White noise. Too much. I’m sure you understand; sometimes electronic music gets to be overwhelming. The singles, remixes, edits, re-edits, collabs, DJ sets and full artist albums pummeling you at lightning speed; we live to keep pace, but somehow, in all the flurry, forget from where the whole mess spawned. That once upon a time, genres were merely one unhyphenated word, sans sub-genre and sub-sub-genre. That it was all just…experimental. Or incidental. Or, simply, electronic.

So let’s take it back a bit, shall we?

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Delia Derbyshire – Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO [1968]

Mother of the Dr. Who theme song. Member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Total tech-wizard revolutionary. Seriously, what else is there to say: electro wouldn’t be electro without Delia Derbyshire. This girl is my hero.

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Delia Derbyshire and/or Daphne Oram – Found Recording [approx. mid-1960s]

Unearthed by Mark Ayres after Delia’s death, this snippet went unheard for so long, no one’s totally sure when it was made—or whether Delia’s truly the creator. Though it’s clearly her voice asking us to “forget about this, for interest only”, some speculate that the track might actually be the work of collaborator Daphne Oram. Either way: this shit was made near the mid-60s, and it sounds like something XLR8R would flip over tomorrow.

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Raymond Scott - Cindy Electronium [1959]

Bandleader, commercial writer, inventor…and unwitting electro pioneer. Raymond Scott not only broadened the voice of musique concrete (and subsequently disco, house and techno), he also built the sequencers necessary to create the compositions. He may not be as revered as, say, Robert Moog, but his work was certainly as crucial; without Scott, we’d have never had the Electronium, a random sequencing machine that paved the way for all those ER-1s and 303s racking up the bucks on eBay.

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Manuel Gottsching – E2-E4 [1984]

Though it falls in line with things Kraftwerk were perfecting at the time, E2 E4 was especially vital: it all but spawned the genesis of 80s house and modern minimal. Come on, Gui Boratto’s guitar work? Second side of this album. For real.

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A Number of Names – Shari Vari [1981]

Pseudo-disco or Detroit firestarter? Well…ultimately both. “Shari Vari” has quietly inspired a lot of things over the years, from straight-up synth pop to the more ghostly sides of Johnny Jewel and James Murphy. Giorgio Moroder gets most of the credit these days, but A Number of Names were right there too.

- Rue Sauvage