As a music-obsessed child, my parent's record collection was like a comfort blanket stuck through with pins: warm, welcoming and familiar but with odd spikes and sharp points that could catch you unawares.

One of these points was the record that (probably) introduced me to electronic music at an impressionable age - and is therefore one of the most important records in my listening history: Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

What the hell it was doing among my parents’ collection of Beatles, Stones and classical music I couldn’t tell. And yet there it was, its cartoon cover of young droog Alex, as portrayed by Malcolm McDowell, wielding a blood-stained knife, as shocking as finding an actual bloody knife wedged in between Sgt Peppers and Sounds of Silence.

What gave the record even greater power was the fact that A Clockwork Orange was unavailable to view in Britain in the 1980s, when I discovered the soundtrack. As a pre-teen, I obviously wouldn’t have been allowed to watch Kubrick’s disturbing adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel anyway.  But believing the film to be banned for its violence - which wasn’t quite true: it had been withdrawn from cinema release in 1973 at Kubrick’s request - made this record all the more horribly alluring. 

Obviously, I asked my parents about why they had bought this particular record and, if I remember right, they had seen the film on its 1971 release and were simultaneously impressed and repulsed by it, with the music having made a particularly strong impression. Knowing this, who wouldn’t have put the record on the cheap 80s hi-fi?

I’ve said that A Clockwork Orange soundtrack probably introduced me to electronic music. I’d like to be more definitive but, as a child growing up in the 1980s, electronic sounds were all around, from Kraftwerk to the Pet Shop Boys. 

Whatever the actual historical sequencing, though, none of this 80s music was anything like the Clockwork Orange soundtrack or rivalled that record’s gnarled and damning impact. Wendy Carlos’ masterpiece helped shape my listening habits in a way that remains deep wired four decades on.

Many years later I pieced together the history of the soundtrack. Carlos studied music composition at Columbia University in the 1906s, where she was taught by electronic music pioneer Vladimir Ussachevsky.

She later helped to develop the Moog synthesiser and broke through into public consciousness with the release of Switched on Bach in 1968, an improbable million seller that featured Bach’s music played on a Moog. 

Coincidentally, Carlos was reading A Clockwork Orange when she discovered that Kubrick was filming the novel and she sent the director Timesteps, an original composition she had recently made (iwith long-time producer Rachel Elkind) as an introduction to an electronic arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Kubrick saw the weird symmetry between Carlos’ warped classics and Burgess’ dystopian view and hired Carlos to write the film’s original score.

There are, as I later discovered, two Clockwork Orange soundtrack albums. The one that my parents had was A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack), which features (almost) all the music used in the film, including six Carlos recordings, several classical numbers, I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper and Singin’ In The Rain. It was released in early 1972, after Kubrick’s film made its US debut in December 1971.

Three months after that record hit the shops came A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, which featured uncut versions of the songs employed in the film, as well as recordings created for A Clockwork Orange that Kubrick didn’t use.

Logically, this would be the definitive version of the album. It includes Timesteps in its full, 14-minute, glory rather than the four-minute excerpt Kubrick used; and it ends with Country Lane, a disturbingly beautiful piece of pastoral electronics intended to soundtrack Alex being taken into the country and beaten up by the police. 

The latter record also contains Orange Minuet and Biblical Daydreams, two brief pieces intended for the film; and Carlos’ take on The Thieving Magpie, which was not actually commissioned by Kubrick but inspired by the film’s use of the orchestral version of Rossini’s work.

You could argue that the version of the soundtrack I grew up with was toned down. Which it is, in a way. 

Timesteps, on A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack), is initially almost danceable, upbeat in a way that suggests delirium rather than good times, before what sounds like electronic timpani drag it down into a world of oily swirls and drones. It is incredibly effective in the film, where it scores a scene in which Alex is introduced to the Ludovico technique of aversion therapy. (Think: eyes clamped open and horrors on screen.)

When left to menace over 14 minutes, though, Timesteps is remarkable, a piece of warped adventure that suggests the thrilling range of electronic music as it separates itself from the crude realities of analogue instrumentation. 

Timesteps may have its roots in classical music but it is the moment on the Clockwork Orange soundtrack where electronic production sounds genuinely like its own thing, far removed from the safe harbours of melody and tone. I can’t think of anything in popular music that sounded like Timesteps before Timesteps; instead, the songs reminds me of the awful fatalism of The Doors’ The End translated into the physics of a Black Hole. So you need to hear the whole thing.

That aside - and it’s quite a big aside - I actually find that the juxtaposition on A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) of Carlos’ electronic pieces with familiar embrace of pop fluff like Singin’ In The Rain actually serves to make Carlos’ work sound all the more shocking - more stomach turning in its alien beauty.

The album starts with Carlos’ Title Music from A Clockwork Orange, an iconic piece of music based on Henry Purcell’s The March for Queen Mary, taken from Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.

Purcell’s composition is chilling, the spine jangling from its mixture of beauty and pitch-black sadness. But Carlos’ take raised the tension even further, her version somehow more alien and also more human, the lightly warped electronic sounds suggesting Purcell’s music being rolled out as a future lament for the end of the human race, rather than just Queen Mary’s demise. It is infinitely sad but also slightly sickening.

The song is a faithful cover in many ways, with Carlos sticking to Purcell’s melody and arrangement. But the slight electronic tweaks, the echos, the quivers and the decays transform the piece, making it chilling and repulsive and beautiful and addictive. I often think that Carlos’ song contains all I ever wanted in electronic music, a sense of possibility and otherness, anchored to deep emotion.

What comes next on the album is, I think, a fantastic example of why A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) wins out over Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score.

Carlos’s Complete Original Score follows Title Music from A Clockwork Orange with the artist’s take on The Thieving Magpie, while A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) runs straight into a fairly standard classical recording of Rossini’s piece, as used in the film. By doing so, Carlos’s Complete Original Score suggests a kind of routine to A Clockwork Orange; the sequencing allows the listener to adjust to Carlos’ electronic / classical crossover, to feel familiar with it, in a way that is more Switched On Bach than violent bacchanalia, toning down the soundtrack’s alien impact.

A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) sustains its classical / electronic juxtaposition over most of the record’s relatively brief running time, its sequencing close to, rather than a direct copy of, the order that the music follows in Kubrick’s film. 

In this way, Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie is followed by Carlos’ Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana), in which the film’s title music is re-played in the style of Beethoven, using gentle flute-like tones, its very lightness like a whispered insult that is no less sincere for its subtler tone.

The official soundtrack album follows this with a Berlin Philharmonic recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Second Movement, its stately orchestral majesty undermined by the knowledge of what Carlos can do to this kind of music, as if the electronic composer is lurking in the shadows glowering silent menace. 

This tacit threat is fulfilled moments later, with Carlos’ March from A Clockwork Orange, her take on the choral movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Anyone familiar with A Clockwork Orange will know the importance of Beethoven to Alex and its significance in the film. Even without this knowledge, March from A Clockwork Orange is a hugely important piece, as Carlos turns her electronic composition nous towards the human voice, using a “spectrum follower” - a kind of pre-vocoder that coverts the human voice into electronic signals - to render Beethoven’s familiarly joyous choral piece as a sinister android choir.

This, in turn, gives way to the nauseating ridiculousness of Carlos’ take on Rossini’s William Tell Overture, 77 seconds of demented electronic scurrying and toy-town cymbal effects that sounds almost played for laughs on vinyl but which soundtracks one of the film’s most disturbing Ludovico Technique scenes.

William Tell Overture ends side one of A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) and that’s almost it for Carlos’ music on the record. Side two includes a four-minute excerpt of Footsteps, as well as Suicide Scherzo, Carlos’ take on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Second Movement, complete with rolling electronic timpani. The record is rounded off by Terry Tucker’s Overture to the Sun, Erika Eigen’s I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper and Singin’ In The Rain, none of which are exactly pioneering works of electronic instrumentations

So how can A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) be a better album than A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, particularly when the latter adds Orange Minuet (pompous and puffed), Biblical Daydreams (metallic and military) and Country Lane to the mix?

The answer, I believe, lies in the soundtrack’s pacing, which offers dramatic contrast and emotional impact, mixing violent disgust with incredible beauty in a way that feels true to Kubrick’s work. When I eventually saw A Clockwork Orange, years later, it felt like I recognised the film, even on first viewing, as if  Carlos’ soundtrack had already brought me into its twisted world.

A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) had a fundamental impact on my listening, helping to shape my musical tastes forever more. I favour melody in electronic music over textures; music that simply uses volume and sonic tricks to disturb is - for me - nowhere near as moving as a a melody buried deep among electronic effects. Drones, wrinkles and atmosphere on their own never quite satisfy; and it takes a very particular set of circumstances for music to disturb me.

A Clockwork Orange (soundtrack) is almost certainly to blame. This is a record that bursts with innovation, experimental music recorded in 1971 that still sounds fresh today, a soundtrack that burst into the future - but did so while doing a job, very successfully. The soundtrack was a huge commercial success, too, and I can hear its influence in everything from David Bowie’s Low to Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity; Selected Ambient Works 2 to Daft Punk’s Tron Soundtrack. 

More importantly - for me anyway - I can still remember the thrill of picking up the Clockwork Orange soundtrack from my parents’ record collection, all those years ago, and being utterly in thrall to its illicit delights. 

Where do you go from there? Where can you go from there? And so my die was cast, my rubicon crossed, my innocence lost; and, of course, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Karl Bartos bonus

When I interviewed former Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos recently for the Line Noise podcast, I asked him about A Clockwork Orange.

“I am a big fan of this record, of course,” he explained. “I am a big fan of the irony in the sound. Because when the guy, Alex, when he is with his people, you have Beethoven: “Every person on this planet become brothers” - “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” [“All men become brothers”, taken from Schiller’s Ode To Joy, which Beethoven used in the final chorus of his Ninth Symphony]. And he’s killing people? And the twist - the atonal twist of the song - makes real sense. It’s a wonderful film, it’s a really great score.”

Some listening

Green-House - Farewell, Little Island

“Environmental music / ambient” duo Green-House feels a hair’s breadth away from being the kind of jazzy acoustic duo you might see playing in a local café, tap your foot to, then ignore.

But that’s hair’s breadth is important. Because the duo of Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan wrap their eminently tuneful compositions in the subtlest layer of electronic abstraction - the slightest glitch, the very suggestion of drum machine - in a way I find rather wonderful, like a Vince Guaraldi soundtrack for Peanuts on the moon.

Shackleton - Crushing Realities

I don’t know about you but I could do with a bit less crushing reality these days. And, despite the name of the song you see above, Shackleton’s stunning new album Euphoria Bound delivers on this level, its layers of rolling percussion, head-spinning production effects, astral melodies and world-eating ambition lifting the listener out from their mundane lives.

Crushing Realities starts with a vocal melody so ornate and catchy it could easily adorn a big pop hit. Is it lifted from Indian music? Its tone suggests it might be and the sample’s use reminds me of the time in the early 2000s when hip hop producers decided to raid Bollywood for its spoils. But Shackleton’s sonic stew is so densely, perfectly Shackleton that any sound he uses feels disconnected from any universe other than his own and the vocal hook eventually melts away under the drums like the sun disappearing behind snow clouds.

Two Shell - The Nightmare

Is Two Shell’s next level of tiresome art prank to make straight-forward chart house music? The - oddly titled - Nightmare suggest so, being three and a half minutes of pop bounce, with a huge synth riff and bright, hooky vocal that Pete Tong would once have described as both “pumping” and “upfront” and yet is so well made I really can’t be mad at it.

Shinichi Atobe - Rain 1

I hate the rain. It’s a symptom of growing up in Scotland. My wife, who was born in the considerably drier climate of Catalonia, loves it. And Rain 1, the first song released from Japanese dub techno master Shinichi Atobe’s new album, promises to bridge the familial divide. 

The song sounds like how my wife makes rain feel when she talks about it: refreshing, magical and life giving, as it tickles the senses and delights the sensibilities. Over a steady electro boom bap beat and eminently stable descending chord sequence, Atobe sets the most sensuous and delicate electronic chimes at work, like tubular bells over an underground lake, the song’s fundamental repetitiveness being tempered by an ever-shifting patchwork of effects - and, frankly, the fact that it is all so damn pleasurable to listen to. Rain 1 tinkles.

Xylitol - Falling

Line Noise artist of 2024 Xylitol returns with a body-slamming jungle number that rides atop a pitched-up rave sample and P-funk synth squeal, as the breakbeat absolutely strains at the leash in their desire to take you away, creating what might be the most accessible thing she’s ever done. 

Even then, Xylitol can’t resist slipping some beautifully weird aqueous blips towards the end of the song, giving us the dreamy kiss-off of our underwater dreams. Good night Xylitol. Sweet dreams.

Robyn - Sexistential (Arca’s take)

I like, rather than love, Robyn’s Sexistential, which combines brilliant lyrics about IVF, PTSD and donors with slightly vanilla production. (Besides: everyone adores it, so no need for me to get on the bus.)

But I love Arca’s take on the song, which takes Sexistential’s Chicago House-ish production and messes it up that crucial bit, leaving the original song intact if a little ragged, like those twisted early house productions when the acid (house) was starting to hit, all disconcerting echoes and nervous psychedelic effects.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise podcast with Flying Lotus

I spoke to the very charming Flying Lotus at the Mira festival in Barcelona recently about the links between music and film, his body horror Ash, the scariest music in the world and the possibility of new records. 

You can listen to it here; or watch it here.

ActxPalestine - Interview with Lina Makoul

I interviewed the Palestinian artist Lina Makoul at the recent ActxPalestine concert in Barcelona and, although brief, she was a very inspiring person to speak to. You can watch that interview here (yes, I’m straining to make out what she’s saying among the deafening crowd) and check out Radio Primavera Sound’s catch up video of the whole event here.

The playlists

It’s 2026 and that means A NEW PLAYLIST, cataloguing the best new music of this year: you can follow that on Apple Music here: The newest and bestest 2026.

And on Spotify here: the newest and bestest 2026.

The old classics remain in place, too: 

Apple Music: The newest and the bestest

Spotify:  The newest and the bestest.

Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.