Is Electronic Music in trouble?

Experimental Electronic Sounds Society:

EMS Improvisation Group, 'Vacant Possession' Viewing and The Last Toadsmen Of The East

~

E.M. Arson Debut Album Review

Norwich University of The East

Monday 24th October, 2026

I came away from Norwich University of Arts with the thought that electronic music is in trouble.  The session in the Performance Theatre at NUA was organised by Liam Wells, who is course leader for the Electronic Music and Film and Moving Image Production at the arts university.  Liam pulled some strings to provide a space for The Experimental Sound Society to meet, after the Norwich Puppet Theatre arrangement ended.  As the evening wrapped up, I headed out not sure that the exercise had been entirely worthwhile.  Electronic sounds and performance do not seem to have progressed much beyond the 1950s and 1960s electronic experimental sounds, despite the now widely available and cheaper technology.  What exactly is it that experimental electronic sound is doing that is in any way definable as experimental after 70-plus years of experimenting?

EMS Improvisation Group set the musical bar

This was a free event featuring an opening set by the EMS Improvisation Group, a poetic film, ‘Vacant Possession’ about an empty property on the edge of the marshes at Walberswick, Suffolk and a performance by The Last Toadsmen of The East.  The Last Toadsmen of the East are Liam Wells and artist and film-maker John Bowers, who performs under the moniker of John The Modulator.

The Experimental Sound Society does promote itself under a banner of Live Music Norwich, but as my compadre, Sean The Cyclist, pointed out in the pub afterwards, it is a ‘sound’ society, not a musical one.  This of course provides potential scope for exploring everything from the sounds of plants, to noises from beyond the Ionosphere, which is exciting.  I have heard music which incorporates plant amplified emissions and it is mind-blowing.

Taking up Sean’s point, one must approach the output of a sound society with an open mind. Music’s boundaries were pushed back a long way during the last century as string, wind and percussion instruments became amplified and performers discovered that amplifiers and loud speakers have their own sounds. So, we now carry a far wider appreciation of music than that described in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994.  That particular piece of Tory legislation, aimed at ending the Rave scene, defines music as “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”  Take the beats out and you can still have music and very beautiful music too, as we heard during the Zero BPM drone music festival in late-May  2026 at The Church Piano Bar, Redwell Street, Norwich.

What the EMS Improvisation Group produced was absolutely fascinating. As well as incorporating sounds from guitar strings, there were sustained notes generated from various pieces of electronic kit and lap-top computers, as well as the squiggles and pips and blips one associates with electronica.  Found sounds, such as distorted voice recordings, provided a further complexity, along with bird-like chirps and whistles.  The performance of around 20 minutes was layered and engaging, with a range of sounds and patterns that held my attention, developed a sense of anticipation, built tension and led to an exciting conclusion.  I hope that a recording of this performance has been kept, as it was a thoroughly enjoyable example of experimental sounds being blended into a musical piece. Although some of the noises may have seemed extraneous in the moment, the waves of background harmonics held the piece together, allowing the solo items to float in, around or penetrate the encompassing sonic skin. Nice, I thought.

Where to start with ‘Vacant Possession’ film by John Bowers, spoken word by Jackie Montague?  A naked, aged Hell’s Angel sits in a broken armchair in an abandoned cottage in Suffolk by the marshes. This is a modern still life film combining elements of 17th Century Dutch art, with all its necessary elements of decay and mortality, combined with Sex Pistols referenced lyrical content, to emphasise that England’s feudal land ownership laws still return any abandoned property and land to The Crown.  The film took about 25 minutes to run, the preamble took five minutes and the ‘any questions’ session afterwards, took up 30 minutes. My only question was going to be, “Is there anything else for us to listen to?” I did not get to ask it, but was preparing to leave when the compere wrapped up that particular entertainment and the society moved onto the headline set from The Last Toadsmen of The East.

John Bowers & Jackie Montague   

Again, Bowers took to the stage behind his laptop and electronic kit, with the amiable Liam Wells, sitting at a not dissimilar array of cables and plugs to move around an box with flashing lights. This performance came with a visual element that I found pleasantly distracting. It was hard for me to follow what was going on on the audio-front.  The volume was loud and the sounds being generated were intense, creating a palpable tension.  A couple went to lie face-up on the floor of the hall, presumably to more fully appreciate the sonic experience, as sitting in the Performance Theatre lecture hall seats may not have been allowing them a comfortable listening space.

 Wells and Bowers: The Last Toadsmen of The East

This was electronic experimental sounds, but was the equipment being experimented with, or the audience being experimented on, because I am not convinced that the output was in anyway experimental.  Are there new, or experimental sounds to be discovered this far into the electric era?  One of the issues is possibly that the human ear, when in good order, has limitations on the range and tones it can understand, similarly the hearing range of whales and bats are limited to what they need to hear and can process.  What I heard from The Last Toadsmen of The East sounded no different from experimental electronic sounds being generated from the Cold War period on either side of the Iron Curtain, so I ask, where does electronic experimental sound go from here?

E M Arson: Debut Album e.m. arson Out Now

Coincidentally, I was sent a link to E.M. Arson’s debut album, which was released on Friday, 30th October, 2026 on the Electronic Sound label .  It is nearly a concept album, with a couple of recordings of the late Sinead O’Connor punctuating the collection of tracks pulled from the past few years of E.M.’s bedroom studio productions.  I was intrigued by the recordings of O’Connor’s voice and what she had to say about her experience in the lime-light and wondered if the album would explore this woman’s experience in some way, but it doesn’t.

This album is reminiscent of Music For Films by Brian Eno, which was a bunch of soundtracks in search of a film.  This album is very much the same, music developed to follow the action, or supplement the scenery of an as yet un-photographed film.

Working with several clips from recordings of found sounds made on E.M.’s  iPhone, the home studio produced tracks, lean toward the moody and what one would typically describe as atmospheric.  The tones of synthetic sounds and treatments of electronica does atmospheric well and E M Arson has done a fine job with this set of imaginative work here.  There are some splendid juxtapositions of sound, with the first musical track being a fine example. 

It always tricky with instrumental albums to get a grasp of the artist’s purpose, there is no context and no words, other than a title to bridge the distance between creator and listener.  As with poetry, what the recipient takes from the work is entirely their own, differing from person to person, with any connection to the artist a unique perspective. Here, titles provide clues, the yellow wallpaper, when icarus fell from the sky, indoor relief may spark a pre-cognition of what might follow, but are we attempting to see what the musician sees, or means, or do the titles divert the listener from listening closely and enjoying the piece for whatever they derive from it themselves?

The track elizabeth on jeff plays with the voice of Elizabeth Fraser, (Cocteau Twins) explaining her somewhat intense, romantic past-connection with the musician Jeff Buckley.  The inclusion of speech-heavy tracks, this the third on the album, makes repeated listening challenging, as there is nothing inherently musical about what one hears, except for the timbre of the voices chosen and the phrasing of the language.

What I do enjoy about the album is the rhythms used by E.M.Arson and how they provide the pulse for the collected sounds that are brought into play with each track. the workhouse is a fine example of this.

The four tracks, indoor relief, the workhouse, the treadmill of the poor and the deadroom, fit wonderfully together and would make an EP, or provide the foundation for a deeper look at the whole issue of the parish poor and the shadow of the poorhouses which over-shadowed rural lives in East Anglia for so many years.  I wonder if E.M. Arson might combine her full scope of artistic talent to go deeper and darker into this topic.  I feel that what she has produced here could be a precursor to something of epic proportions, given its relevance to the current noises about welfare and benefits.        

This self-titled album (written in lower-case, e.m.arson), is available on transparent red vinyl from Electronic Sound. Each copy includes a unique signed photograph by the artist, which were taken by her somewhere between Virginia and New York City, then between Norfolk and London. 

~

Spencer Ide

5th November 2026