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In the recently released documentary
Sisters with Transistors, beloved avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson poses a provocative question: “How do you exorcise the canon of classical music of misogyny?” She pauses a beat, eventually answering: “With two oscillators, a turntable, and tape delay.”
The issue Anderson raises is a familiar one. In the last few years, electronic music has undergone a discursive reckoning: scholars, producers, DJs, journalists, and select labels and festivals have called for a feminist reimagining of electronic music’s past and present. This narrative shift has spotlit the women behind the boards; those tinkering with tape machines and oscillators, searching for a sense of freedom in the technology that once upended the traditional structures of composition and music.