What new box-setty-ish product can you get that hard-to-please electronic music lover for the holidays?

but fuck it, what an outstanding album

the electrosoniks 'electronic music'

--This is a model, a standard, a template for how such collections should be assembled and presented. Four CDs in a substantial box with seven booklets (180pp) comprehensively written, beautifully documented and illustrated in full colour on nice print stock with 3 fold-out replicas: a score, a schematic, an early newspaper article - and a fold out time chart. The texts are excellently researched and written (with exemplary materials on the Philips laboratory, electronic scoring for film, the three featured artists: Dick Raaijmakers aka Kid Baltan. Henk Badings and Tom Dissevelt, and extensive track notes, beautifully designed. The CDs concentrate only on the popular and functional productions of the studio, meaning ballet music, industrial film soundtracks and experimental productions of what was intended to be 'popular electronic music', that is non-academic electronics pitched somewhere between science fiction beeps and swoops, tunes, lounge and jazz. That said, most is not sleazy (as much later work in the field tended to be) but really straddles worlds in a fascinating (and very listenable) way. CD1 presents 2 ballet scores by Henk Badings, 'Cain and Abel' (1956) and 'Evolutionen' (1958), plus 'the world's first attempt at popular electronic music' - a single by Kid Baltan (1957) with an unpublished B-side for 3 ondes martinots and backward piano, Tom Dissevelt's extraordinary 'Intersection' for electronic sound and jazz orchestra (1961), plus a few other pieces from 1959 & '60. CD2 features concert and film soundtrack music ('57 - '66) including a pretty wild 16 minute unpublished industrial film track by Dick Raaijmakers (using his own name for his non popular productions). CD 3 reproduces Tom Dissevelt's 'Fantasy in Orbit' LP (1963) and CD 4 contains great alternate versions of some of the pieces on the other CDs, some extra, short, unpublished pieces and 75 'sound example' tracks which are not only fascinating and instructive but also make great listening just as they are, in sequence. The CD ends with a spoken letter from Fred Judd (1966) to Tom Dissevelt about the problems of popular electronic music and the state of play in the UK as well as Holland at the time. This CD is a gem. But then so are volumes 1 and 2. Vol 3 is a more standard electronic/lounge production, interesting but not exceptional. Overall, I would say that this is as much of a must-have set as Raymond Scott's 'Manhattan Research' which it in many ways resembles and which was also produced by Basta. This was a critical and interesting period in the history of early electronics, and the Dutch productions have until now been rather ignored. They were important and here they have been given the best presentation anyone could want. Essential. And cheap!

I keep seeing this at Twisted Village and almost buying it.

the Ohm set is also really nice, very well done overview.

the Sub Rosa sets are also surprisingly listenable; the first one has a lot of great brutal noise from the 60's, including the incredible 30 minute Oliveros piece, the second one is much mellower, has great exclusive Dockstader and Alan Splet pieces.

An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music first a chronology 1921-2001 (Dbl)
Price: £12.50

A very worthwhile collection that includes pieces well known, and crucial to the form - though probably already in the collections of students and specialists -: Corale, ÎWeekend', Etude Violette, Scambi, Poeme Electronique, Concret PH, Rozart Mix, Aspekt, plus a number of unreleased pieces, mostly of interest though not always great, of which for me the most resonant is one by Sonic Youth, made at the end of a concert, where they turned their microphones onto a baying crowd and processed the sound they made in real time. A gem. This is a fine collection for those wanting some grounding in the history of electronic music and for those who will want some of these unreleased pieces. The presentation is eccentric, not chronological, with Pousseur and Mumma in the chronology section and Varese and Cage in the Îexploration' section, which is not organised chronologically, nor in any other way that I can perceive. There are notes, but they don't explain the raison d'etre of the order or the choice of pieces either. Better to ignore the educational or historical part and take this as an almost random scattering of interesting pieces by participants in the unfolding story of electronic music. There are rarities here, and strange unexplained juxtapositions. A Î postmodern' approach one might say; slightly scattershot with no clear intellectual underpinning. Are Varese, Cage and Fennesz really comparable in a coherent way?The bulk of the music, however, can speak for itself.

ANTHOLOGY OF NOISE AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC. Vol 2 (dble CD)
Price: £18.50
Quantity in Basket: none

Another vital, if eccentric, collection from SR, who seem now to be the best source for much of the historic catalogue and who are slowly assembling an indispensable library. CD1 contains pieces by well known composers (Ussachevsky, Luening, Ferrari, Dockstader), by much lauded but seldom heard pioneers, such as Daphne Oram, Johanna M Beyer and Hugh Davis, as well as pieces by Morton Subotnik, Alan Splet and Kim Cascone. There's also a quintessential piece of phone-pirate Scanner. CD2, deals more with the recent years and veers off into territories I don't care for so much, but is still a useful overview (Autechre, Yoshihiro Hanno, Merira Asher, Lasse Steen, SPK &c). It also contains a short piece by Percy Grainger for 4 Theremins, a strong sample of industrial ambient Laibach, a feedback piece by David Myers and two inexplicable selections from Sun Ra and Don Van Vliet (well OK for them being there, but the choice of pieces does not bring out what is essential). Still, no complaining. Overall, it's essential listening, and though loosely documented, here the ear's the thing.

AN ANTHOLOGY OF NOISE & ELECTRONIC MUSIC: Volume 3 Third a Chronology (dbl)
Price: £18.50
Quantity in Basket: none

Third in the valuable Sub Rosa edition. The main work of this volume seems to be a proposed connection between early electronic productions evolved under the aegis of contemporary 'classical' music - yes, the terminology is deeply problematic - and recent, mostly computer and sample driven - work that floats unattached to any institution. From the first group there are pieces by Hugh le Caine, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Herbert Eimert, Robert Beyer, Bernard Parmegiani and Michel Chion; from the second Michael Schumacher, Francisco Lopez, Peter Rehberg, Asmus Tietchens, Rune Lindblad , Michael Rother (Kraftwerk), Lilith, Merzbow, Faust and a few sound artists: (Justin Bennet, Carsten Nicolai, CM Von Hausswolf. These are not complete lists, there are 23 pieces featured. A few stand out: Le Caine, Mimaroglu, Schumacher, Einert and Beyer, Faust but it is the sweep across somehow related fields that is useful to a listener trying to orientate in a profligacy of 'electronic' music. For the laptop generation, this will likely be an enjoyable collection, for students of the history of electronic music it should be informative; in any case it's a valuable resource. I still tend to the view that the claim to kinship between these different worlds is problematic and that many essential questions need to be answered before it can be easily accepted. The presence of Faust and Merzbow suggest this, but not deliberately. Perhaps I ask too much. In general this is an admirable and invaluable series.
[OFFER. All three Volumes £48]