has documented another detail that makes those rhythms more interesting: Thomas frequently listened to music while she worked, and she thought carefully about relationships between visual composition and musical ideas such as sequence, contrast, harmony and rhythm. Her titles repeatedly connect colour, nature, space and music.

Look at the paintings with that in mind and the gaps become important.

The coloured marks do not form one continuous surface.

They arrive in pulses.

White canvas interrupts them like tiny rests between notes.

I do not think the paintings need to be translated literally into music. That would make them less interesting.

What matters is that rhythm is not owned by sound.

Repetition, interruption, tempo and variation can all exist visually.

Thomas also complicates one of art history’s favourite myths: the important artist revealed as a young genius.

Some of her strongest work came in her eighth decade.

Creative development does not always peak early.

Sometimes decades of looking are preparation.

https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/alma-thomas

#AlmaThomas #ColorPainting #AbstractArt #VisualRhythm

Alma Thomas Painted While Music Played Smithsonian American Art Museum Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas Alma Thomas spent decades teaching art before her most recognisable abstract paintings emerged after retirement. By then she was already in her seventies.…

29 Aug 2026 Electronic Music

The Nigerian Synth Records Nobody Could Explain

William Onyeabor self-released a series of records in Nigeria between 1977 and 1985, then largely abandoned music and refused for years to explain much about how those recordings had been made.

That silence contributed to the mythology, but the music itself is more interesting than the mystery.

Onyeabor’s records combine long-form funk grooves, electronic keyboards, drum machines, repetition and synthesizer lines that can sound surprisingly close to later synth-pop and electro. Luaka Bop eventually spent years licensing and reintroducing his catalogue internationally. The label itself notes that many biographical claims surrounding Onyeabor were difficult to verify, which is a useful warning against allowing the legend to replace what can actually be heard.

What fascinates me is how awkwardly the music fits familiar histories of electronic pop.

We are often given a tidy geographical story: experimental electronics in Europe, disco in the United States, synth-pop emerging from particular Western cities.

Then a record from Enugu appears and the map becomes less convenient.

The synthesizer was never owned by one musical culture.

Once electronic instruments began travelling, musicians everywhere could discover uses their manufacturers had never imagined.

Music history becomes much more interesting when the lines stop moving only from the usual centres outward.

https://www.luakabop.com/products/william-onyeabor-who-is-william-onyeabor-1

#WilliamOnyeabor #NigerianMusic #SynthFunk #ElectronicMusic

The Nigerian Synth Records Nobody Could Explain luakabop.com Who is William Onyeabor? by William Onyeabor - Luaka Bop Little is known about William Onyeabor, and that’s the way he likes it. Sure, you might hear something about him if you go to Enugu, a rural and isolated town in Eastern Nigeria, where he lives in a hidden palace in the woods. As a crowned High Chief of his Igbo village, he is arbiter of his community. He also rejoices in expanding Nigeria’s energetic Christian music scene. The man is not in hiding. But he has turned his back on the music that made him a star to Enugu youth in the turbulent 1980s. What makes a man turn his back on his past? William Onyeabor is a powerful man and yet he chooses to remain a mystery. It is as if Onyeabor, in the prime of his force, has chosen to forget the work of his youth…the stinging Afro-funk; tickly wah-wah; searing jazz synth keyboard; runs suggesting spaceships leading into helium-voiced choruses singing in a jingle-jangle; tuning from the faraway stars; and that particular nostalgic sound found when the first electronic drum machines arrived to tantalize drummers everywhere. While most artists whose music has been obscured feel validated to have their work re-issued, Onyeabor imposed an obstacle to surmount for this anthology to exist. Even money – usually an effective persuader—initially failed to move him. It took time and serious wooing to persuade Onyeabor to let new listeners, from a non-African perspective, appreciate this work. The slim Onyeabor creation myth (of which there is no known corroboration by Onyeabor himself) claims that he was plucked from the ranks of his ravaged province and sent to study in Russia. In the 1970’s it was not unknown for the brightest African youth to get scholarships in Moscow. Onyeabor’s intention, apparently, was to be a filmmaker. Back in Nigeria he founded an eponymous company called Wilfilms, an outlet through which he released his musical recordings. It may or may not have released any films. He began investing in banks of synthesizers to create, as he sings “My kind of sound… for your Body and Soul.” The bloody Biafran/Nigerian Civil War had ended ten years before the release of Onyeabor’s second disc, 1979’s bubbly “Fantastic Man.” Biafra had attempted to make an independent nation of the eastern region where Onyeabor lived, and create a safe space for the Igbo tribe, often treated as second-class citizens, even massacred. But with Nigeria backed by Britain, its former colonial power, Biafra stood little chance. Instead of freedom, famine followed, and the strike for independence made Biafra synonymous with emaciated babies. The gap between rich and poor was broadening abruptly into a deep, virtually unbridgeable crevasse. The surge in the price of oil that was bringing London to its knees (and producing the bereft climate that spawned punk) was fattening Lagos — at least the city’s rich. Meanwhile, in that same city, it was common for taxpaying civilians to be hauled from their cars and horsewhipped in the street in front of their children for some phony infraction of authoritarian rules. Onyeabor’s politics, dancing on their bubbly synthesized beat, bit deep and permanently. Laconically crooning “You want another guy to stop a bullet for you?” in 1979’s “Why Go to War,” Onyeabor still sounds all too relevant, right now. “Atomic Bomb,” Onyeabor’s dance anthem, played on fears that were very real at the time – and still are. Temitope Kogbe, a Nigerian DJ who grew up dancing to his father’s copy of Onyeabor’s “Atomic Bomb” L.P., reminds us, “Though the Cold War…had petered off in the West, Africa was the new theater for this confrontation—in Angola, Mozambique, and most tragically in the Congo, where in 1961, the U.S.-backed Mobutu to kill Patrice Lumumba, who was feared to be a communist. So the Cold War and its threat of Atomic Bomb was still very much in the spirit of the times when the record was released in 1978.” But Onyeabor’s specifically political music did not dominate his output, unlike, say, Fela Kuti, whose songs were a running commentary on the military dictatorships. Onyeabor’s looks and sounds are both oceans away from the bleak perception of his struggling, starving territory. In the few extant photographs of Onyeabor, he sometimes embodies the “Fantastic Man,” in white flares and a gold-buttoned navy jacket, looking like a contented capitalist on his yacht. Elsewhere, he wears a white disco suit, as if he was a Philly soul man. His musical and sartorial choices place him as an outernational artist, not defined or confined by accidents of birth. The music, too, is a cosmopolitan brew—these are charming, imaginative, infectious dance tracks. Onyeabor’s biography is full of missing links. He, too, is a kind of missing link—Nigeria’s answer to synth-pop and New Wave. Within the African canon, he is a progressive adventurer who wielded the brand-new synthesizer like a musical passport. Now you can hear the uncharted, outer-space places his musical journey took him. -Vivien Goldman