Thursday, May 29, 2008

BRUCE HAACK - THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER (1970)








ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL MUSICIANS EVER

ARTIST`````BRUCE HAACK
ALBUM`````
THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER
GENRE`````EARLY ELECTRONIC, OBSCURO, EDUCATIONAL
YEAR```````1970


WHY:
Since I mentioned him earlier... Bruce Haack is one of my favourite musicians and the one I respect the most. He used his homemade electronic instruments in ways nobody did before him and just a few artists after him. I consider him to be the greatest musician in the field of electronic music ever. Simply, he was so "far out there" that the music industry almost completely ignored him (and still does), even now - when his popularity is growing (over the internet) and his fanbase was never this big.

Here I present you 2 of my favourite Bruce Haack albums - his most serious album "The Electric Lucifer" and the best compilation of his early works - "Hush Little Robot".



BIOGRAPHY:
Bruce Haack, born on May 4, 1931, was one of the most musically and lyrically inventive children's songwriters of the '60s and '70s. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- his intended audience, his music was unusually expressive, combining homemade analog synths; classical, country, pop, and rock elements; and surreal, idealistic lyrics. Haack's innovations and desire to teach still sound fresh, making his music a favorite with fans of analog synths and esoteric recordings. Followers like Luke Vibert and Add N to X championed his unique musical vision, which embraced concepts like "powerlove" and turned household appliances into synthesizers and modulators.

THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER REVIEW:
After hearing late-'60s rock & roll from his friend Chris Kachulis, Bruce Haack added acid rock to his already diverse sonic palette. The result was 1970s Electric Lucifer, a psychedelic, anti-war song cycle about the battle between heaven and hell. The underlying concept of this concept album is "Powerlove," a divine force that not only unites humanity but forgives Lucifer his transgressions as well. But though this album extols the healing powers of peace and love, Electric Lucifer uses often menacing music and lyrics to get its point across. "War" depicts the battle royale between good and evil with a martial beat and salvos from dueling synthesizers; a child's voice murmurs "I don't want to play anymore, " and a funereal synth melody replaces the electronic battle march. Haack's marriage of rock rhythms and his unique electronics creates a sound unlike either his previous work or the era's psychedelic rock, but songs like "Incantation" and "Word Game," with their percolating beats, buzzing synths and vocoders, are much trippier than most acid rock. The strangely forlorn "Song of the Death Machine" sounds a bit like a short-circuiting HAL singing "My Darling Clementine," while "Word Game" features cool, dark electro-rock and brain-teasing lyrics like "Ray of sun/Reason/Knowledge/No legends." Kachulis sings on both of these tracks, and his deadpan vocals complement the weirdness going on around him nicely.

His involvement with
Electric Lucifer also includes aiding the album's release on Columbia Records; though it was Haack's only major-label release, Electric Lucifer remains musically innovative and subversive.

You can check him out here:

http://www.brucehaack.com/pix.asp

DOWNLOAD THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this post.

Sagan said...

Thanks so much! Can't wait to check this out.
Such a great, diverse blog!

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