How confused they must have been, said Andy Cush: the tiny fraction of the Fenway Center audience that had seen the word “electronic” on event fliers distributed by Northeastern’s music department and arrived at the former church last month for a night of pulsing techno.

Initially, the scene did little to dampen their expectations. Three college-aged guys took the stage, amidst “a technical mass of cable and pieces of hardware,” recalled Cush, one of the performers. And then there were the laptops – the only instruments they’d play all night. Not a far cry from your standard tag-team DJ set.

Then, there was the music.

If the first minimalist notes didn’t surprise club-ready onlookers – just a small showing of 30 or so attendees, mostly music technology students and professors – there was the abstract cacophony that followed. As Cush said, each member of the ensemble was generating a separate, loosely improvised sequence of notes – “controlling different parameters on synthesizers, controlling tempos of playback” – until the three compositions merged into an indiscernible hydra of sound.

“It challenges a lot of people’s traditional conceptions of what music is supposed to be,” said Cush, a sophomore music technology major who’s been part of Northeastern’s Electronic Music Ensemble since his freshman year. “There’s not really a concrete melody, or a theme you’ll remember the next day.”

But it’s music nonetheless, he said.

“The emotional investment we have is the same – the dedication,” he said. “And it’s still an auditory experience.”

As electro-rock and pop artists claim the top spots of critics’ year-end lists – from MGMT to Hot Chip and Radiohead – and pop and hip-hop producers go heavy on the robotic sounds of auto-tune, it seems electronic music, which began its ongoing character arc around the 1940s, has breached the mainstream. Along the way, there’s been Kraftwerk, who popularized future-sounds early on; the invention of electro-rap in the ’80s by LA club dweller Egyptian Lover; the explosion of techno in the ’90s; and recently, the merger of reggae and electro by Terry Lynn.

“If electronic music is an umbrella term, there’s probably 50 different subgenres in there,” said Professor Mike Frengel, who created and leads the ensemble.

But there’s still a place for experimental electronic music, said Ian Headley, a sophomore music technology major – even if it’s been eclipsed in the mainstream.

“There’s probably just as much electronic music out there – and avant-garde – as dance music,” said Headley, who joined Cush onstage at the Fenway Center last month. “Dance music is dance music – it’s not really supposed to be a great symphony, and a lot of electronic composers want to still write that great symphony. They just want to use electronic instruments.”

Cue the Electronic Music Ensemble.

On Tuesday afternoon, Frengel is in his Ryder Hall office, finding possible compositions for the ensemble to perform this April. Of the eight he’s corralled, there’s three by Karlheinz Stockhausen: “Seventeen Texts for Intuitive Music,” “Tierkreis” and “Plus-Minus.”

Unlike classical chamber groups, Frengel said the Electronic Music Ensemble picks compositions from a body of work typically no older than 70 years.

Frengel founded the group three and a half years ago, he said, to cater to the department’s 50 or 60 music technology students. Like other music majors, they’re required to complete a handful of ensemble credits – though they might be more adept at software control than screaming guitar solos or improv brass runs. For decades, their only options were acoustic chamber groups – rock, jazz or strings. Now, they have access to relatively off-kilter pieces like “Trio for Laptop Computers,” the Richard Hall composition tailored specifically for the group, unveiled at the Fenway Center in December.

“I guess the most obvious difference is the instrumentation that we use,” Headley said.

Although a violinist would be hard pressed to get his violin to sound like anything else, Headley said, with his laptop he can push all the boundaries of acceptable music.

“It offers an infinite sound world,” he said. “If you want something to sound like five trucks honking horns with popcorn popping at the same time, you could do that. And you can write an entire piece of music that uses those sounds.”

That’s not the only way Frengel’s ensemble operates differently than a chamber string group or a jazz quartet. For one thing, improvisation has all new rules: Everyone is improving at the same time, so it’s less about grabbing attention than supporting your peers.

“Don’t play anything until you think that something needs to be played” – that’s the sort of exisential direction Frengel said he has been known to offer his students.

In the last 15 years or so, Frengel said most music departments across the country started electronic music composition programs. Though they they don’t always have a corresponding ensemble, Frengel sees the movement as part of a greater evolution, in which the term “contemporary” will expand to naturally include electronic music.

“Music has always sort of embraced the technology of the time … electricity and electronics and, nowadays, computers, are a part of everyday life,” he said. “And it’s sensible that it would be part of everyday music.”