Vocoders make voices sound robotic, drums sound melodic, and everything else sound really hypnotic. Vocoders are used by almost every major electronic musician.
Gating is often used by electronic music producers to chop up long, droning sounds into smaller, percussive bits of audio.
Many electronic musicians will use rhythmic gating at some time or another. But, the way it is used depends greatly on the style of music being composed. Trance musicians use this effect all the time.