Other than late 50s and early 60s space age pop....

I'll start you off: Art of Noise's (Who's Afraid Of) The Art Of Noise? from 1984. The Fairlight, the MIDI presets, the slap bass and synth drums (or was it synth bass and slap drums?), the primitive sampling, the clinical overproduction. And that "hey! hey!" vocal that's been borrowed a million times since. I found this unlistenable at the time (the Meat Puppets, Birthday Party and Cocteau Twins were my thing at the time) and only recently have I been able to approach it, first out of curiosity and now genuine affection. I had it pegged as part of the shiny phoniness of the 80s, when the passion and inventiveness of post-punk gave way to Robert Elms'  trousers, winebar soul and other surface noise. But now it seems separate from that tosh, a crazy attempt to use the clunky new technology of the time on its own terms rather than in tasteful moderation to decorate the same old crap that was sneaking back into the charts. It's a museum piece but a lot of fun. Don't make me watch the video for "Close (to the Edit )" though. That's too much clunky eighties technology for one brain to take.