Best Thing Ever: White Noise - An Electric Storm

After listening to White Noise's An Electric Storm a few times now, I can't fathom how fantastically difficult it must have been to create.



This strange little psychedelic record holds the distinction of simultaneously being the first electronic pop album and one of the best pieces of "tape music" ever created. Each of the ghostly, endlessly rich compositions on An Electric Storm were painstakingly created using laborious tape-manipulation techniques that give the bizarre soundscapes found on Sgt. Pepper's and Pet Sounds a run for their money. Recorded by a small group of engineers at the BBC's legendary Radiophonic Workshop under the direction of American-born David Vorhaus, An Electric Storm is celebrated more for its form than its content, but the bells-and-whistles only serve to spice up some fundamentally fantastic pop songwriting. "Love Without Sound," recorded on-the-sly after everyone else at Maida Vale had gone home for the night, is all spooky Parisian troubadour pop occasionally breaking out from beneath a churning burble of clinks, clacks, women screaming in ecstasy/agony (hard to tell which). You really need to hear it to understand so,

mp3-> White Noise - Love Without Sound [from An Electric Storm, out on Universal]

[Download]

Now, after you've taken that in a bit, remember that dudes made that song LIKE THIS:



That's OG.

Head on over to the always-stellar Decrepit Tapes for a link to download the whole record, complete with artwork and the must-read liner notes.