# Ethereal Other Worldly Modern Electronic Music



## ArthurBrain (Aug 19, 2012)

I'm searching for modern electronic music that has a quirky edge to it where it comes to chords/harmony which I seem to be having difficulty finding at the moment. I may well not be describing this adequately but what I seem to be finding a lot, especially with the more abstract music in genres is that a lot of it sounds kinda 'samey' and there's nothing that really 'grabs the ear' musically. If a comparison helps then some of the earlier Amon Tobin works like 'yasawas' and 'chronic tronic' are examples but any considerations and recommendations in genres would be gratefully appreciated. 

Cheers.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Definitely quirky, but it may not be what you're looking for.....


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Cool burp-core.

I am pretty bad at electronic recommendations, despite listening to quite a bit of it I never feel I have a real grasp of it. So here are some vaguely connected tracks


























Also the radiostation cliqhop might twist your melon, available here http://radiotuna.com/s/76220


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

ArthurBrain said:


> I'm searching for modern electronic music that has a quirky edge to it where it comes to chords/harmony which I seem to be having difficulty finding at the moment.


I look for similar things. Unfortunately I have the impression that harmony in electronic music is clearly the less developed aspect. You have mentioned Amon Tobin e I'm a big fan of his Bricolage, one of my favorite electronic albums, but even that stands up for his liquid, mysterious sound than for the harmonic progressions, it's based on loops after all.
Anyway, if you don't know it yet you could give a try to Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba. It's not drum and bass, and the atmosphere is completely different, a lot less dark and definitely warmer than Tobin, but absolutely otherworldly, with subliminal voices mixed with the music. It sounds like something that come at the same time from the future and from the memory.










Other than that I don't know, something of groups like autechre, black dice, spring heel jack but I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Steve Roach definitely for the atmosphere in albums like Dreamtime returns or The magnificent void, but it's very slow music so probably it's not your cup of tea.


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## Ravndal (Jun 8, 2012)

Something you might be interested in 




Some quirky synth-action here.

And welcome back, by the way


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## ArthurBrain (Aug 19, 2012)

norman bates said:


> I look for similar things. Unfortunately I have the impression that harmony in electronic music is clearly the less developed aspect. You have mentioned Amon Tobin e I'm a big fan of his Bricolage, one of my favorite electronic albums, but even that stands up for his liquid, mysterious sound than for the harmonic progressions, it's based on loops after all.
> Anyway, if you don't know it yet you could give a try to Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba. It's not drum and bass, and the atmosphere is completely different, a lot less dark and definitely warmer than Tobin, but absolutely otherworldly, with subliminal voices mixed with the music. It sounds like something that come at the same time from the future and from the memory.
> 
> 
> ...


Hi, thanks for the recommendations. I've just checked out your Nuno Canavarro links as to be honest I'd never even heard of it before. Ethereal certainly fits and I'm surprised it goes back to 1988. I quite like 'fused vocals' into music as it certainly adds another dimension at times. Where it comes to Tobin I understand what you mean, though it's still the harmonic ideas that give them such a mysterious atmosphere for me, even if they're not developed in a 'classical' sense overall. Where it comes to Autechre I find a lot of their work pretty stale and repetitive but that's a personal thing. I'll check out 'Black Dice' however as that's another band I've not heard of. Where it comes to the 'speed' of the music I'm fine with slow/fast whatever if you can think of any others. I love the earliest works of Tangerine Dream so beats per minute isn't necessarily a concern...

Here's a track which plays around with chords and keys as it progresses: Plaid - Cedar City


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

ArthurBrain said:


> Ethereal certainly fits and I'm surprised it goes back to 1988.


it's an album definitely ahead of it's time, and it predated and inspired the glitch movement.



ArthurBrain said:


> Here's a track which plays around with chords and keys as it progresses: Plaid - Cedar City


thanks, I didn't know them, very interesting. For the Black Dice, a good point to start is Beaches and canyons.
By the way, I was thinking that some examples of the most otherwordly electronic music I know is not recent and it's not exactly popular, like a collection of pieces composed by russian composers with the unique ANS synthetizer at the end of the sixties and in the seventies. Things like this piece of Schnittke (the first time I heard it, it totally blew my mind)





Or this Otto Luening's Moonflight, even if here there's also a flute:


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

^ The Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin synth! 

I was going to mention Steve Roach too (it's him in my pic). Some of his music is deeply layered and has interesting chords and harmonies with subtle manipulations to the sounds. Two of my favorites:

- Dream Body





- Infinite Shore (The Magnificent Void)





Ethereal and otherworldly enough? Listen a few times closely to the subtleties in this piece. How it ebbs and flows and slowly unfolds into a beautiful dialogue between the lower and higher tones, as if the stars are talking... 
It's pieces like this that I revere his music for. He is on a higher plane, maybe some day other electronic artists will catch up.


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## Chrythes (Oct 13, 2011)

Thanks for the Nuno Canavarro rec, great music.

I am a total newcomer to this genre, but it seems to have some sort of quality to it. Though it's mainstream (I guess, I truly have no idea if it's good or bad in this case, but I enjoy it), have you tried Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma?


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## LindnerianSea (Jun 5, 2013)

I think it would be possible to categorize ambient music as the minimalism of electronic music... can never fail with Brian Eno !


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)




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## Guest (Jun 6, 2013)

*Ethereal Other Worldly Modern Electronic Music* is the title of this thread, so I offer my take on this with a few examples as follows. Hope you enjoy them.

*Denis Smalley* : *Pentes**





*Denis Smalley* : _*Wind Chimes*_





*Alejandro Viñao* : *Chant d'Ailleurs* For Soprano And Computer





*Jonathan Harvey* : _*Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco*_





(*) Icorporates (near the end of the piece) some Northumbrian pipes. This is for Taggart's delectation.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

DeepR said:


> - Dream Body
> 
> 
> 
> ...


another favorite from Steve Roach is "Altus", the towering finale to the Magnificent Void






I read that he doesn't really remember creating this album, because many elements from each track were worked on over a period of years.


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## Ravndal (Jun 8, 2012)

Chrythes said:


> Thanks for the Nuno Canavarro rec, great music.
> 
> I am a total newcomer to this genre, but it seems to have some sort of quality to it. Though it's mainstream (I guess, I truly have no idea if it's good or bad in this case, but I enjoy it), have you tried Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma?


I love Flying Lotus. This is my favorite:


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