For a decimated post-war West Germany, the electronic music studio at the WDR radio in Cologne was a beacon of hope. Collaborating with scientists and technicians, the studio's composers coaxed music from oscillators, generators, filters, and magnetic tape, reclaiming and repurposing military machines, spaces, and discourses into the new sounds of mid-century electronic music. Jennifer Iverson's Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical
Avant-Garde traces the development of this music into a quintessential Cold War innovation-one that reverberated as much with anxiety as with the promise of a new age.