Synthesising the Future: How sci-fi soundtracks shaped the sound of electronic music
Is there any better marriage of genre and soundtrack than the alien sounds of electronic music scoring tales of other worlds, dystopian futures, or Man’s Promethean tampering with nature? Since the advent of electronic possibilities in the early 1900s, the sci-fi concepts dreamed up by HG Wells or Jules Verne suddenly found a befitting sonic language to illustrate their futurist imaginations.
Alongside the ‘pulp’ sci-fi literature producing early work by Isaac Asimov and John W Campbell came the eerie tones of the theremin. Developed by the Soviet inventor Leon Theremin, its unprecedented manner of playing and melding technology with music served as an important milestone for future electronic artists. Utilising a radio wave antenna and knobs to control frequency and pitch, one could create its signature spooky whine by simply waving a hand in its magnetic field, seeing its use in a slew of horror and Sci-Fi films for decades, in particular Bernard Hermann’s score for 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still.
While Sci-Fi Hollywood was incorporating the latest technical innovations amid traditional orchestral soundtracks, the first film to embrace a totally electronic score was 1956’s Forbidden Planet. A remarkable pairing of blockbusters and the avant-garde, magnetic tape experimentalists Bebe and Louis Barron were approached by MGM producer Dore Schary in a Greenwich Village nightclub with the offer of initially providing 20 minutes of unique electronic sound effects. The studio music department decided to expand the brief to a full feature score, affording the couple full rein in the New York studio to create their otherwordly soundscapes, the first MGM score ever recorded outside the studio lot.
What makes Forbidden Planet‘s score so pioneering is its blurring between music and diegetic sound. The slow pans across Altair IV’s desolate landscapes, the inner workings of the C-57D spaceship, or the Id monster’s synthetic howls all nebulously straddling score and on-screen action. This would prove influential on Vangelis’ acclaimed work for Blade Runner, his distinguishing soaring sinewaves and rich synth textures breathing life into Ridley Scott’s dystopic vision of a Los Angeles in tech-ravaged decay. Due to Barron’s lack of Musicians Union membership, their score wasn’t eligible for Academy consideration or even to be considered ‘music’; instead, they were given the much cooler credit of ‘electronic tonalities’.
The journey to post-punk and synthpop could be traced back to Wendy Carlos‘ chilly soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s controversial A Clockwork Orange in 1971. Following the precedent set with her landmark 1968 debut Switched-On Bach, her Moog interpretation of Henry Purcell’s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary became the defining theme of urban breakdown and subterranean violence that plagued the 1970s discontent, feeding punk’s subsequent surge.
A generation of kids fed on Doctor Who and The Quatermass Experiment took the sci-fi of their youth and punk’s ephemeral flame to unleash a wave of tape experiments and futurist synthpop, Cabaret Voltaire unleashing their white noise dadaist fuzz or a pre-Dare Human League naming an early studio outtake ‘4JG’ in honour of dystopian writer JG Ballard and a nod to Roxy Music’s ‘2HB’ honouring Humphrey Bogart.
As techno and dance-focused electronic music has grown apace across Europe since the fall of The Berlin Wall and the many clubs that sprung up in the former East’s warehouses and disused factories, a recent shift to sci-fi’s utopian, cinematic possibilities has guided the sonic direction of a new generation of electronic artists. Ambient dub cosmonaut from Bristol, A Sagittariun, spoke to DJ Mag in 2019 when discussing his album A Fistful Of Bitcoins: “This album is for the loners, the dreamers, the night trippers, the deviants, the others, the fantasists, those with open minds and open hearts.”
He added: “For someone lying horizontal with a pair of headphones, lights down low, incense burning, perhaps a relaxing smoke. Those in transit too, late-night car journeys, trains, underground, in flight. I always like to listen to albums while in motion.”
As Sci-Fi eternally reflects humanity’s celestial wonders or societal anxieties, its conceptual guiding hand will always have an important role to play in electronic music’s uncharted frontier.
