The Atomium is a monument in Brussels, originally built for Expo '58, the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Designed by André Waterkeyn, it stands 102 metres (335 ft) tall. It has nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

Tubes connect the spheres along the 12 edges of the cube and all eight vertices to the centre. They enclose escalators connecting the spheres containing exhibit halls and other public spaces. The top sphere provides a panoramic view of Brussels. Each sphere is 18 metres in diameter. Four spheres are currently (as of 2012) closed to visitors; others can be reached easily by escalators. The vertical vertex contains a lift which was very fast and advanced at the time of building (the speed is 5 m/s).

Renovation on the Atomium began in March 2004; it was closed to the public in October, and remained closed until February 18 2006. The renovations included replacing the faded aluminium sheets on the spheres with stainless steel. To help pay for renovations, the old aluminium was sold to the public as souvenirs. A triangular piece about 2 m long sold for €1,000,^{[citation needed]}

Karl Bartos (born 31 May 1952, Berchtesgaden, Germany) was, between 1975 and 1990, along with Wolfgang Flür, an electronic percussionist in the electronic-music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on its US "Autobahn" tour. In addition to his percussion playing, Bartos was credited with songwriting on the Man-Machine, Computer World, and Electric Café albums and sang one lead vocal on the latter.

He left the group in 1990, reportedly^{[citation needed]} frustrated at the slow progress in the group's activities because of the increasingly perfectionist attitude of founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.

In 1992 Bartos founded Elektric Music. This new project released the Kraftwerk-style Esperanto in 1993, and then the more guitar-based Electric Music in 1998. In between the two albums, Bartos collaborated with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on Electronic's 1996 album Raise the Pressure, and co-wrote material with Andy McCluskey which appeared on both Esperanto and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Universal album. In 1998, he also produced an album by Swedish synthpop band the Mobile Homes, much in the style of his work with Electronic: guitar-pop with very slight synthetic references. It was received as a great disappointment to synthpop fans, but it sold more than any of their previous albums and was used in TV advertisements for an airline to moderate success.

Stars of the Lid is a duo specializing in drone-based ambient music. They list among their influences minimalist and electronic composers such as Arvo Pärt, Zbigniew Preisner, Gavin Bryars, and Henryk Górecki, as well as Talk Talk (both bands have tracks named "Taphead"), post-rock artists Labradford, and ambient innovator Brian Eno. Their songs are largely beatless soundscapes, composed of droning, effects-treated guitars along with piano, strings, and horns; volume swells and feedback fill the gap of rhythmic instruments, providing dynamic movement within the songs. Their sound has been described as "divine, classical drone without the tedious intrusion of drums or vocals".

Formed in Austin, Texas, in 1993, SOTL is composed of two members — Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie. McBride explained in an interview that the band's name refers to "your own personal cinema, located between your eye and eyelid", suggesting the colors and patterns one can see with closed eyes (either phosphenes or closed-eye hallucinations). Both have released solo material, the former under his own name and the latter under The Dead Texan alias. Their two most recent releases have been triple LPs released to generally positive reviews. Adam Wiltzie currently lives in Brussels, Belgium and Brian McBride in Los Angeles, USA.