Future Sounds: The Story of Electronic Music from Stockhausen to Skrillex

Music journalist Stubbs (Fear of Music) admirably pulls together various fields of electronic music into a cohesive history. Stubbs starts this trenchant survey with the machine-obsessed, neo-fascist futurist composers, such as Arseni Avraamov and his 1922 Symphony of Sirens before working through pioneering midcentury found-sound and recorded-loop composers such as Pierre Schaffer and Edgard Varese, who would later inspire Frank Zappa, among many other musicians. Stubbs weaves criticism throughout, declaring Karlheinz Stockhausen the greatest composer of the 20th century and noting how postwar electronic noodling sounded “redolent of antennae and Martian holidays, and hovercars.” Stubbs amps up the narrative once disco and punk hit the scene, approvingly describing No Wave commandos Suicide as “anti-tainers, dispensing sonic flamethrowers from the stage,” as well as in capturing the chilling sounds of such electro-pop innovators as Brian Eno, Depeche Mode, and Kraftwerk. Stubbs expertly weaves granular encyclopedic detail into a sweeping cultural history in this astute and entertaining study of how a fringe music form entered the mainstream. Agent: Kevin Pocklington, North Agency. (Nov.)