The first electronic music emerged in the Soviet Union after the revolution, in the 1920s. Then it was composed not by musicians, but by scientists. One of them was Leon Theremin, who invented the theremin. Out of this instrument, you can extract unearthly sounds by moving hands in the air.



Avant-garde composer Arseny Avraamov (a.k.a. Revarsavr) had already worked in genres that only in the late 20th century were defined as noise and musique concrete, and devoted much time to synthesizing sound.



He even offered Joseph Stalin to record the Soviet anthem on not yet existing synthesizers. But Stalin's government did not support all experiments.



With Nikita Khrushchev coming to power in the 1950s, there came the "thaw," the first flight of Yuri Gagarin into space has opened up new horizons of development. Including for music. The first Soviet synthesizer developed as early as in 1936 became widely available. Musician Vyacheslav Meshcherin – who formed the Soviet Union's first Ensemble of Electro-Music Instruments (AEI) in 1956 – picked up this new free mood in his light, weightless music. The band was a huge success. Even Gagarin admitted that AEI's music haunted him in space. This music genre was later called Space Age Pop.

