condition (records/box): M / NM Book included, plus two inserts. Electronic Panorama: Paris, Tokyo, Utrecht, Warszawa spreads across four LPs in a Philips box, the most ambitious survey of electronic music the label attempted. Each disc documents a different studio: the GRM in Paris, the Studio voor Elektronische Muziek in Utrecht, Radio NHK in Tokyo, and Polskie Radio's experimental studio in Warsaw. Four cities, four institutions, four approaches to the electronic frontier.

The Paris disc alone constitutes a who's who of French electroacoustic music: Ivo Malec, Luc Ferrari, Guy Reibel, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, and François Bayle all represented. Utrecht brings Jaap Vink, Milan Stibilj, Frits Weiland, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and others working at the Dutch studio that Koenig directed. Tokyo contributes Toshiro Mayuzumi, Maki Ishii, Minao Shibata, and Makoto Moroi, proving that electronic music had become genuinely global. Warsaw closes with Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Arne Nordheim, Włodzimierz Kotoński, and Bogusław Schaeffer, Polish Radio's experimental wing demonstrating that the Iron Curtain couldn't contain sonic innovation.

The box set format suited such pedagogical ambition. Individual LPs were too brief for comprehensive surveys; four discs allowed scope matching the project's reach. Maurice Fleuret contributed program notes, guiding listeners through terrain that 1970 audiences found bewildering. Philips bet that such audiences existed, listeners willing to invest time and money in understanding rather than merely enjoying. The Prospective 21e Siècle series, with its distinctive silver sleeves, became synonymous with this wager on the future.