Fuck Richie Hawtin and his $1,000 glasses. Fuck Autechtre and their Teutonic hautiness. Fuck every last experimentalist touchpad wank nerd getting fellated or cunnilingated by ahistorical music journalists. It's time for some respect for the father of synthesized rhythmic minimalism and low-key ambience, Raymond Scott, who recorded three groundbreaking concept albums -- for infants no less -- in 1962 and 1963. This was 12 years before Brian Eno's "ambient" album Discreet Music. Not only does Soothing Sounds for Baby actually soothe babies, but it foreshadows Kraftwerk and Neu and a whole host of other more famous, less talented musicians.

Unlike those Moog-addled, namby-pamby Krauts, Scott had to both build his own equipment and then figure out how to coax the sounds he wanted out of switches and relays and gears and vacuum tubes and transistors. This was a laborious, tedious, and extremely time-consuming method of creating music, making Scott a log-cabin pioneer chopping beats in the techno wilderness. Scott spent millions of 1950 dollars pursuing sound concepts of which few others understood the importance. And amazingly he built the first sequencer, but refused to share his invention with anyone, condemning him to obscurity.

Thankfully, a few modern musicians have paid their respects. Cats like Coldcut, Biftek, Momus and Olivia Tremor Control have sampled Scott's electronic work. DJ Spooky has called the third volume of Soothing Sounds "fucking incredible. It's repetitive, with a beat pulse. I consider Raymond Scott a techno aesthetic originator." An RS remix and tribute album is in the works.

As Jeff Winner, a key member of the Raymond Scott Archives (www. RaymondScott.com) puts it, "The concept of electronic music for babies in the early 1960s usually strikes folks as either extremely clever and useful, or totally insane." Not quite. Soothing Sounds is clever insanity.

Engineered for 12- to 18-month-old hipsters-in-training, Volume 3 features three songs: Tin Soldier, Little Miss Echo (named after a 1960 toy doll of the same name) and The Playful Drummer. It's a spooky, bouncy, analog dispatch from outer space that should shame Boards of Canada into silence.

Click here for a longer interview with Jeff Winner.