Switched On: The Earliest Intersections of Pop and Electronics

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This list came from a somewhat vague prompt, more based around a general archetypical album than a concrete theme, so here we go: these are, succinctly, early electronic pop records. This means:

• They're early--prior to the mainstream adoption of synthesizers;
• They're electronic--there's some sort of high-tech audio trickery going on; and
• They're pop--this means no classical music (so no A Rainbow in Curved Air, and also despite the list name no Switched-On Bach), and also no soundtracks (as dearly as i would have wanted to talk about Daphne Oram this excluded a lot of her stuff), and also generally no albums that are just covers.

Harry Revel, Les Baxter, & Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman - Music Out of the Moon (1947)

6/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: theremin

PHILOSOPHY: romanticism

EMOTION: sentimental

REVIEW: Arguably the first electronic pop album, and it's "electronic" because there's a theremin. You know I knew a guy who used to tell everyone he could play the theremin? But then every time there was actually an opportunity to show off his supposed theremin chops something would come up or there'd be some excuse and looking back at it I think he had that teen boy disease where you lie compulsively.

Anyway this is some perfectly fine MGM-soundtrack sentimentality. Honestly, you can barely hear the theremin under the choral backing vocals. Which are great! And manage to be genuinely otherworldly.

Dick Hyman & Mary Mayo - Moon Gas (1963)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: oscillator

PHILOSOPHY: postmodernism

EMOTION: wry

REVIEW: DICK HYMAN. HIS NAME IS DICK HYMAN. AND HE IS DOING A COLLABORATIVE ALBUM WITH A WOMAN NAMED MARY MAYO. DICK HYMAN AND MARY MAYO.

Now then.

So "postmodern pop" is way older than you think it is. This is, I'm sorry to say, the 100 gecs of the early 1960s. By which I mean: Mr. Hyman and Ms. Mayo here are taking the classic pop songs of the previous generation (there's a gershwin tune on this!) and producing them funny to make them sound weird. And it works! These are some beautiful melodies, but they're all put together in such a way as to make them sound... disturbing. Off. The intention is "spacy" I suppose, but the actual effect is just uncanny. In a good way.

I will say, though, there isn't actually anything all the electronic about this album. The main source of otherworldly sound here is that mysterious creation known as the "woman". Mary Mayo does some strange things with her voice on this, and that's what really sends this thing into space.

Mort Garson - The Wozard of Iz (1968)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: moog

PHILOSOPHY: situationism

EMOTION: bitter

REVIEW: Okay, so. This one was a journey. Buckle up, and maybe don't play this one for your plants.

What this is is a semi-musical radio play (like The United States of America, Vol. 1: The Early Years), with the gimmick being that this is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz set in the hippie era--so Dorothy is a dropout from middle-America square society searching for some kind of transcendent truth or reality. And for the first half of this album, well... I could not believe how much of a "fellow kids" album this was. Like, there's a line about Ferlinghetti and then another one about Warhol and I'm just like oh my god, this kind of blatant pandering, "headsploitation" if you will, is unbelievable and also so suspect.

But then you get to side B, and you're greeted with seven minutes of terrifying, chaotic noise, followed by one of the most beautiful pop ballads you'll ever hear about how searching for "reality" by rejecting social norms will get you nowhere, followed by... well I'm not going to spoil it, but this has one of the most shocking, unpleasant endings you'll ever hear. The real parallel to this, among the albums I've listened to lately, is actually Lie: The Love and Terror Cult.

Now, if The Firesign Theatre had done this it would have been more subtle and artful, and if the Doopees had done this it wouldn't have been quite as much of a downer, but you really need to listen to this--the dark side of the summer of love is a narrative vein that has in many ways been done to death, but this might be the definitive take on it.

Also, hey, did you know that you can sync this up to The Wizard of Oz and it totally works???

Silver Apples - Silver Apples (1968)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: osciallator

PHILOSOPHY: abstract impressionism

EMOTION: driven

REVIEW: Who cares whether or not it's ahead of its time--it's great. This album is incredibly melodic, but melodic in the service of rhythm, and rhythmic in the service of melody--like a great jazz combo, every instrument is doing everything. Even the guy's precious little flower child voice.

Jean-Jacques Perrey - The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound of Jean Jacques Perrey (1968)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: moog

PHILOSOPHY: pop art

EMOTION: gleeful

REVIEW: Last few albums have been terrifying, and the next album's gonna be really terrifying, so as a breather please enjoy this, the happiest album ever made. I knew "Brazilian Flower" from a meme, but all these songs have that same infectious puppy-dog goofiness. I think the genius here is that M. Perrey recognized that, in 1968, synths still didn't really sound good, so the best move was to exploit how funny they sound.

The White Noise - An Electric Storm (1969)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: oscillator, tapes

PHILOSOPHY: symbolism

EMOTION: satanic

REVIEW: Delia Derbyshire: "Nice 60s lounge-pop album you've got there. Would be a shame if something"--*leans meaningfully against a giant oscillator and a pile of tapes labelled "hippie sex noises"*--"happened to it."

No, that's not how it went down. But holy shit. This is one of the very few albums to have actually scared me. (the other big example i can name is Suicide, which interestingly has a lot in common with this) And I think that the fact that there are melancholic trad-pop songs underneath all the sound-collage noise-horror is actually what makes this so powerful! The uncanniness of manipulating the familiar in unexpected ways--we've been playing with that since Moon Gas.

Richard Hayman - Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine (1969)

6/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: moog

PHILOSOPHY: pop-postmodernism

EMOTION: silly

REVIEW: Wait. You're telling me that Dick Hyman and Richard Hayman are different guys??? This is the most absurd genre.

Anyway this actually has the same general concept as the Dick Hyman album--take familiar pop idioms and make 'em sound weird using electronics--but this is a lot less subtle and therefore a lot less good. Kind of grating in places, honestly, which I know is by design, but still, does not make me what to listen to it.

Beaver & Krause - In a Wild Sanctuary (1970)

5/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: moog

PHILOSOPHY: liberal environmentalism

EMOTION: placid

REVIEW: Okay so I have spent so much time going "huehuehue Dick Hyman", but straight up, one of these guys is named Beaver. That's a 60s frat boy sex nickname if I've ever heard one.

And perhaps fitting with the frat theme: this is boring hippie background music. It doesn't have a cool beat or fun melodies or even any weird noises--it probably doesn't even sound good if you're stoned. That said, I do like the samples on "Walking Green Algae Blues"--that kid being upset about the lack of snakes, that's like a Books level sound bite.

Tonto - It's About Time (1974)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: T.O.N.T.O.

PHILOSOPHY: jazz

EMOTION: cosmic

REVIEW: So, the story of Tonto is basically that these two guys decided to overcome the limitations of early analogue synths basically through brute force, by strapping a whole bunch of them together, and came up with this absurd thing that was the size of a room and needed two people to play it. And they made a very boring semi-ambient album with it, which blew a bunch of people's minds back in the early 70s, not least of whom Stevie Wonder, who recruited the Tonto boys to play on a couple of his albums. Now, those albums included--ahem--Music of My Mind, Talking Book, and Innervisions, so let's see how Tonto has learned from Stevie.

And--they've learned a lot! Things like "melody" and "rhythm" and "not just going beeeooooo for 20 minutes". The first track on this is an honestly pretty groovy jazz fusion jam! The rest of this is spacier, but still grounded on earth, as it should be. Thanks Stevie!

Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygène (1976)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

EQUIPMENT: post-moog synthesizer

PHILOSOPHY: liberal environmentalism, again

EMOTION: accepting

REVIEW: Maybe the last time synthesizers could be considered a novelty. Mr. Jarre here uses a whole truckload of them to make... a prog album. Like, a fairly normal prog album. If a bunch of British prep school kids with guitars had made this it wouldn't be remarked upon, is what I am saying.

And that--synths becoming something that isn't even really remarked upon, at least musically--actually feels like a massive sea change. Like, at this point, all pop in synth pop, and in a lot of ways this--along with Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, and Yellow Magic Orchestra--was the beginning of that era.

Which is a good thing and a bad thing! Because, undeniably, people have used synths better after this than they used them before--but also, people used them weirder before this, and that deserves to be celebrated.

Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts

Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough what a joy this list was to make--maybe my reviews don't quite get this across, but this stuff was all just so fascinating. The bleeding edge is a good place to be!