VA / Soul Jazz Records Presents - Space, Energy & Light: Experimental Electronic And Acoustic Soundscapes 1961-88 [yellow coloured edtition]

Soul Jazz Records

£12.85

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: SJRCD392C
Barcode: 5026328803920
Release Date: 17 Feb 2023
Genre: Experimental/Electronic

 New edition of this Soul Jazz Records out-of-print classic album, available as a one-off pressing special yellow CD edition and yellow triple vinyl album (plus digital download code).
 Soul Jazz Records’ ‘Space, Energy & Light’ is a collection of music by early electronic and synthesizer pioneers (from the 1960s through the 1970s), mid-1970s proto-new age gurus and 1980s guerrilla DIY cassette-era electronic artists, spanning in total over a near 30-year time frame. These artists used electronic advancements in music technology as a means of exploring not only space and the idea of the future but also of looking inwards to the soul and of creating music in harmony with the natural world.
 From computer software and hardware experimentalists and sound pioneers such as Laurie Spiegel and Kevin Braheny, as well as Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company - the first synthesizer ensemble created in collaboration with Robert Moog - through to the earliest musique concrète experimentation of Tod Dockstader, the album shows how technological advancements and creative artistic expression went hand in hand.
 In the mid-1970s artists Steven Halpern and Iaxos were instrumental in creating proto-new age music, experimenting in both the healing properties of sound and its relationship with the natural world. These artists also pioneered a new self-contained and underground DIY approach to music, creating their own record labels, forming new distribution networks (with albums sold in meditation centres, health food stores and ashrams) far away from the commercialism of the mainstream music industry. In the early 1980s after the revolution of punk, these DIY attitudes and ideas appeared once more in the growth of the distinctly anti-commercial and underground cassette-only careers of artists such as Germany’s Stratis and Carl Matthews in Britain.
 Album artwork includes some of the earliest photography of the Plieades star cluster dating from the 1880s.
 “Listening to ‘Space, Energy & Light’ in one sitting is a bit like experiencing constellations exploding within constellations inside your brain.” - Record Collector
 Press - Reviews & features in Mojo, The Wire, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Pitchfork, Irish Times, The Observer, Clash, Vice, Metro, Record Collector, Uncut, Independent, Q.

Tracklisting
J.B. Banfi - Gang (For The Rock Industry)
Michael Garrison - To The Other Side Of The Sky
Iasos - Lueena Coast
Carl Matthews - As Above, So Below
Tim Blake - Midnight
Stratis - By Water
Laurie Spiegel - Improvisation On A ‘Concerto Generator’
Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company - Ceres Motion
Michael Stearns - In The Beginning
Beverly Glenn-Copeland - Ever New
Richard Pinhas - Variations VII Sur Le Thème Des Bene Gesserit
Tod Dockstader - Piece #1
Kevin Braheny - Ancient Stars
Steven Halpern - Starborn Suite (Part 1)