Tonight’s post features electronic music from the late-70s, all from albums that are out-of-print.

A lot of times, when I share music like this, I go whole hog and just put the album up in its entirety, but I wanted to consolidate and just focus on some specific highlights tonight. I feel that trying to get a bunch of random people to download an entire album of ambient/experimental electronic music might be a hard sell.

I do have some stuff by more mainstream releases in the pipe, but posts for the next month or so may be sparse. Looking for a new teaching gig (looooong story) has taken up a lot of free time as of late! But things are cool, and I got cool stuff planned, so hang tight and mellow out with these groovy tunes.

 

Hydravion
Etude En Do
Hydravion are an odd sort, halfway between electronic and rock music. While they rely heavily on keyboards and other electronic effects, they also employ more traditional instruments, often to great effect. This track straight up features a dope guitar solo, not to mention an absolutely bitchin’ bassline, the types of things you rarely find on electronic music of this era. Apparently, their guitar player, Patrick Verbeke, went on to be blues musician of some regard, and I can hear it here. Dude has style.

These guys didn’t put out much, just a pair of albums in the late-70s. Both are out-of-print, but neither command a high price in the secondary market. So if you dig this, they’re pretty easy to check out.

 

Adrian Wagner
Chasquis
Andrian Wagner’s great-great grandfather was Richard Wagner, which I imagine kind of sucked. Just think, no matter how great the musical contribution Adrian made to society, his parents could’ve been like, “granddad wrote ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ what’s you’re problem with this synthesizer crap?”

But Adrian Wagner, who sadly passed away last year, was not only a composer, but an inventor. He was the creator of the Wasp synthesizer, which was one of the very first digital synthesizers when it came out in the late 1970s. While the wasp didn’t sell all that great when it first came out, these days they’re prized collectibles amon synth-enthusiasts, thanks to their unique look and sound.

I don’t know if Adrian used the wasp or similar sytnhs on this track from his 1978s album The Last Inca, but it certainly sounds like it. It has a cleaner and brighter sound than a lot of other instrumental electronic music of that era. Instead of sounding like a Tangerine Dream knock-off, his music actually sounds like the tunes that Tangerine Dream would be making in the second-half of the 80s, except that his music is actually good.

Wagner seemed to have a thing for Incas, this was just one release themed around Incan culture, with Instincts being the other. Neither were ever released on CD individually, but they were bundled together on one disc in 1990 for a release called Incan Gold, if you decide to seek them out.

 

Earthstar
Latin Sirens Face The Wall
Earthstar was a Berlin School ambient/electronic artist much in the vein of Klaus Schulze, so much so that he produced this album from which this track comes from, their 1972 sophomore effort, French Skyline. However, unlike literally every other artist like this, Earthstar weren’t from Germany. They were actually from New York. I’m sure there are other artists of this style that were from America, but they certainly were few and far between – this type of music seems to be distinctly European.

Earthstar put out four albums from 1978 to 1982. Their debut record, Salterbarty Tales, is in high-regard among electronic fans, but since it was an independent release and has never been repressed, original copies go for a mint these days, so I haven’t heard much of it.

This track is, like I said, very reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, but I do feel like the group do bring their own style to it, it has a more ethereal quality than a lot of Schulze, thanks to the choral effects that give it a church-from-another-world vibe. If you ever find yourself out in the middle-of-nowhere around 3am, this would be suitable background music.

French Skyline was reissued on CD about ten years ago, and its still affordable online. LPs aren’t too expensive either. If you dig it, I also recommend checking out their follow-up, Atomkraft? Nein, Danke!, which features shorter songs, and is a bit more diverse in style.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2019 at 6:36 am and is filed under Adrian Wagner, Earthstar, Hydravion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.