Monday 15 June 2020

Morton Subotnick ‎– "Silver Apples Of The Moon" (Nonesuch ‎– H-71174) 1967


Allegedly the first piece of Electronic Music commisioned by a record company. Which is probably correct,as in music made from a purely electronic source.The source being, in this case,The Buchla Modular Electronic Music System.There were plenty of 'electronic' records and recordings before this,especially those of the Musique Concréte variety; but with a synthesizer,Silver Apples is said to be there first.
There's not much in the way of structure here however, more in the line of Free Electronics,relying on funny electronic noises for it's avant-garde novelty value. If this is Avant-Garde then so was the soundtrack to the Forbidden Planet made a decade before this.
There was certainly a lysergic appeal that would have the casual Hippie space cadet freaking out at those groovy sounds man;and the cover art betrays nonesuch's target market with it's far-out oil film projector still.Psychedelic cover means Psychedelic music right?
Just tell 'em what to do and they'll invariably do it.

Tracklist:

A Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part One) 16:30
B Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part Two) 15:00


2 comments:

rev.b said...

Subotnick really is the perfect name for the guy producing this material, innit? This album was followed by a whole series of Nonesuch releases, some commissioned, of electronic music, 20th century avant stuff and so on. They all came in very academic looking covers of similar design filled with ‘analysis’ of the music, backgrounds on the composers and performers. It was all so dour, it’s relevance certainly more significant than you could possibly begin to appreciate outside the University music lab, especially w/o a coupla Ph.Ds under yer belt. In my teens, I collected all of them I came across. On one hand, they’re very much of their time. On the other, they still sound a lot more unusual than most of what you come across today. One reason I still like ‘em is they’re completely divorced from the world around me, which, given current events, can be a blessing.

Taylor Jessen over at Fuji Puzzle Box‘ll tell you all about ‘em:
https://taylorjessen.blogspot.com/search?q=Nonesuch

Looks like he’ll still letcha download one of them too.

Here’s another:

Charles Dodge - Earth's Magnetic Field
https://www.mediafire.com/file/83s6vp8l6mcnotq/Chrls_Ddg_-_Erth%27s_Mgntc_Fid.zip/file


Funny, this stuff doesn’t sound psychedelic at all to me. More like factory music from Jupiter. Wrong drugs I s’poze.

rev.b said...

BTW, I played some of this type of thing for the wife a few years ago. It made no sense to her at all. I guess you had to be there before the typical floaty etherial drones or dance beat driven dung that’s now called Electronic Music/Electronica came into being. Grumpy old twat that I am, it only give me the shakes. Beyond that, I couldn’t give a cripe.