Digital technology may be the most fundamental change in the history of Western music since the invention of music notation in the ninth century. Sounds can now be recorded with no "performance"-at least in a conventional sense-and then perfectly pieced together as a music composition and endlessly reproduced with no loss of quality. In Strange Sounds , Timothy D. Taylor explains the wonder and anxiety provoked by a technological revolution that began in the 1940s and gathers steam daily. Taylor discusses the cultural role of technology, its use in making music, and the inevitable concerns about "authenticity" that arise from electronic music. Along the way, he provides an excellent introduction to the bewildering plethora of electronic music genres-past and present-from musique concrète to Space Age pop to techno. In the work of artists and composers such as Pierre Henry, Esquivel, Dick Hyman, Stereolab, and Muslimgauze, Taylor finds that human agency is alive and well in electronic music. Counter to the claims of anti-technology naysayers, technology, he argues, is always fundamentally and profoundly social, shaped by human desires and practices.

Informative and highly entertaining for both music fans and scholars, Strange Sounds is a provocative look at how we perform, listen to, and understand music today.