Sounds of Future Past: from Neu! to Numan

In late 1970s and early 80s European rock and pop music a predominantly Deutsch-Englisch creative network of musicians forged a sonic futurscape, an imagined world of trans-local musical activity, constituted through the exploration of new electronic synthesised sounds and the radical re-invention of guitar based Anglo-American rock music. At the heart of this futurscape was music embodying the notion that manipulating sound through recording technology, the mixing desk, sound processors and tape editing was fundamental to the creative musical process. Traditional criteria of musicality seemed peripheral in efforts to reinvent the sonicality of rock music.