Music compilations can be hard to swing – they might point you towards a few interesting artists, but rarely hold together as cohesive albums. Bleep.com’s Guide to Electronic Music doesn’t quite hold together as a cohesive listening experience, but it’s an interesting historical document, tracing electronic music from it’s earliest foundations on to it’s latest incarnations, beginning with “Musique Concrete” and the odd, often jarring experiments of the first composers to get their hands on synthesizers and ending with, for better or worse, dubstep.
While one can certainly quibble with the decisions made by the curators (again, dubstep), the progression of, well, bleeps, through the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s through to the present day is fascinating either way, and the curators’ eye for the historical importance of these pieces is understandably much clearer as we move back through time.