Electroacoustic

Audio brainiacs and sonic geeks rejoice — we're about to push electronic music to its very limits, with the composers who dived into a sea of circuitry and came up with strange pearls of sound that make us question art, life, the universe and everything. The maestros of the electroacoustic movement are among the most innovative and intimidating creative pioneers in the history of recorded sound, so we've eased you in gently with the ambient layers of Steve Reich's "Electric Counterpoint - Fast (Movement 3)" (borrowed by the Orb for "Little Fluffy Clouds") before bringing on the brilliant Karlheinz Stockhausen ("Kontakte"; "Studie 1") and Pierre Schaeffer ("Etude aux Chemins de Fer").

The found sounds of modern aviation become an electroacoustic orchestra, in Next Steps.

If you've ever stood at an airport, listened to the sounds of planes on a runway, and thought "this isn't noise pollution . . . this is a symphony!" then you're certain to find a friend in Burkhard Beins, the German composer and improvisational electroacoustic artist whose "Tarmac Berlin Edit" could quite possibly reverse your antipathetic feelings towards long-haul travel. Edgard Varèse, who was born in the 19th Century but picked up on the first stirrings of electronica to become the "Father of Electronic Music", wrote his incredible "Poème électronique" for the 1958 Brussels World Fair, while four decades later Filament (Otomo Yoshihide & Sachiko M) transformed electronic clicks into high art.

Meet the cutting edge rockers who kept on pushing the envelope, in Deep Cuts.

The entrance to our Electro Acoustic Deep Cuts should carry a warning — prepare for extreme sonic disorientation . . . because here's where we introduce you to an extract ("3") from Pixel's The Drive, created by Jon Egeskov as a soundtrack to an imaginary road movie, out of cracks, hisses and meticulously ordered static. What it all means is for you to decide: just immerse yourself and chew on whatever your brain delivers. The core of Experimental Audio Research is former Spacemen 3 member Peter Kember, who oversees such minimal creations as "Whisper Incantor," and "Out of Their Heads (On Locoweed)" finds Henry Cow co-founder Fred Frith using his guitar to access a new dimension.

Rooted in the pioneering sound experiments of Pierre Schaeffer who led the musique concrète movement in Paris from the late '40s, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's Cologne-based elektronische musik, electro acoustic music does things with both recorded and synthesized sound that could quite literally blow your mind — a feast for the intellect, and a challenge to traditional notions of structure and melody, the virtually endless sonic possibilities afforded by electronic equipment started to transform the way we experience the world, so much so that these tracks should be approached with a spirit of adventure, all preconceptions checked-in at the gate. Our off-the-charts experimental electroacoustic Essentials are a great way to soundtrack journeys of the mind into inner and outer space, and to discover audio galaxies you perhaps never knew existed.