1970s early synth music appreciation thread

JupiterKid

There is a serious bias here towards 1990s and 2000s electronic music, and don’t get me wrong, I love stuff like The Prodigy, Orbital, Chemical Brothers, Boards of Canada etc.

But am I the only one who has a real appreciation for the pioneers of early synthesizer music, like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Vangelis and others? They paved the way for 80s synth pop and later on, techno. Some of their stuff was amazing for its time.

Here’s a Kraftwerk track from their seminal 1974 album Autobahn. Way way ahead of its time and might amaze some people what was possible with the Moog and ARP synthesizers back in 1974.


Kraftwerk - Kometenmelodie 2 (1974). Released 44 years ago this month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlHFlrXZmKQ

Feel free to post up your 1970s electronic/synth music here.:)

francois

francois

francois

francois

francois

JupiterKid

Great to see this thread develop in a forum that has for far too long ignored the massively important pioneers of early synth music.

Just listen to Donna Summer’s classic I Feel Love, produced by Giorgio Moroder and tell me that this was just mind blowing for 1977. The pioneers of electronic music are very very important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2qI6UDD2uQ

Doge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiZGti2eykk

Stab*City

This guy was doing it 10 years before any of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRCemf2JHc

Tenshot

The entire Stuntman album is great; this is my favourite track (esp from about 5:50):

Doge

Stab*City wrote: »

This guy was doing it 10 years before any of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRCemf2JHc

Boiler Room 1969! :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E7BLSSLgtw

Grayditch

Class thread. I write a lot of late 70's/early 80's style synth, so this is a nice little vault for finding new/old influences.

CrankyHaus

Yeah great thread!

Gangstarr and Futurama influence.

Doge

Grayditch wrote: »

Class thread. I write a lot of late 70's/early 80's style synth, so this is a nice little vault for finding new/old influences.

Have you any links to your stuff?

Grayditch

Doge wrote: »

Have you any links to your stuff?

I hope it doesn't mess with the thread, but yeah

Dystopiate
Beyond
As One

Back to the good stuff though, Goblin are always considered prog rock but this is some synth gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pins1y0XAa0

Grayditch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtWTUt2RZh0

Even Coldplay couldn't ruin this for me

Doge

Love the 2nd part of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0hg_9fLcIk

It was actually sampled by Jackpot and turned into a more DJ friendly kind of track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3d_96woABY

The soundtrack to the Last Ninja 2 had 2 tracks heavily inspired by them too, this is the more obvious one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Asl7O1RC8

And the less obvious one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBeiRu6CquA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NGfH5QRSyc

Grayditch

I still Listen to The Last Ninja soundtrack. I think Matt Gray re-recorded loads of his soundtracks for a kickstarter style thing and they did really well.

Doge

Grayditch wrote: »

I hope it doesn't mess with the thread, but yeah

Dystopiate
Beyond
As One

Very nice stuff man! Sounds very polished and layered beautifully.

Nothing wrong with sharing 70s/80s style music in a 70s/80s music thread.

Grayditch

Thanks! I just don't wanna be 'that' guy, haha.

Grayditch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHZZaC4sfjU

JupiterKid

Kraftwerk - Neon Lights (1978). Bloody amazing for 40 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqmGZ_6LaUw

JupiterKid

T.O.N.T.O.’s Expanding Head Band - Timewhys (1971) They subsequentlybwent on to produce some of Stevie Wonder’s finest material in the 1970s, with heavy use of their synthesizers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDBLgFV69Vk

bodhrandude

Click Switch Doctor Tim Blake, keyboardist formally of GonG and current member of Hawkwind, Crystal Machine and Blake's New Jerusalem should be in your collections too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Blake

Here you go. Mesmerising, haunting, brilliant...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfDskFjPZqM

lardzeppelin

Handy thread, the 70s was a proving ground for where synthesis could go in music, and along with the names mentioned, others such as isao Tomita, Eddie Jobson, Larry Fast, Roger Powell, who were innovators both musically and in terms of technology... Tomita and Fast were not far behind Bob Moog with technology in music, Powell was chief demonstrator for ARP instruments as well as being the keys virtuoso for Utopia, and EJ was the man who in UK pretty much made us all want polyphonic portamento (yamaha cs80, the bane of every keyboard roadie)...
Tangerine Dream, Triumvirat and the Eloy were showing us that Germany was as healthy in its musical experimentation as the best of England and America...
And before I clock out... PINK FLOYD - on the run...might just be the best thing a vcs3 ever turned out...

Arthur Daley

Steve Davis DJ set introduced me to this little nugget.

bodhrandude

Don't forget Brian Eno's involvement with Talking Heads and David Bowie.

Check out Sense of Doubt and the following two tracks after from Bowie's Heroes, class soundscape synth areas. Also check out Eno's collaboration with David Byrne in 1981's My Life in a Bush of Ghosts.

jiltloop

Eno's contribution to Roxy Music's first 2 albums was also very innovative and I'm sure would have been quite exciting music at the time (I unfortunately only discovered it relatively recently as it predates me!)

Another gem mentioned by Francois above who was even around before the 70s was Silver Apples, Simeon was the musical genius who experimented with a synthesizer which he largely devised himself and made some very groundbreaking music that probably isn't widely recognized as much as it should be today. Truly pioneering music.

2 giants of the synth world from the very late 70s, Sakamoto and Numan...2 bona fide classics...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nch0Qj_bEDI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaF9KTH0SEg

JupiterKid

Another 1970s synth classic number - Dream Weaver by Gary Wright (1975)

francois

I was luck enough to see TD in the National Stadium 1980 in the for the Tangram tour classic line up of Froese, Franke and Schmoelling I was 14 and totally blown away by it-
They had a black see-through curtain which they drew back for the encore and Edgar Froese stepped up and treated us to a 20 minute psyche freak out on the guitar, playing stuff that sounded like their 1st LP Electronic Meditation-epic gig as well, lasted well over 2 hours

Kraftwerk in Cork tonight...

Doge

Deleted User wrote: »

Kraftwerk in Cork tonight...

What a night!

The pulsating bassline in Radioactivity on that sound system was the highlight for me!

After first hearing them 36 years ago, I was too awestruck to judge how good it was...it was more of a religious experience than a concert!

But Radioactivity and The Robots were the standouts.

JupiterKid

Vangelis - Heaven and Hell Part 1 (1975). Part of the soundtrack to the superb TV show Cosmos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryqQItAVmj0