Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com:
Opening with Clara Rockmore's reworking of Tchaikovsky with the theremin, and finishing with one of Brian Eno's ambient soundscapes, OHM artfully succeeds in its goal of giving a representative (as opposed to the impossible, comprehensive) overview of the first several decades of electronic music. Over 3 discs, 42 compositions, and 96 pages of notes and photos, OHM clearly illustrates the producers' and contributing writers' point that early electronic music is much of the foundation of contemporary music. Herein lies the connective tissue bridging musique concrète, 20th-century classical, electronic experimentation, and the theoretical avant-garde to psychedelia, ambient, dub, techno, electro, and synthpop and the globalization of sound. The groundbreaking uses of loops, sampling, drones, remixes, and cut-and-paste technology are put fully into context. The diversity of music included makes any sort of summation impossible, but that is also the point: electronic music is not really a genre, but an open field of endless possibility. From John Cage's famous "William's Mix" of tape snippets to Karkheinz Stockhausen's electronic orchestral compositions, from David Tudor and Holger Czukay's experiments in unrelated blendings of audio elements to David Behrman's supremely peaceful duet between computers and musicians, the aural renegades on OHM tread where none (save a few of their contemporaries) had gone before. The liner notes convey the incredible amount of hard work and experimentation it took to stitch together many of these pieces in the predigital era. Putting aside the inevitable quibbles about what's missing (much of it due to legal and/or logistical issues), a more complete collection of musical eggheads, eccentrics, and visionaries is hard to imagine. --Carl Hanni

Rating : - Not your grandson's electronic music
For those who are unacquainted, this set is the gateway into an entirely new experience of sound. Few listeners, and likely not many practitioners, for that matter, of dance, techno, and trance fully appreciate the extent to which "electronic music," as we know it, was borne from the world of avant-garde classical music...

...and don't expect a killer drum and bass rhythm section on any of these pieces. As you'll soon learn from listening to this box set and reading the ample liner notes (with intro by Brian Eno, no less), the origins of electronic music were anything but simple, or dull. The set takes off by introducing a couple standard-ish classical pieces which put to use some of the first electronic instruments invented. The theremin and ondes martinot (a small keyboard-based instrument which was a distant precursor to the synth) are featured in the first two tracks, respectively, and after that the set moves into some of the different movements and styles developed throughout the middle part of the 20th Century.

Track three is by Pierre Schaeffer. For all you dance and techno buffs out there, this was the first man ever to loop a track, play a track back in reverse, or use a host of other effects which are all common tools for musicians of today. His "Etude Aux Chemins de Fer," or "Railroad Study," is a field recording of various train sounds which was manipulated by Schaeffer in his Paris studio. He developed this method of documenting found sounds and applying various effects to them, dubbing it "Musique Concrete." The process caught on fast. John Cage uses the same method in "Williams Mix," but organizes the sounds in random, rapid succession according to complex principles of chance. This piece is absolutely jarring. Another amazing example of musique concrete is Hugh le Caine's "Dripsody," a virtuosic piece composed from the repetition and manipulation into different pitches of the sound of a single drop of water.

Before entering the age of synthesizers, there is some fine tape-music in the form of Varese's "Poeme Electronique," a fantastically subtle blend of found sounds and instruments grossly manipulated by tape cuts, as well as Richard Maxfield's "Sine Music," a sort of pointillist tape piece which rearranges the sound of a sine wave.

Shortly following the era of musique concrete, synthesizers were being brought into development. One of the first synth pieces on the Ohm set is an excerpt from Milton Babbitt's "Philomel," a complex serialist work scored for female voice and the Mark II synthesizer, (one of the earliest ever developed, to which Babbitt had sole access for a time). "Cindy Electronium" by Raymond Scott is another highlight, which uses Scott's own "Electronium," a "spontaneous composing and performing machine," as he described it, developed half a century ago. As you will notice when hearing this track, the Electronium was capable of producing electronic sounds which sounded as modern as anything churned out by the electronic musicians of today. Also provided in the synth category is a sample of Morton Subotnick's infamous "Silver Apples of the Moon," one of the most popular electronic pieces ever recorded.

The later tracks on this box set delve into digital computer pieces and soundscapes. Paul Lansky's "Six Fantasies" is a rather haunting piece for robotic-sounding voices harmonically enriched using early computer technology, and David Behrman's "On the Other Ocean," is a brilliantly thought-out improvisation between a solo cellist and a computer program written by Behrman himself, which reacts to the soloist's performance. The four or five tracks rounding out the set can be considered some of the earliest forms of New Age, as these artists used combinations of the earlier techniques to make some of the first intentionally ambient and hypnotic music.

To me, the most fascinating aspect of all of this music is not only the lack of conventionally-produced sound, but also in many cases the complete abandon of traditional compositional form. In 90-95% of the pieces, there exists either no recurring themes, introductions, crescendos, counterpoint, etc., or there exists merely a complete distortion of these standards. This music truly represents everything new and revolutionary we have come to expect from the beginnings of the postmodern era.

The Ohm box set serves as a fantastic historical document and THE definitive entrance point for anyone interested in the origins of electronic music. The fact that edits are occasionally used can be a bit frustrating (the original versions of many of these pieces are loooooong), but some of this music is not available anywhere else, and let's face it: after being infected by the incredible sounds encased here, you'll be searching for all of the artists' original albums, anyway.

(PS, be sure to pick up the reissued version, OHM+, which is the same exact set but comes packaged with a DVD.)