The Unexplained: Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult by Ataraxia

Moogsploitation is a retroactively coined term for the late-1960s and early-1970s wave of pop-oriented records that showcased the Moog synthesizer as a novelty attraction. These albums typically featured playful, technicolor arrangements, catchy lead lines, and filter-swept timbres, often covering current chart hits, film themes, or familiar classical tunes in a cheeky, futuristic style. Sonically, moogsploitation sits at the crossroads of lounge and easy listening, space age pop, and early electronic experimentation. It foregrounds monophonic Moog leads, burbling bass ostinatos, spring/plate reverbs, tape echo, and stereo panning tricks, while rhythm sections lean on light pop, bossa-nova, or shuffle grooves. The genre blossomed after the commercial success of Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach (1968), prompting labels and arrangers to release “Moog-ified” LPs that celebrated the synthesizer’s new, otherworldly character.

Experimental music is an umbrella term for practices that prioritize exploration, process, and discovery over adherence to established genre norms. It embraces new sound sources, nonstandard tuning systems, indeterminacy and chance operations, graphic and open-form scores, extended techniques, and technology-led sound design (tape, electronics, computers, and live processing). Rather than a single style, it is a methodology and ethos: testing hypotheses about sound, structure, and performance, often blurring boundaries between composition, improvisation, sound art, and performance art. Listeners can expect unfamiliar timbres, unusual forms, and an emphasis on how music is made as much as the resulting sound.

Electronic is a broad umbrella genre defined by the primary use of electronically generated or electronically processed sound. It encompasses music made with synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, computers, and studio/tape techniques, as well as electroacoustic manipulation of recorded or synthetic sources. The genre ranges from academic and experimental traditions to popular and dance-oriented forms. While its sonic palette is rooted in electricity and circuitry, its aesthetics span minimal and textural explorations, structured song forms, and beat-driven club permutations. Electronic emphasizes sound design, timbre, and studio-as-instrument practices as much as melody and harmony.