Recent Suzanne Ciani and Daphne Oram reissues have gotten many singing the praises early electronic music's leading ladies, but chatter about their computing cohorts has been shockingly sparse. It's a big deal that Maggi Payne composed these pieces on an 8-bit Apple II, since just a few years earlier, the only option was to compose via punch card and wait a day to hear what some vacuum-tubed, room-filling beast spit out. And while she's certainly active in academic and art music realms as co-director of Mills College's Center for Contemporary Music-- where she was one of the first MFA students-- it seemed as if her music would reach no other ears. Thanks to Root Strata's anthology of her collaborations with video artist Ed Tannenbaum, Ahh-Ahh Music For Ed Tannenbaum's Technological Feets 1984-1987, fans of Actress, Outer Space and everything in between will be able to enjoy technologically ancient sounds that are bizarrely contemporary.

Ahh-Ahh Music For Ed Tannenbaum's Technological Feets 1984-1987 is out now on Roots Strata.