Customer Reviews

Electro Shock!

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent chance to learn about the music, gear, and artists behind the phenomenon known as electronica. Everything from the the primordial creators of the genre to it's wide-spread, present-day personalities.

Rule's interviews are always informative yet personal, thus allowing the reader to learn not just the hard music facts but the personal details just as well. The equipment reviews are equally entertaining and informative. Rule goes above and beyond the usual instrument critiques by releasing its birthplace, birthdate, measurements, price, availability, lengthy description, and often an interview of a person(s)who played a part in the production of the unit.

As both an electronica fan and musician, I was able to extract knowledge and entertainment from this book. I experienced no "tedious reading" while exploring this book--it was a grand safari. I reccomend this book to any one that remotely enjoys electronica or would like to more about the genre.

This is a rather conservative reading of the electronica canon -- Bjork, Aphex Twin, The Chemical Brothers and Trent Reznor are all more or less household names, and while, sure, it's a small pool of readers that would be interested in a more esoteric selection, as an overview of the genre, this is a pretty limited and timid survey. Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode are included as representatives of the old school -- no one remotely less commerical is given consideration. Most of the book is made up of interviews with his idols, but even these are less than gripping, being mainly preoccupied with fetishistic technical detail (-- what kind of filters do you use? --what range of equalization do you prefer? etc.) I had hoped, since the book was geared towards the pioneers of the genre, that it would deal more with its philosophies, rather than its techniques: Why choose to work in a medium that is deliberately mechanical and artificial? How does the human element come into play? How assiduously do the artists include or mask its presence? Sadly, these are issues that this book doesn't address in a meaningful way. Rule takes it as a given that the aesthetics of the genre are accepted and need no exploration, and thus he seems to have missed several golden opportunities in his face-to-face meetings with the very artists who might shed some insight into what makes this potentially remote music so compelling to so many people.

I, for some reason related to my enthusiasm for the subject, was really excited to read this book. Unfortunately, it essentially reads like a compilation of promotional material about products and a number of artists. Nothing original here. If you're reading this, you obviously have an internet connection and access to much more information than is in this un-original text.

This book was a great read. I got it because I love electronic music and it was interesting to learn all the origins of some of synths. The cool thing about the book is that you really get a very specific, articulated description of how the artists came up with their sounds and the processes they follow. The only bad thing is that some of it is so in depth that at points it reads the synth's owner's manual and goes on and on about the tech specs to a point where it's very dry. BUT the artist's interviews absolutely make up for that and for this reason I reccomend this book if you want to find out how electronic music began and evolved to what it was in the late 90's.

Good overall review of synth music artists and equipment; however, it pales greatly when compared against other books such as Julian Colbeck's "Keyfax Omnibus Edition" and Mark Vail's "Vintage Synthesizers."

The interviews in this book are several years old. If that isn't enough to turn you off the old technology will certainly do it for you. Remember the 1970's ARP and the 1980's Juno? How many readers are going to get excited about that old technology? Even the artists who were interviewed have moved on to using synths like the Nord Lead 3 and the Virus kb. Save your money and buy something else.