Electronic Sound July 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 23

highbrow quality, but this is no surprise
given their original intended purpose.
The pieces with composer and exponent
of visual scores Harrison Birtwistle aside,
many of these tracks were intended as
backdrops for theatre or other creative
projects – an example would be the
contributions Zinovieff recorded for Hans
Werner Henze’s ambitious six-movement
‘Tristan’, two extracts from which are
presented here.

PETER ZINOVIEFF
Electronic Calendar:
The EMS Tapes
SPACE AGE

An engaging retrospective
of the great man’s work from
1965 to 1979
In an age where a software version of a
vintage synth can be put on an iPad and
played absent-mindedly while waiting for
the bus, the practicalities – or rather, the
struggles – of how early electronic music
was created can sometimes be forgotten.
Principally the output of scientific
endeavour rather than for artistic or
musical purposes, it’s no surprise that
recordings from the time sound, and let’s
be totally honest, a bit potty, carrying a
sulphuric whiff of singed eyebrows and
greasy lab coats.
‘Electronic Calendar’ was assembled and
overseen by Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember,
former Spacemen 3 member, fan of
circuit-bent instruments and arguably the
best thing to have come out of Rugby
since cement and games played with
odd-shaped balls. Here, Peter Zinovieff’s
legacy gets the same lavish treatment
and necessary profile-raising that Kember
gave to the Radiophonic Workshop’s
Delia Derbyshire.
For the most part, the tracks here have a

These pieces are musical, in an extreme
sense, but on first flush they feel
like they were primarily intended as
opportunities to showcase the kind of
textural capacity a sound source such
as his VCS3 was capable of. And in
that regard, ‘Electronic Calendar’ is a
thoroughly absorbing listen, particularly
when you think about how damn difficult
it would have been to realise anything
here when technology was so expensive,
primitive and unruly.
Despite the interest in synths from many
well-paid pop musicians, early exponents
of electronic kit seemed duty-bound to
align themselves with the classical world.
The three pieces here with Birtwistle
were originally made available through

the most austere of labels, Deutsche
Grammophon, while Dr Zinovieff also had
a stab at forcing an orchestral structure
into an electronic framework with 1970’s
‘Lollipop For Papa’. It represents an
element of light relief among a collection
of generally more demanding pieces with
its wry humour and levity.
Elsewhere on this expansive collection,
‘March Probabilistic’ finds an army of
bleeps meandering and wobbling around
all over the show as if Zinovieff had
given up all hope of keeping them under
control. Other highlights include the fizzy
urgency of ‘Tarantella’, or the tentative,
regimented pulse of ‘Chronometer ‘71’
with Birtwistle.
The greatest success of ‘Electronic
Calendar’ is to rescue Zinovieff – the
person, the prodigy and the pioneer –
from becoming another footnote in the
genesis of electronic sound, something
that could well be overlooked by anyone
mucking around distractedly for a
couple of minutes on the disappointingly
inevitable iPad version of his landmark
VCS3.
MAT SMITH