Music Arcades: Various: OHM - The Early Gurus of Electronic Music

About fifteen years ago, my friend Peter Adamson came round to my flat in Thornsett Road a few times to play, swap and chat about records. Peter had refined taste. One of the records he bought was John Cage's First Meeting of the Satie Society, and another was a Trevor Wishart LP (Tongues of Fire, I think).

While the Wishart was playing, Peter argued that some music has to be seen as a kind of Research and Development. And with R&D you accept that an experiment with a 'negative' result, or a prototype that doesn't quite work, are part of a successful process. In other words, you can't expect to like all experimental electronic music, but you can still appreciate its value and importance.

This 3-CD collection is the 'best of' the experiments, though even so I doubt there are many who like all the tracks. It's clearly a labour of love, and must have taken a lot of trouble to license all the music from a wide range of obscure sources. The booklet is magnificent, too (much too good to be shrunk down to CD size). It has notes on each piece from key people like Robert Moog, Chris Cutler, the composers themselves (Milton Babbitt, Holger Czukay, La Monte Young, Steve Reich), additional commentary from Brian Eno, David Toop, DJ Spooky, and features on key centres like GRM.

Half the music is from composers I know, and half is unknown. Like many boxed sets, I'm nowhere near digesting this fully. Another one to catch up with properly when I retire.