Mort Garson's road to the sublimity of Plantasia meant a decades-long journey through an underworld of sophisticated, international, string-laced arrangements - over a thousand writing, conducting, and arranging credits - to arrive at this set of queasy-listening revelations. A Canadian-born composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music who worked until his death in 2008, Garson's knack was to exist in both worlds: super-commercial and way out. Via his wizardry, the synthesizer transcended novelty to ubiquity and dominance. As Robert Moog himself noted: "The jingles were important because they domesticated the sound."

This collection of rare and unreleased recordings from Garson's home studio archives reveals the process behind his most celebrated work. Sourced from over one hundred reels of tape, the compilation plays like an ultimate Garson playlist: alternate takes of Plantasia tracks, music for never-aired radio advertisements, themes for science fiction films, erotic oddities, spacecraft-hovering études, and delirious minute-long commercial blasts. Were there really account managers in the early '70s who greenlit these compositions which seemed to anticipate everyone from John Carpenter to Suicide? Regardless, Mort's jingle work laid the groundwork for the future.

Questions abound throughout these nineteen pieces. How did Garson's arrangement work for Arthur Prysock's satiny body worship album transmogrify into the body-snatcher pulses of "This is My Beloved"? What is the IATA code for the airport of "Realizations of an Aeropolis"? The mad-science ingenuity that makes Plantasia so intriguing is here in spades, channeled in different directions on each track. The wild variety of styles - baroque whimsy in "Rhapsody in Green", throbbing space-disco in "Dragonfly", ravishing instrumental passages from Music for Sensuous Lovers, cartoonish absurdity in "Son of Blob Theme" - makes for an enlightening journey through Garson's creative practice.

This is Da Vinci's notebook of sorts. An exercise in understanding how a composer who straddled the worlds of commercial necessity and genuine experimentation approached his craft. The polish and pedigree that made Plantasia stand out may not be fully present here, but these sketches, demos, and lost works offer something more valuable: insight into the mind of an artist who helped shape the sound of electronic music while remaining, paradoxically, under the radar.

Garson's daughter Day Darmet and Sacred Bones Records continue going through all the material he left behind, bringing to light a body of work that deserves serious attention alongside peers like Suzanne Ciani, Bruce Haack, and Jean-Michel Jarre.

All analog source material restored, transferred and mastered by Josh Bonati
Liner notes by Andy Beta (Pitchfork)
Cover art by Robert Beatty

For admirers of early synthesizer pioneers, space-age experimentation, and the beautiful strangeness that emerges when commercial imperatives meet genuine artistic vision.