Written from the perspective of two people currently involved in experimental and electronic music in Australia, this chapter provides an overview of some of the key movements and works in the genre, from the twentieth century to the present day. Focusing primarily on music that exploits technology and experimental approaches that progress innovation in art music contexts, it highlights some of the diverse practitioners – performers, composers, improvisers, sound artists, and instrument makers – who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible, often blurring the lines between art forms in the process. While it is unable to provide an exhaustive historical or contemporary account of the innovations that have been achieved here, or those responsible, the selected representative survey should serve to contextualise Australia’s contributions to electronic and experimental music, demonstrating our reputation for presenting ‘mavericks’ to the music world.

Attuning to feminism with sound as a trans-historical listening practice, this chapter considers the intersections of feminism(s) and sound through echo, making the case for the phenomenon of echoic sound as feminist method alongside considering Echo, the Greek mythological character whose reappearances through literature confer upon her a cumulative agency, evidenced in her sonic invention/intervention. The writing charts a reading of Echo as complicating any idea of a coherent female identity, and then considers echo’s legacy through two recent examples of sonic art works: Bouchra Ouizguen’s Corbeaux and Sonya Boyce’s Devotional Series, both of which insistently demand to take up space through sounding out multiple times, and multiple women in and through history. Rather than constructing identities of the artist and/or audience, the chapter attends to these works’ formation of collectives in and of those who witness, organised following Jennifer Nash in her writing on black feminist love politics, ‘around the vibrancy and complexity of difference.’