Better listening through circuitry

Just about everyone's listening to some sort of electronic music these days, but most people would be hard-pressed to name any of the medium's pioneers. Perhaps most would recognize Kraftwerk as having popularized a purely electronic sound; probably fewer could name-check Robert Moog, the man who spearheaded the mass-production of affordable synthesizers. But only the real otaku could name the man who inspired Moog, a Soviet emigre named Leon Theremin (born Lev Termen), a mad-scientist-cum-musician who invented the first purely electronic instrument, the Theremin.

But even if you don't recognize the name, you surely know the sound -- that eerie, vibrating ooo-weee-ooo that graced dozens of cheesy '50s sci-fi movies, a sound that is at once operatic and artificial. You've heard it in The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" and in the soundtrack to Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" where it was actually played by Theremin's protege, Clara Rockmore.

What you definitely don't know is the fascinating story surrounding this instrument and its creator, and that's what director Steven M. Martin delivers with his documentary "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey," a 1993 film that's receiving a criminally belated release in Japan. Martin combines period footage and recent interviews to trace the forgotten history of Theremin and his seminal instrument, and, as it turns out, this was one of those stories just begging to be told.