Bill Rhodes

Bill Rhodes was a Florida-based synthesist and composer who spent the 1980s building an idiosyncratic body of work across a series of self-released cassettes and limited vinyl pressings, entirely outside the commercial music industry and largely unknown beyond the tape-trading network he plugged into through South Florida connections and fanzine advertisements. His music was described by Boomkat as spanning "lounge jazz flair to doomy John Carpenter feels," evoking a library's worth of themes and cues for American 1980s television and video nasties. He himself described the work as "synthphonic" — a word that captures the compositional ambition behind it: Rhodes built sustained, evolving electronic environments of genuine craft, with live performances accompanied by light shows of his own design.

This double LP (Applied Synthesis: Recordings 1982–88, VOD146.BR1/2) draws on 24 tracks from across his solo synthesist catalogue: the Mindbreak LP, the cassettes Outside Looking In, Expressions, Sculptures, Neoclassical Works Vols.1–2, and the 1986 tape, plus the Quantum 12". All appear on vinyl for the first time. Part of VOD's American cassette culture survey, issued as a stand-alone release in an edition of 444 copies, and distinct from the companion Everfriend double LP which covers Rhodes's progressive rock output.