10/2025 – Shufu Studio

Electricity is all around us. We see it most clearly when we try to escape it. As we seek darkness at night, turning off every light, small devices still pierce the black with tiny red and green beams. From space, this electric presence is overwhelming. Our cities glow as massive beacons, broadcasting to any observer: “here be humans.”

But light isn’t the only sign of the high voltage in our daily lives. It has a sound. The hum of a fridge, the buzz of transmission lines, the squeal of a dying lightbulb – electric currents are a significant component of our lives’ soundtrack. Toasters, microwaves, and vacuum cleaners all have sonic side-effects. Chief among these noise machines are the speakers. They are everywhere: in the neighbourhood cafe, on our desks, in our pockets… and now some are even water-resistant.

Given this context, one could argue that all recorded music today is essentially electronic music. Yet, we’ve still carved out a specific genre under that name, one where the aesthetic often favours the artificial and processed over the “natural.” In our quest to craft music that is more tamable and controlled, we stumbled upon the difficulty of controlling our own inventions. We discovered the unpredictable artefacts they might produce, whether in the complex physical sound waves our ears struggle to decipher or the psycho-acoustic consequences of such alien sounds.

This is obvious in the works of early pioneers like Jean‐Claude Risset and Klaus Schulze, who recorded their sounds on the unforgiving magnetic tape, before the introduction of digital recording technology. Their work stands in stark contrast to the surgical precision of modern producers like A.G. Cook and Nu:Tone, with their wild and detailed remixes.

This month’s playlist attempts to capture this entire spectrum. We’ve included everything from the danceable beats of Cymbals and Odopt and the uncanny robotic voices of Pig & Dan and Secret Soviet Army, to the hyperactive movement of Xanopticon and Flying Lotus and the uncompromising sound experiments of Saint Abdullah and Walls Of Genius.

Here are three highlights from our research that showcase the breadth of this electric journey:

Jean‐Claude Risset – “Mutations” (1978)
A true landmark in this month’s theme. Risset was a French composer and pioneer of computer music who worked at Bell Labs. He created this piece using early computer sound synthesis. It feels less composed and more grown. It’s a complex digital organism made of pure, algorithmic sound waves. It’s a vital reminder of the genre’s academic and deeply experimental roots.
Saint Abdullah – “Sounds from the Hosseinieh” (2017)
Representing a more recent and raw form of experimentation, this track is electronic music as cultural and political texture. The New York-based Iranian-Canadian brothers, Mohammad and Mehdi, build a charged, anxious atmosphere using minimalist dub techniques and samples drawn from their cultural upbringing. It’s not the clean precision of modern pop or the academic purity of Risset; it’s a raw, immersive sound collage that feels both ancient and urgently modern.
Hikaru Utada – “Face My Fears (A.G. Cook Remix)” (2022)
Jumping to the absolute cutting edge, we have A.G. Cook’s remix of Hikaru Utada’s track (originally featured in the famous Kingdom Hearts video game series). Cook, a key architect of the hyperpop genre, represents the peak of modern digital precision. Where Risset’s work was about discovering what a computer could do, Cook’s is about pushing what it should do. He shatters Utada’s vocals into a million glittering, high-fidelity fragments. It’s a perfect example of hyperactive, impossibly clean, and wildly detailed production.

We hope you enjoy the results of this month’s research. Let us know your thoughts, and feel free to share your favourite tracks or artists with us over at: research@shufu.studio