Ambient

Lou Reed “Metal Machine Music” (RCA, 1975)

Here it is, Lou Reed‘s most controversial and divisive release. I know a critic who hates the Velvet Underground and all Reed solo records—except for Metal Machine Music. There are probably a fair amount of noiseniks who share that opinion. On the other hand, about 99.3% of humanity would likely run screaming from MMM after 32 seconds of track one. In between those extremes are reasonable folks such as your blogger, who have plenty of time for VU’s catalog, who own a grip of Lou solo LPs, and who will spin MMM every few years, just to clean out the pipes. Like a mental enema, or something. It’s called cranial hygiene. Look into it.

Anyway… MMM stands as one of the most disruptive aesthetic decisions in a legendary rock artist’s career. (Can you imagine the looks on the faces of RCA’s brass and PR department upon first clapping ears to it?) The sounds on this 64-minute double album (divided into four sidelong pieces) are almost unprecedented in Lou’s career. Maybe only certain parts of the Velvets’ “I Heard Her Call My Name” and “Sister Ray” approach MMM‘s relentless discord and torrents of corroded, chromium tones that wash over you like radioactive sludge.

Of course in 2026, MMM doesn’t sound as confrontational as it did 51 years ago. So many releases since have taken the noise genre to more extreme realms (hear: Merzbow, Masonna, Whitehouse, et al.). But none except for Pat Metheny’s Zero Tolerance For Silence and Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Arc appeared on an American major label, as MMM did.

Blandly classified on the front cover as “An Electronic Instrumental Composition,” MMM can be viewed as a soliloquy of nihilism and a sonic middle finger extended to RCA Records. It’s more punk than any canonical or cult-fave punk record, even though it surfaced a year before punk arose as a codified genre. Or, MMM can be construed as perhaps the most abrasive ambient album ever. The album’s ability to elude easy categorization is one of its strengths.

In his original liner notes, Reed writes with a speed-freak’s reckless clarity and hilarity. He seems at once facetious and utterly serious. “This record is not for parties/dancing/background, romance. This is what I meant about ‘real’ rock… Most of you won’t like this, and I don’t blame you at all. It’s not meant for you.” Everyone who bought “Walk On The Wild Side” and boogied to “Rock And Roll” must have been mortified.

As The Stranger’s Dave Segal wrote on the Seattle paper’s blog in 2015: “MMM is the Big Bang of noise rock, a monument to artistic freedom and hubris, a testament to the superiority of uppers, and an efficacious lease-breaker… It’s a fathomless howl from a tormented soul who’d undergone shock therapy yet also written some of the tenderest ballads ever to coax tears from curmudgeons. It’s an aural signifier of a significant portion of the human condition, splattered onto tape with surgical care, ready to be dipped into at any point in its hour-plus trajectory of disgust. There is a kind of bruised-armor dignity in its occasional spikes of triumphal fanfares. Metal Machine Music commiserates with your misery—with more of the same.” Maybe not coincidentally, Segal tells me that his tinnitus has been worse than ever this year.

The avant-garde classical ensemble Zeitkratzer later performed MMM at the MaerzMusik festival in 2002, lending the oft-scorned LP a degree of respectability. Damn the haters; Lou had the last rueful laugh. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Harold Budd “The Pavilion Of Dreams” (Editions E.G., 1978)

Through years of rigorous research, I’ve found that Harold Budd’s music ranks among the best for facilitating the transition from wakefulness to sleep. If you think that’s a derogatory statement, you don’t understand the importance of sound slumber to mental and physical health. And if you believe that music that helps you to get some shut-eye is, ipso facto, boring, you need to open your mind.

[Stepping off my soapbox] As a keyboardist and composer, Budd had one of the nicest soft touches in music. Odd, because Budd’s origins lie in bebop and he played drums in an Army band with free-jazz titan Albert Ayler. Gradually, though, Budd gravitated to the minimalist, pacific approach that drew him into Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars’ orbit of ambient geniuses. The rest is tranquil sonic history.

Described as “an extended cycle of works begun in 1972,” The Pavilion Of Dreams was produced by Eno, and it shows. It kicks off with the 18-minute 1974 opus, “Bismillahi ‘Rrahman ‘Rrahim.” Composed for Marion Brown, it features the great jazzman on alto sax. Joining him are Budd on electric piano, of course, four marimba players, including Michael Nyman, Bryars on glockenspiel, Maggie Thomas on harp, and Richard Bernas on celeste. One of the pinnacles of Budd’s career, this unspeakably gorgeous work is marked by Brown’s über-chill alto sax trills and mellow melisma (talk about a gentle tour de force), Budd’s gleaming electric piano, and Bryars’ glistening glockenspiel. The peace this composition brings is nearly unsurpassed. It almost makes Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way sound like a free-jazz blowout.

Things can’t help sounding a little anticlimactic after this. “Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord”—a traditional hymn that Pharoah Sanders previously had adapted—features mezzo soprano Lynda Richardson’s spiritual, operatic singing and Thomas’ lean, pretty harp cascades. It’s nice enough, but it’s not really what I come to Budd for. Ditto for “Butterfly Sunday, which was adapted from John Coltrane’s “After The Rain,” one of his most languid ballads. “Rosetti Noise” and “The Crystal Garden And A Coda” are serene art songs with more of Richardson’s sonorous, wordless vocalizing, underscored by pastel dapples of electric piano. On “Juno,” Eno provides lovely, distant “aaahhh”s and Budd dramatic chord progressions on piano in this caressing, low-lit jazz jewel, which Bill Evans surely loved… assuming he heard it.

The Pavilion Of Dreams isn’t Budd’s best album; that would probably be Ambient 2 (The Plateaux Of Mirrors), The Pearl (with Eno and Daniel Lanois), or The Oak Of The Golden Dreams. But in “Bismillahi ‘Rrahman ‘Rrahim,” it boasts one of the world’s most beautiful and calming tracks, an immortal, blood-pressure-lowering miracle. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Laraaji “Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance” (Editions EG, 1980)

Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance came to fruition after Brian Eno discovered Laraaji (aka Edward Larry Gordon) playing an electronically modified zither in New York’s Washington Square Park for pocket money. (This was around the time Eno was curating the essential No New York comp.) At that point, Laraaji already had released two LPs on micro indie labels, but Day Of Radiance substantially elevated his profile, thanks in part to it appearing on Eno‘s legendary Ambient series and being produced by the great anti-musician/theorist himself. Issuing this all-time classic has been one of Bri’s wisest decisions in a career full of them.

You can hear hints of Day Of Radiance on the 24-minute “All Pervading” from Laraaji’s excellent 1978 debut album, Celestial Vibration. For Ambient 3, Laraaji—now 82 and still going strong—recorded five tracks totaling nearly 50 minutes: three titled “The Dance” and two “Meditation.” “The Dance #1” possesses some of the most chakra-tingling and, yes, radiant timbres ever generated. Its undulating stream of electric 36-stringed, open-tuned zither and hammered dulcimer tintinnabulate like the universe’s most sanguine ringtone. “The Dance #2” offers a slight variation on “The Dance #1.” The hammering of the dulcimer sounds a bit more emphatic, almost like tambourine slaps. The track’s akin to New Age gamelan, a perpetual glee machine of unwavering beauty. Relatively concise at 3:20, “The Dance #3” is more monochromatic than the previous two pieces and chugs like a train running through a gamut of gongs. It must be acknowledged that Eno’s production here is brilliant, in all senses of the word.

Unsurprisingly, the “Meditation” tracks are more tranquil, and so beatific, they can almost nullify the ill effects of reading the news in 2026. The nearly 19-minute “Meditation #1” and the much shorter “Meditation #2” bestow a delicate, fluttery beauty; they feel like being caressed by angel wings or like bathing in a lavender-scented mist and then being swaddled in a terry-cloth onesie while a benevolent deity ushers you to Heaven’s VIP section. What I’m trying to say is, these tracks might be epitome of sonic peace, for which Laraaji and Eno should’ve won a Nobel Prize.

Count your blessings—Day Of Radiance is some inexpensive, efficacious health care in the guise of music. No home should be without it. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

A.R. Kane “69” (Rough Trade, 1988)

To appreciate 69, the debut album by the UK’s A.R. Kane, you have to shed your rock expectations and simply drift in the alien aura that Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala summoned from Buddha knows where. While early singles like “When You’re Sad” and “Lollita” relied on noisy surfeit (critics of the time somewhat accurately described them as “the black Jesus And Mary Chain”), most of 69 is downright spare, yet strangely moving. But does it rock? Not really.

That A.R. Kane subsequently were classified as “shoegaze” is not totally on point, either, although they did have elements of that genre. Actually, the duo were more diverse than their shoegaze contemporaries, delving into dub, Miles Davis’ late-’60s/early-/’70s jazz fusion, acid house, and sampladelic dance music (cf. M|A|R|R|S’ Pump Up The Volume).

As for 69, there’s a watery disorientation to much of it, an exploratory restlessness that recalls Tim Buckley’s Starsailor and Can’s Future Days. (Simon Dupree And The Big Sound/Gentle Giant member Ray Shulman produced and contributed bass; his role in this sonic triumph should not be underestimated.) Singer Ayuli’s voice here is a small, unmoored presence buffeted by breezes and gales of sound. It’s a voice deflated of all tension—a pure embodiment of bliss.

69‘s opening cut, “Crazy Blue,” catches you off-balance right away. A feather-light, quasi-jazz romp embroidered with shimmery halos of guitar, it totally goes against the grain of A.R. Kane’s previous recordings. “Suicide Kiss” starts almost funkily before it quickly dissolves in billows of guitar haze, while still maintaining a semblance of song structure. “Baby Milk Snatcher”—which originally appeared on 1988’s brilliant Up Home! EP—sounds like a meticulously carved masterpiece in the context of 69‘s general amorphousness.

“Dizzy,” “Sulliday,” “Spermwhale Trip Over,” and “The Sun Falls Into The Sea” are unprecedented (from a late-’80s perspective) sketches of souls in various states of exaltation. One must conjure ludicrous metaphors to describe these songs, and honestly, it’s too hot right now for me to do that. Go through moldering issues of British mag Melody Maker for examples.

Ultimately, 69 doesn’t douse me in the icy ecstasy that Up Home! does. However, in its own enigmatic way, 69 is a weird trip worth taking. A.R. Kane’s intentions were baffling, and that’s always a positive, in my book. Every foray they made surprised in rewarding ways. Thirty-six years after its release, 69 is still flummoxing heads and revealing new, fascinating facets. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Lou Reed “Hudson River Wind Meditations” (Sounds True, 2007)

Lou Reed’s final album—originally released only on CD, but receiving a vinyl reissue by Light In The Attic on January 12—was as much an outlier in the revolutionary rocker’s catalog as Metal Machine Music. Hudson River Wind Meditations‘ title telegraphs its sonic tranquility; the four-track album’s essentially a 180º counterpoint to the beautifully abrasive 1975 noise opus mentioned above. It’s Reed in “IDGAF about anything but my own peace of mind mode,” and, after all of the groundbreaking work he did with the Velvet Underground and the occasional shafts of brilliance of his solo career, Lou certainly earned the right to go as insular as he did here.

Reed generated these ambient compositions to soundtrack his recited meditations that his acupuncturist had recorded for him. Gradually, they morphed into music to score his Tai Chi and yoga sessions. Wind Meditations‘ value lies primarily in its two longest pieces, totaling an hour of beatless peacemongering. “Move Your Heart” consists of nearly 29 minutes of wombient swells that wax and wane with solemn dignity. The track is, in fact, meditative as well as a soothing soundbath to ease you into slumber. There’s a desolation at the core of “Move Your Heart” that makes me think it could have come out on Pete Namlook’s ambient label, FAX, if Reed had released it in the mid ’90s. The piece changes very minutely throughout its epic duration, so those with short attention spans or who thought that “Sister Ray” was a grueling endurance test will bow out well before its end.

“Find Your Note” offers yet another marathon listen (31:35—make yourself comfortable). Its interiorized drones, refrigerator-on-the-fritz hum, and microbial feedback sculpting recall Coil’s Time Machines project, all of whose tracks were named after hallucinogenic drugs. It also reminds me of Folke Rabe’s What??, which I’ve used for many an acid-trip comedown. “Find Your Note” is a supreme zone-out performance, to be sure.

The final two much shorter works somewhat come off as afterthoughts. “Hudson River Wind (Blend The Ambience)” combines recordings of sea breezes with wisps of piercing synth or guitar tones while “Wind Coda” is a striated and muted chiaroscuro of high and low frequencies that’s as austere as an Éliane Radigue piece, with waves of aquatic ambience gradually overtaking the composition.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Hudson River Wind Meditations will only appeal to a small fraction of Reed’s rock-loving fan base. The main audience for this record? Those who appreciate Metal Machine Music‘s conceptual perversity, hardcore ambient heads, and Lou completists. It’s a fascinating curio in the career of an artist whose creative restlessness yielded many more interesting experiments than uninspired flubs. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Doug McKechnie “San Francisco Moog 1968-72: Vol. 2” (VG+ Records, 2023)

Better late than never, the 2020 archival release San Francisco Moog 1968-72: Vol. 1 introduced a lot of people to Bay Area synthesist/composer Doug McKechnie. Now 80, McKechnie somehow had gone barely noticed as a Moog pioneer, despite opening for the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969 and appearing in the Maysles brothers’ documentary of said tragic event, Gimme Shelter. Although McKechnie performed often during the years outlined by the title of this second collection of his largely improvised electronic works, he only released a couple of cassettes back then. The Moog craze of those days somehow did not sweep up Mr. McKechnie.

Perhaps Doug’s music didn’t draw much attention in those days because it lacked a gimmicky concept, which was typical of vintage Moog-centric records. Plus, he didn’t have the academic imprimatur that some of his peers enjoyed. Rather, McKechnie was a lone-wolf hippie, relying on his instincts to create extraordinary sounds on the Moog Modular Series III synth, to which he fortuitously gained access because his audiophile/electronics wiz roommate, Bruce Hatch, owned one. McKechnie became so adept with the new instrument, he gave lectures about it and demonstrations of it in colleges and other schools.

San Francisco Moog 1968-72: Vol. 2 further delves into McKechnie’s vaults from that heady era. The first volume’s rippling drones, grand melodies, ominous throbs, and eerie drifts predated and resembled some of the things happening with the work of German artists such as Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Ashra. The second one skews a bit weirder and more introspective. “Search For An Honest Man” recalls Moog superstar Mort Garson’s peak-era winsome melodiousness and bleak chirpiness. “Live At The Family Dog” offers a premonition of minimal techno, with its pinprick percussion and spaciousness, before it shifts into a wickedly warped k-hole of Doppler-effected “wow”s and “whoa”s.

If you’re a fan of Keith Emerson’s flamboyant flourishes in ELP, you’ll dig the bold, spasmodic piece “Moving.” “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” is a wildly oscillating excursion, like Tonto’s Expanding Head Band experiencing an anxiety attack while “Rumble Ramp Explosion,” as the title helpfully discloses, is an extreme display of tone dispersion and simulated rocket ascension and explosion. True mindfuckery. The best track here is also the longest: over its 11-plus minutes, the meticulously designed “Glide” features a main Moog motif that icily radiates over insistent pulsations, and thus enters the massive pantheon of intense sci-fi-film suspense-builders.

The VG+ label has compiled both San Francisco Moog LPs onto one CD, if you prefer that format. One way or another, you should get this music into your ears for easy transport out of this mundane reality. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections

Cluster “Cluster II” (Brain, 1972)

Cluster 71—German geniuses Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ first album without Conrad Schnitzler, with whom they formed Kluster in 1969—stands as an important landmark in the formation of industrial ambient music, forging forbidding expanses of desolation and agitation. Similar to Tangerine Dream’s Electronic Meditation, 71 did not rock at all, although it often got categorized as “krautrock.” Rather, it sprawled and glowered in dank space like a malignant satellite. This was head music par excellence, but only for the headstrong who can deal with no beats or hooks whatsoever.

Moebius and Roedelius’ follow-up, Cluster II (produced by Conny Plank with his usual magically maniacal touch), found the ever-questing duo bringing in guitar to their synth-heavy miasmas, but still not rocking in any conventional way. In some regards, it’s a bit less alien and alienating than 71, but still kilometers beyond the concise, melodious synth songs on their next full-length, 1974’s Zuckerzeit.

“Plas” begins 71 with a series of grainy synth throbs and billows that accumulate mass and ominousness, before strange pulsations and shrill, panicky fanfares enter the frame, like a deflated trumpet blurt arcing across the night sky. It’s a precarious, hallucinogenic trip and a helluva bold way to open an album. On “Im Süden,” Moebius’ crispy-fried guitar riff pierces through Roedelius’ bassy synth borborygmus for nearly 13 minutes, and the effect is both hypnotic and fraught as hell. Everything intensifies and gets denser as the track progresses, until you feel as if you’re churning in the guts of a massive cement mixer, with Moebius’ chiming guitar motif tolling like a farewell message… imminent-catastrophe vibes for days. You can definitely hear this track’s influence on Austrian guitarist/laptop composer Fennesz’s early releases.

After this incredible 1-2 punch, the quality dips slightly, but the material is still deeply dissonant. “Für Die Katz” is subtly turbulent space musik for imperiled astronauts while “Live In Der Fabrik” is the sound of infinity in a circuit board or maybe the world’s most sinister video game going on the fritz… or simply mad scientists going rogue in the lab. “Georgel” consists of an enveloping drone that’s pregnant with menace and “Nabitte” ushers us to the exits with chaotic keyboard clusters, distressing groans, and slamming of unknown metal objects.

These Übermenschen didn’t let up for one second on II. Their motto seemed to be “if you’re not overcome by paranoia, we’re doing something wrong.” Truly, an unsettling bleakness pervades the entire album, one entirely at odds with the brilliant constellation cover art. You have to respect such relentless journeying to the heart of darkness.

Bureau B reissued Cluster II in 2022 and Superior Viaduct did so in 2023, so the album should be easy to find and to afford. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Brightblack Morning Light “Motion To Rejoin” (Matador, 2008)

Brightblack Morning Light essentially have one song—but lord have mercy, what a wondrous song it is. Their third album, Motion To Rejoin, finds singers/multi-instrumentalists Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes continuing to hone their slow-music formula to a sublime burnish.

Generally speaking, the nine songs here creep in on worn-out moccasins, emit a holy glow, and slouch into a groove akin to Dr. John’s “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” on Quaaludes. Nay and Ray croon as if trying not to wake a baby in the next room—a vocal style that perfectly melts into the molasses-y ASMR-rock they summon.

As with Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock, faint glimmers of cool jazz seep into BML’s hazy, nocturnal soundworld; the bass part in “Oppressions Each” even recalls Cecil McBee’s resonant, majestic motif on Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda.” Yeah, that’s the kind of hallowed ground upon which BML tread.

Ultimately, Motion To Rejoin ranks as one of the greatest records to play first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It’s at once one of the most calming LPs in rock—and one of its most sensual. It didn’t get much better than this in 2008. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Brian Eno “The Shutov Assembly” (Opal, 1992)

Everybody and their sister rave about Brian Eno’s ’70s and ’80s ambient releases, and rightly so. They influenced many essential chillout specialists and became crucial soundtracks for meditation, deep-tissue massage sessions, and childbirth, among other things. But it would be a grievous mistake to overlook his ’90s output in that genre. :Neroli: from 1993 is another Eno ambient gem that often gets lost in the gush of praise that’s bestowed upon, say, Music For Airports, Ambient 4 (On Land), and the highly overrated Discreet Music. Unquestionably, The Shutov Assembly belongs in any serious discussion about mid-period Eno’s most interesting work.

By the ’90s, Eno was a rich man thanks to his production work for U2, Talking Heads, and James, so he basically could do anything he wanted in the studio and get it released. On The Shutov Assembly, Eno delves into atonality and eschews scales and pitch, which lend the 10 tracks a peculiar liminal quality. Everything sounds unresolved and mysterious. Recorded from 1985 to 1990, these pieces previously appeared in art gallery and museum installations.

“Triennale” opens the album with a paradise of twinkling synths undergirded by serene droning and that enlightening beam of clearlight keening last heard on Tonto’s Expanding Head Band‘s “Riversong.” If you’re not immediately lured into Eno’s enigmatic cathedral of sound, you have some explaining to do. “Alhondiga” presents a fragrant whorl of suspenseful and somewhat sinister drone poems while “Markgraph” offers effortless entry into a strange sonic (sur)reality, in the process creating a new genre: New Age horror.

The alienating and metallic oscillations of “Francisco” make it perhaps the album’s weirdest cut. “Innocenti” renders a gorgeous evocation of stasis; think of it as eternity’s on-hold music. The longest track by far at 16:08, “Ikebukuro” is a languorous depiction of desolation, all long bell tolls, lassoing rope whooshes, and velvety drones.

You may get the sense that this music is “going nowhere.” (I hate this line of thinking. Why do you presume that music must have a destination?) Maybe that’s true from a conventional standpoint, but the suspended-in-mid-air feeling Eno manifests here results in subtly gripping ambient excursions that seemingly emanate from machines, with minimal human input. The Shutov Assembly actually sounds like A.I.-generated music, three decades before the fact. But it’s good—very good.

All Saints finally reissued the album on vinyl in 2014 and again in 2020, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. I also recommend the CD, a format ideally suited for longform ambient releases. A digital version found on streaming services contains seven bonus tracks. -Buckley Mayfield

Located in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Jive Time is always looking to buy your unwanted records (provided they are in good condition) or offer credit for trade. We also buy record collections.

Seesselberg “Synthetik 1.” (self-released, 1973)

I’m fascinated by artists who release one amazing album and then go quiet, for whatever reason. Examples? Skip Spence, the United States Of America, Tomorrow, Friendsound, Ibliss, McDonald & Giles, Kendra Smith, Young Marble Giants. German brother duo Seesselberg belong in this pantheon, too.

In the early ’70s, Wolf (b. 1941) and Eckhart (b. 1952) Seesselberg self-released some of the most innovative electronic music this side of Conrad Schnitzler and Morton Subotnick, and then vanished in a puff of fried synth circuitry. If you own one of original 1,000 copies pressed, however, you could sell it and travel the world on the earnings.

Thankfully, golden-eared curators have kept the nine precious cuts on Synthetik 1. in circulation over the decades, preserving what sounds like the birth of certain strains of IDM and techno, over 10-20 years before those styles emerged. The Seesselberg bros were clever electronics boffins who built their own synths, which obviously added special sauce to their distinctive sound. These 46 minutes reveal two nerds reveling in the temperamental strangeness of their gear, testing its parameters, and thereby drawing a blueprint for future synth iconoclasts to emulate—assuming they had the keen instincts to find Synthetik 1. and the maverick talent to fuck with its DNA. It is indeed an exclusive cult who have done so.

Synthetik 1. starts spectacularly with “Overture (If Somebody Survives We Will Have A Return Match),” a compendium of burbling, zapping, and oscillating sounds that sets a disorienting tone and warns the listener that Seesselberg are serious about sending you to the craziest quadrants of the omniverse. The 62-second “Eintrachtkreis-Paranoia” is a staccato panic-inducer that resembles the Ronald Frangipane-composed “Fuck Machine” sequence in The Holy Mountain. The equally brief “Verhütungsfreudenwalzer (Kontinenzmusik Für Eine Akademie)” sounds like a computer stuttering a disturbing mantra. These two snippets come off like the brothers playfully fucking about with their equipment. The more focused “Speedy Achmed (Verhaltensanweisung)” offers low-key, sinister pulsations and eldritch screeches that foreshadow Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. The A-side closes with a nearly 11-minute track bearing an absurdly long German title. Its ominous whirs, distant abattoir emissions, and eerie avian whistles make it a close cousin of Tonto’s Expanding Head Band‘s “Jetsex.”

The flip side begins with Synthetik 1.‘s highlight, “Phönix,” a 10-minute piece Wolf composed for a 1972 film of the same name. It’s a dazzling menagerie of high-pitched synth discombobulations ruptured by pulsating spaceship-door percussion, emergency-warning bleeps, and weaponized drones. I imagine the track scoring the movie’s climactic scenes in which astronauts meet terminal doom. There’s no way anyone gets out of this piece alive. The last two tracks (both with long German titles you’ll instantly forget) reiterate Synthetik 1.‘s m.o.: creating bizarre electronic abstractions that “go nowhere” in the traditional sense that dull people expect them to venture to. Essentially, Seesselberg are all about generating an interesting array of tones for its own sake—escapism with a sense of danger about it.

Some will complain that Synthetik 1. lacks “humanity” or “warmth,” but sometimes it feels great simply to immerse oneself in the alien sonography of custom-built synthesizers and lose all sense of reality. Seesselberg made that scenario a breathtaking certainty nearly 50 years ago. Enter their secret society.

[Synthetik 1. has been reissued officially on CD by Plate Lunch (2001) and on LP by Wah Wah (2013). Both are pricey imports, but totally worth it.] -Buckley Mayfield

Lenny White “Venusian Summer” (Nemperor, 1975)

For a musician who played drums on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and lent rhythmic bombast and intricacy to fusion gallants Return To Forever, Lenny White is (un)fairly obscure. But his debut solo album, Venusian Summer, is a stunner, every bit as dazzling as its Larry Kresek-illustrated, sci-fi cover.

It helps that White gathered some of jazz’s most burning instrumentalists to help him realize his ambitious vision. The extroverted funk of “Chicken-Fried Steak” features Ray Gomez spraying bold guitar graffiti over White’s and bassist Doug Rauch’s greasy-as-a-KFC-grill groove. Organist Jimmy Smith’s adds another layer of spiciness. I’d never eat the titular dish, but I’ll gladly lap up this track dozens of times. Funk gets stronger and more tensile yet on “Away Go Troubles Down The Drain,” with more guitar and organ pyrotechnics, this time by Doug Rodrigues and Weldon Irvine, respectively. The song’s like that old carnival ride, Tilt-A-Whirl, but with better rhythm and dynamics. Fans of Herbie Hancock’s Man-Child will tear their bell bottoms doing the splits to this.

Dedicated to the crew of the Starship Enterprise, the 10-minute “The Venusian Summer Suite; Part I. Sirenes” is commandeered by synth master Dr. Patrick Gleeson, with help from Peter Robinson on synth, Tom Harrel on synth and flugelhorn. They all engage in awe-inspiring, stellar tone painting; this is deep, overcast ambient music in the Klaus Schulze and Peter Michael Hamel veins. On “Part II,” Harrel’s flugelhorn kicks in and things oscillate to a higher level, recalling Deodato in “Also Sprach Zarathustra” mode or Isaac Hayes stretching out with one of his orchestral-funk epics. Hubert Laws’ far-roaming flute solo and Robinson’s clavinet co-star in this space-pimpin’ track.

Side two’s dominated by a couple of lengthy showcases for that furious fusion virtuosity your punk-loving buddies warned you about. “Mating Drive” is the most RTF-like song here, a gleaming, cruising, rococo tour de force that would make prime-time Mahavishnu Orchestra bow in respect. The piece revels in excess like the most audacious prog-rockers and fusioneers, and earns their indulgence tenfold. That’s to be expected when you have studs such as Larry Young (organ), Rauch (bass), Gomez (lead guitar), Onaje Allan Gumbs (organ), and Rodrigues (rhythm guitar) at your command. LP-closer “Prince Of The Sea” begins mellowly then gradually accelerates into a fluid jazz-funk groove filigreed by Gumbs’ icily pointillistic acoustic organ. What follows is a battle royale between guitar gods Larry Coryell and Al DiMeola: the former’s insanely intricate and mercurial guitar solo versus the latter’s fleet-fingered, fuzz-toned curlicues of virtuosity. We get articulate wails galore from both of these prolix axe heroes in this duel for the (s)ages.

I bought my copy of Venusian Summer for $3 many years ago, but it still usually sells for under $10 in the US. So there’s really no excuse to not grip your own copy and cheaply ride the lightning out of this solar system. -Buckley Mayfield

Ned Lagin “Seastones” (Round, 1975)

Seastones might be the strangest document to emerge out of the vast Grateful Dead diaspora. From 1970-1976, Ned Lagin was the psych-rock figureheads’ modular-synth guru, a computer-savvy maverick who generated bizarre subliminal electronics onstage and in the studio. Outside of those actions, Lagin composed Seastones from 1971-1974 with help from a lot of the same crew who contributed to David Crosby’s 1971 cult classic, If I Could Only Remember My Name: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Grace Slick, David Freiberg, and Croz himself. But aside from Garcia and Slick’s distorted voices, it’s nearly impossible to detect these prominent musicians’ personalities amid the microcosmic mysteriousness of Seastones.

Lagin classified this record as “Electronic Cybernetic biomusic,” and superficially it resembles the ambient excursions that Brian Eno purveyed in the ’70s and ’80s, Morton Subotnick’s disorienting Buchla synth parabolas, and Gil Mellé’s unsettling Moog miasmas in The Andromeda Strain soundtrack. But parts of Seastones also point ahead to the mercurial glitchtronics of ’90s IDM. Whether artists such as Markus Popp or Alva Noto ever heard Lagin’s arcane opus remains unknown, but the similarities are remarkable.

Seastones is divided into 10 tracks, but the album seems like one organism—or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it flows like a lysergic dream, with subtly changing episodes. Lagin keeps the sonic activity submerged near the ocean’s floor, with most of the vocals appearing to ripple from underwater. While the credits list Garcia’s guitar, Lesh’s bass, Hart’s gong and Spencer Dryden’s cymbals, they’re hard to discern among the synths (ARP, E-mu, Buchla), prepared piano, clavichord, and Interdata 7/16 processor that Lagin deployed to manifest these microbial movements. But you don’t need to know how this sausage was made to enjoy its peculiar flavors.

If you’re the type of Dead fan who thinks American Beauty represents the pinnacle of their career, you’ll likely find Seastones impenetrable, and you can keep on “Truckin’” without it. But if you dig, say, “What’s Become Of The Baby” and adventurous electronic music that nudges your mind to strange, subaquatic realms, you’ll find Seastones an engrossing enigma. Just be prepared to give it many listens—preferably on quality headphones—in order to grasp its crab-like maneuvers.

Important Records reissued a remastered version of Seastones on LP and CD in 2020. -Buckley Mayfield