I don’t rightly remember how I first heard the music of electronic composer John Wiggins. I do remember reading about his music in one or two of the underground magazines and being curious. Then, I had his tapes and LPs in a trade probably and was fully able to digest his sounds. Of all the people in the underground scene John seemed to be the composer most closely aligned with “serious” electronic work, that is, his material seem to be a direct descendant of Shaeffer, Dockstader, Dhomont and was presented beautifully. That is not to say it was mimicking these great composers in any way but they appeared to have an antecedent effect. Engrossing and weird, his music existed in another universe, perhaps not even parallel to ours but somehow in communication with us. Albeit slightly different, “granular synthesis” is a term thrown around these days and to my way of thinking Wiggins was there way ahead of the pack working with equipment that made it much more difficult to accomplish.

Above, an LP on RRRecords from 1986 and below his cassette, “Particle Music” from 1985. On this tape he states, “All sounds on this cassette are real. Each was sampled in and manipulated by an 8 bit computer and then recorded and edited on a 4 track. No synthesizers were used”.

Keep in mind that this was 1985 and sampling was not widely done by home tapers yet and even the use of computers was rare in any kind of home produced music. His day job in the commercial music industry may have helped him understand the procedures but his probing creative spirit pushed him into unknown territories.