Compiled by Veronica Vasicka and Peanut Butter Wolf, The Minimal Wave Tapes, Vol. 1 helped further codify a new area and sound for record collectors to obsess over. Or rather, tape collectors: the emphasis here was generally on DIY home recordings by artists exploring the possibilities of late 1970s and early 1980s electronics, eschewing brighter synth pop for more unusual, often murky and cryptic compositions. Check out the work of Tara Cross and Bene Gesserit for an initial taste of what’s here.

Call this a fateful meeting of cratedigging tastemakers-slash-archeologists: when Peanut Butter Wolf joined up with Veronica Vascika, the founder and curator of archival electronic label Minimal Wave, Stones Throw’s dalliances in oddball synthpop fully tapped a rich vein of inspiring otherwise-lost greatness. Think the late ’70s/early ’80s electronic equivalent of garage rock — simple and stripped down by budget-dictated necessity but far from basic, with intersections of techno, industrial, Italo-disco, funk, and post-punk assembling a vision of bedroom synth as a movement every bit as vital to the future of underground music as any endlessly-chronicled hardcore punk scene.