August 4, 2007
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Long Playing
Tony Banks, ‘A Curious Feeling’ leads to HomerTheBrave, ‘A Feeling Of Vague Unease.’ I’m pretty sure I didn’t sell this immedately after purchase only because Tony Banks was a member of Genesis at the time. I have other Genesis solo projects, as well, and ‘A Curious Feeling’ has forced me to decide in favor of creating an ebay pile to contain whatever I find lacking.
Wendy Carlos, ‘Beauty In The Beast.’ Recently re-mastered and re-released on CD by Carlos herself, this LP came out on the Audion label back in the day. I loved Audion, because it was mainly led up by a syntho-keyboard guy called Larry Fast, who recorded many many (many) albums as Synergy (some of which I’ll no doubt talk about here), and played with Peter Gabriel and others. Wendy Carlos, of course, recorded the ‘Switched On Bach’ albums, and did electronic scores of classical music for Stanley Kubrick soundtracks. A real pioneer. ‘Beauty In The Beast’ is experimentation in using synthesizers to create music in exotic tunings and scales. Carlos created special software to allow her to finally be able to fulfill J.S. Bach’s dream: A multi-tempered musical instrument. I could go into the whole thing about the 12 tones of the musical scale and how they came to be, but it’s already far too much for this single paragraph.
So I’ll start another one. Here’s Carlos’ web page for the album. She does a better job than I could. Suffice it to say that ‘Beauty In The Beast’ is an apt title, and well worth the adventurous listen.
