I can only think of Autechre and Kraftwerk.
Aphex Twin kinda. Vangelis too. Same for Basic Channel guys.
Maybe Mark Fell.
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Probably Atom™ or Alva Noto if I had to name someone.
Genius is a contentious term, though.
Everyone has the potential for genius and often it’s more a combination of focus, commitment, and work ethic, that it has the outward appearance of genius.
For an artist to become mainstream there’s a lot of marketing involved that is more about business than genius. So most likely the real geniuses are holed up in their room somewhere never signed to a label and never releasing a video on Youtube or tiktok, just by mathematical probability. Also new generations have new ideas about what’s the bleeding edge vanguard style, and it often happens that they end up discovering an artist from 20-40 years ago that expresses the pinnacle of a certain new style
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Same as anyone can achieve Nobel prize in physics or has the potential for it.
According to psychology genius is a rare phenomenon, comes one in 5 million people. But in classical, philosophical terms much much rarer!
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It’s a very good post and I highly agree with these criteria and descriptions. I could in fact see these as being the standard by which the term is defined, however there are two things which are really the same thing that this fails to take into account:
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The most technical definition of something, while correct, is rarely the lowest common denominator in the general understanding of the larger populous. Sometimes this needs to be factored in and accounted for when communicating with others because if you understand what someone is saying but instead focus on the way in which they’re saying it, something else is lost which may be more important than agreeing on terms.
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The point about how the machines can never meet or exceed these criteria are much like Clarke’s third law, which is that any technology which is advanced enough in indistinguishable from magic.
When you take the same people who have a general understanding of something and show them that which appears to be magic (or in this case genius) then it is for all effective purposes magic. The impact is the same to that general populous, and the dead guy who understands it better and those who are students of these things and are aware of what he said about it may be more enlightened but if they aren’t there, the meaning of the word can in fact change.
In the case of genius, people here are talking about talent or skill and using the word genius interchangeably as a synonym for talent and innovation and the degree which these deviate towards or away from the definitions you outlined may vary, but at the same time when contextualized it seems that more people contributing here view talent, skill and innovation as the hallmarks of genius in regard to electronic music production, so in a sense, it seems the general interpretation by the 51% majority is that these are the signs by which they recognize that which appears to them as genius.
I’m not sure we can properly identify musical or artistic genius within electronic music in the way which we’re attempting to now throw around the names of artists we respect as talented or view as innovative, but at the same time as long as we all know that we’re mostly presenting varying degrees of the same concept to each other, then to further define the term beyond how we’re using it may not change the results of how people perceive and react to magic, even if some magic is more impressive or better articulated than others.
Just saying that the word itself is probably less important to the direction of the diologue here than the factors by which people seem to more or less commonly perceive or recognize the concept behind the word.
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Im always for knowledge! If they can grasp it better than Kant and Schopenhauer then be it! I haven’t seen better explanations than those of these two dead guys and im actively looking for answers. Would love to be enlightened and to learn something new ofc
Ps. Term is a term and classical aesthetics are just that - classical, clear and simple and semantical disputes are never useful. We can add the way how we see things, why not.
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Some that spring to mind, in no particular order:
Kraftwerk
Drexciya
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, particularly Delia Derbyshire and colleagues in the days when early sampling techniques were utilised
Les Paul - pushing multi track recording, in addition to services to the guitar world.
Vince Clarke
There will be plenty of others too - those are just the first to spring to mind.
G
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for an analogy
prodigies are like billionaires
Brilliant people, perfect pitchers etc… like millionaires
then there is the prolific
.
but genius is above all of that
I think the reason that Stockhausen fits neatly into this and not most other later electronic music is time, rhythm and “dance”. In 1995 he was asked to listen to some modern electronic music including Aphex twin and give advice. His main criticism was the use of repetitive rhythms. What’s funny is that Aphex Twin was probably directly inspired by this article as he listened to Stockhausen and had some good things to say and then I think Drukqs and a few other things happened.
Even Steve Reich who is electronic music adjacent and I used to be obsessed with and still love has everything sounding similar because of his core process (and I know almost all his major work). But that’s probably why he’s so popular. If you start having linear (or phasing, building) rhythm to a set system as pretty much all of modern electronic music is, you start falling out of the traditional genius label. Same with melodic / harmonic ideas. They tend to be very very basic in 99% of electronic music, even the experimental stuff. But most importantly, they don’t change much within a single composition or even album.
Björk, who loves 20th Century classical music and once interviewed Stockhausen is probably the closest in the pop electronic world but she also has a great talent to work with some of the greatest producers and inspire them to do their best work.
Holly Herndon maybe? Jlin? Beatrice Dillon?
Funny that the only ones that spring to mind in modern times are women without me even trying to focus on women.
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I think, if you want to call anyone, genius, it would be the people who invented electronic music because they invented something unheard of before
I find a lot of people genius, but that doesn’t count because it’s coloured as I like the music of those people or they were the first people that got me into electronic music
For me Shpongle and Björk are exceptional artists and therefore a genius but I really like them and other people might say that their music isn’t that unique. I’m just not experienced enough with electronic music.
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Without adding any contenders, maybe this article by Malcolm Gladwell is interesting for the concept of genius? (There’s also Brian Eno’s “scenius” -discussion of course).
Gladwell makes the case (presents research) that there is essentially two kinds of “genius” – the young conceptual prodigy and the late master.
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It’s a fun topic.
A common ingredient of genius seems to be doing something differently. Either a whole new thing, or an existing thing transformed.
Another quirk of genius seems to be it appears to get more difficult to achieve, or make your mark as time moves forward. ‘Everything has been thought of already’
It’s easy to look back and identify historic genius.
We might even convince ourselves that whatever the genius did was almost an obvious progression in hindsight, well within human development. Of course E=MC², of course the Stairway to Heaven guitar solo goes like that, of course Reservoir Dogs was a great movie.
Though in hindsight we can string this expected path together, it is oddly near impossible to predict future genius.
In the next decade, century, millenium there will be new geniuses emerging, but we’ve no idea what they’ll achieve.
Dammit! I want to know now!
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Adamski and 2 unlimited
On a serious note not many electronic artists probably kraftwerk and Vince Clarke, on a general level I’d say the Beatles (mainly John and Paul), Brian Wilson, Prince , Bee Gees , Bjork, can’t think of any others off the top of my head.
“Bob Power you there?” Very important record of my teenage days - genius!
Moderat is one of my all time favourite electronic music acts - so I’d have to second this one.
Also:
- Bicep
- The Field
- Burial
- Fred again…
- 65DaysOfStatic
- Max Cooper
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I have some regrets not going to Max Cooper show at Mutek in Montreal this Summer. I’m just a lunatic who forgot to buy a ticket before realizing it was sold out.
One of the great shows I’ve seen.
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His latest album is iconic, truly one of my favourites of all time - the most beautifully organised chaos.
Edit: turns out he has newer releases, I have some listening to do 
I was referring to Motif which is somehow already 2 years old…
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Tipper
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I think I fall into the camp that
[1] A pioneer isn’t the same as a genius, and
[2] At just about 100 years old, the medium is too new to allow for the historic perspective it takes to determine who is or isn’t a genius.
I have my favorites, of course (Stevie Wonder comes to mind).
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What happened to this guy? I thought he would be the next Kubrick. Or at least somewhere in the top 25 film directors of all time. So much potential.
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