Electronic Sound Magazine Issue 51 Back Issue

It’s 2019, it’s March, and that means it must be Brexit! That seems to be the plan at the time of going to press anyway…

In case you’re not entirely aware of what’s been going down in British politics for the last few years (you might be one of our readers in the USA, for example), the government has been trying to extricate the UK from the European Union. It turns out that it’s not straightforward to remove a country from a system of laws and international trade it’s been a part of for nearly 50 years in a way that everybody’s happy with. Who knew?

Here at Electronic Sound, we’ve always appreciated the contributions our European chums have made to the exciting world of electronic music. So we’re marking this month with a brief history of some of those contributions, starting with the International Exposition of Electricity in Paris in 1881, where the attendees included German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz, the inventor of the very first sound synthesiser. Our European jaunt also takes in other early instruments, including the Ondes Martenot and the Trautonium, the creation of electronic music studios like RTF in Paris, WDR in Cologne and Philips in Eindhoven, and the role of artists ranging from Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre to Daft Punk and Speedy J. It’s quite the trip.

You won’t need a passport or any kind of visa to visit the other areas of the magazine, the whole place is Schengen compliant. Feel free to spend as much time as you like in the stimulating company of Matthew Herbert, The Young Gods, Snapped Ankles, ROC, Anni Hogan, Luke Abbott and more. You can also recreate the Trans-Europe Express train route from Paris to Düsseldorf. Via Vienna, of course. We can’t guarantee you’ll meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie, but do enjoy the late night café.