https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-10/Thunderbolt%20horses%201000x745.png
The Orgasmic Opus by Dr Val Stephen
Title:
The Orgasmic Opus by Dr Val Stephen
Year
1967
Dr Val Stephen's (1919-1998) recordings are the first electronic music compositions by an Australian artist to be released internationally on a commercial record label. Stephen was a Melbourne anaesthetist who first encountered European experimental music in the late 1950s and built his own sound-generating equipment. Despite his self-described ‘amateur’ musician status, his tracks Fireworks and The Orgasmic Opus (both recorded in 1963) appeared on the American Folkways compilation album Electronic Music in 1967.
The Orgasmic Opus comically suggests a brief sexual encounter with a series of bleeps overlaying a burbling melody and ending in an explosive climax.
Performer
Dr Val Stephen
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.