"Splattering electronics"

Lenny Kaye described Led Zeppelin II this way. It fascinated me because that's what jumped out at me about the album the last time I played it too. But it rarely gets commented on compared to the attention paid to the Beatles' and Hendrix's efforts in this regard, even to the Velvet Underground's arguably more amateurish experiments. From the moment "Whole Lotta Love" breaks into feedback, theremin, samples, and vocables to the flanged-out vocals on "What Is and What Should Never Be" to the constant use of stereo separation and panning to just the attention paid to guitar tone to the way the "Moby Dick" drum solo breaks down the rhythm and structure of the track into a sparse investigation of space and dynamics, it's like there's an exploration of sound as sound running throughout the album parallel to all the blues-rock and machismo, or maybe as part of it.