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As the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded into television, its musical reach has also grown, embracing diversity both in terms of its composers and the music they make.

English composer Natalie Holt (pictured above) brought unexpected sonorities to “Loki”; Cairo-based Hesham Nazih added specific Egyptian sounds to “Moon Knight”; and American composer Laura Karpman employed a traditional orchestra and choir on the animated “What If…?”

“Loki is sort of a likable baddie,” says Holt, “a grand, Machiavellian, Shakespearean character, so I wanted some kind of gravitas, classical weight, to his theme.”

Yet, in last summer’s six-part series, the Norse god of mischief (Tom Hiddleston) is also playing with time, which suggested more unusual sounds: the wailing of a theremin and its equally eerie French cousin, the ondes Martenot.

“I’d been listening to [Lithuanian theremin virtuoso] Clara Rockmore and [BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneer] Delia Derbyshire,” Holt explains. “The sound of the theremin has stayed with me...

“Loki” composer Natalie Holt immediately knew that she wanted the sliding, spacey eeriness of the theremin to musically convey the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) trapped in the retro world of the Time Variance Authority (Tva). And director Kate Herron was on board with it too. They both had an appreciation for the electronic instrument’s iconic presence in “Spellbound,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and “Star Trek.” They were also fans of theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, and even arranged to license a few of her pieces (including “The Swan”) to sprinkle throughout the score.

“Loki’s such a fascinating character and we can all identify with having a mischievous, cheeky side, a slightly naughty side,” Holt said. “So he’s just revealing more of his [vulnerability] in this show. I felt like it was really important for his theme to have [the theremin] and to integrate it with other instruments and...

How do you score a show that tinkers with time, features a Norse god who is neither hero nor villain, and continually confounds the viewer with new mysteries?

That was the challenge facing English composer Natalie Holt, who with her music for “Loki” becomes only the second woman to compose the dramatic score for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film or TV series.

The music of “Loki” is a bold combination of a traditional orchestra with vintage analog synthesizers, Scandinavian folk instruments and the weird, unsettling electronic sounds of the theremin, once associated with ’50s sci-fi movies.

“He’s a kind of grand, Machiavellian character,” Holt tells Variety from her London studio. “And Tom Hiddleston’s performance has a touch of Shakespeare to it. So I wanted to give him some gravitas and classical weight to his theme, but also have this space-age sound as well.”

Holt had been listening to...

Electronic music — or, as we think of it today, most popular music — is so taken for granted that it’s easy to forget its original pioneers were iconoclasts of their time. Lisa Rovner’s new documentary Sisters With Transistors, about the women who expanded the technological and artistic possibilities of the form during the 20th century, presents those forebears with grace, accessibility, and a touch of the avant-garde.

Beginning with Clara Rockmore, the violin prodigy who dazzled audiences in the 1920s with her theremin (an electronic instrument played via hand movements through the air,...

Let’s get this out the way early – yes, you are correct, “Sisters with Transistors” is the best title for a documentary you have seen so far this year. Doing exactly what it says on the tin, Lisa Rovner’s debut feature is a secret history of electronic music, told via the women that made it happen. No Kraftwerk, no Robert Moog, and only the most cursory mention of Leon Theremin. Instead we hear – and hear from – ten unsung (or rather un-bzzzzzzzed. There’s little singing going on) geniuses of electronic art, drawn from across continents and musical styles, dating back to classical violinist Clara Rockmore’s adoption of the Theremin in the 1920s, and passing through avant-garde art pieces, movies, TV scores and commercials.

Laurie Anderson provides the narration – herself a pioneer of the form – as Rovner stitches her film together from archive audio and footage, with the odd...

Laurie Anderson narrates this fascinating film about the female pioneers of electronic music

What a joy is a documentary that neither talks down to its audience nor diminishes its subject. Lisa Rovner’s Sisters With Transistors is an unapologetically geeky look at the female pioneers of early electronic music which veers fearlessly into the experimental end of the knob-twiddling spectrum. Laurie Anderson narrates a fascinating film that takes in, among others, theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore; a beatifically smiling Suzanne Ciani sensually stroking a suitcase full of wires; Éliane Radigue, engrossed in her minimal tonal experiments; and the great Delia Derbyshire, with the mathematical precision of her diction and her demure slingback tapping to a throbbing loop of noise.

Related: Sisters With Transistors: inside the fascinating film about electronic music’s forgotten pioneers...

They turned drawings into symphonies and made black boxes sing. Why were they never given their due? The maker of a new film, full of revealing archive footage, aims to put this right

Wearing a black cocktail dress and a foil-bright silver headscarf, a woman stands in the corner of a drawing room performing The Swan by Saint-Saëns, while a group of men look on. Although the scene has a sedate Edwardian air to it, this is actually 1976. The woman whirls her red nails around a mysterious black box, making it sigh and lament, whisper and sing. This is Clara Rockmore, the first virtuoso of the theremin, and her audience – all there to learn – includes Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesiser.

A year later, aged 66, Rockmore would release her first album, recorded by Moog, 35 years after she made her concert debut on the instrument at New York’s City Hall,...

The unsung trailblazers behind electronic music are paid harmonic homage in Lisa Rovner’s enchanting documentary

Lisa Rovner’s superb documentary pays a deeply deserved, seldom-expressed tribute to the female composers, musicians and inventors from the brief history of electronic music. The focus falls on about nine or 10 women in the field, from experimental music pioneer Clara Rockmore, a Theremin maestro in bias-cut evening dress, through to the British composer and mathematician Delia Derbyshire (probably best known for co-creating the Doctor Who theme), up to Suzanne Ciani, the first woman to score a major Hollywood movie (The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1981) and her contemporary, composer and early software designer Laurie Spiegel.

Related: The 20 best music documentaries – ranked!

"This is the story of dreams enabled by technology." Metrograph Pictures has released an official trailer for an acclaimed indie documentary titled Sisters with Transistors, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Lisa Rovner. The doc film tells the story of electronic music's female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today. Narrated by legendary multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, it showcases the music of and rare interviews with many electronic heroes including: theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore; "Dr. Who" theme composer and master of tape manipulation, Delia Derbyshire; Daphne Oram, one of the founders of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; Éliane Radigue, known for her work in musique concrète and tape feedback techniques; sound artist Maryanne Amacher, known for using psychoacoustic phenomena; co-creator of the world’s first electronic film score for Forbidden Planet, Bebe Barron; and others as well.

Musician Wendy Carlos wrote the score to Stanley Kubrick‘s “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Shining,” Disney’s “Tron” and helped popularize the Moog synthesizer in the 1960s and 1970s. Clara Rockmore helped popularize the otherworldly theremin instrument in the 1960s, but both figures are essentially still just obscure cult figures in music. That’s hopefully going to change a little bit with “Sisters With Transistors,” a new documentary about the female pioneers in electronic music whose radical 20th-century experiments redefined the boundaries of music.

Continue reading ‘Sisters With Transistors’ Exclusive Trailer: Wendy Carlos & The Female Synth Pioneers Get The Spotlight at The Playlist.

When it first emerged, birthed by the likes of Suzanne Ciani, Clara Rockmore and Delian Derbyshire, whose most famous creation issued forth from half the TV sets in the UK from 1963 onwards, electronic music seemed particularly suited to women. Composers could work alone without having to rely on musicians - who at the time were mostly male - during the early creative stages of their work. They could play their music in alternative spaces inhabited by artists and minority communities rather than having to rely on a concert circuit dominated by men or on clubs and pubs that were often unsafe for them. Over time, as more women moved into those spaces anyway and attitudes began to change, it ought t have becomes easier still; but at the same time, white men were swiftly coming to control and dominate the scene they had built, using existing power structures in...

Metrograph Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to “Sisters With Transistors,” a documentary about the women who were the pioneers of electronic music. The film will debut virtually on Metrograph’s website on April 23.

Directed by Lisa Rovner, “Sisters With Transistors” had its world premiere at the 2020 South by Southwest Film Festival and later played at AFI Fest.

“‘Sisters With Transistors’ was a true revelation to us,” said Metrograph Pictures’s head of distribution George Schmalz. “The untold story of the groundbreaking women who brought us some of the most revealing music ever created, ‘Sisters With Transistors’ is an impeccably crafted film that we’re thrilled to bring to audiences nationwide.”

The doc spotlights critical but little-known female leaders of electronic music, including Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani and Laurie Spiegel. “Sisters With Transistors” was narrated by Laurie Anderson.

Like every industry built under the watchful eye of a global patriarchy, the Edm scene is grossly tilted in favor of its male artists. And like many of those same industries, this fact exists despite the presence of women pioneers at the inception of electronic sound as a medium. For every Robert Moog that acknowledged their genius (he enlisted Clara Rockmore’s expertise to better the advancement of his synthesizer), there were unfortunately countless others like Don Buchla, who agreed to sponsor a class for recent grads like Suzanne Ciani before declaring it closed to women—of which she was to be the only one. So gatekeeping manifests at the level of education, the level of access, and ultimately the level of success.

The numbers don’t lie. Less than three percent of the field’s production and technical roles are women. Less than three-tenths of a percent are women of color.

There’s a tradition of experimental music in which avant-garde ideas are also tender and inviting – think Clara Rockmore, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Speigel, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wyatt, John Fahey. This duo project feels rooted in that notion. Lattimore’s already made one of the year’s best LPs, the deliciously hypnotic Hundreds of Days, an all-instrumental set built around her Lyon and Healy concert harp. Baird is a dreamy folk singer and fingerstyle guitarist with a long collaborative resume (Kurt Vile, Bonnie Prince Billy, Espers, Heron Oblivion, etc.).This mini-lp...

Today’s Google Doodle is quite a distinct one as it is a game where you are taught music by a black and white cartoon of Clara Rockmore. It’s a short memory game, presented in a black and white, art deco styled graphics, which simulates Rockmore teaching users how to play the theremin, a little-known instrument that […]

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