Professor Emerson Meyers

Creel Pone treatment of this 1970 hidden jewel in the Westminster Gold catalogue - an imprint enjoying something of a cult following amongst record collectors due to their amazing & often ridiculous cover designs - not sure how marketing Wagner / Opera recordings via Psychedelic-era cheesecake sensibilities was deemed “Viable” by the ABC-Dunhill bigwigs, but then again there are scads of things about the late-60s / early-70s that I don’t, and most likely won’t ever, get. Featuring music composed by Professor Emerson Meyers, Haig Mardirosian, and Frank Heintz composed & executed at the “Electronic(s) Music Laboratory” at (wait for it...) the Catholic University of America. That there even was an “Electronic(s) Music Laboratory” at the Catholic University of America - instigated in 1961, no less - comes as something of a surprise - that it yielded this fine collection of lo-fi zonked / distorted Moogknuckelry - pretty much all of the Emerson Meyers material - homemade Musique Concrète - Frank Heintz’s synth-less “Fanfare & Raga for Bassoon & Tape” - working a combination of snaking lines, extended-breathing technique drones & instrument-body percussion noises - and even a set of Ruth White-esque possessed vocal-overdub clusters - Meyers & Katherine Hansel’s “Im Memoriam for Soprano & Tape” - is proof that Early Electronic music knew few barriers  - well, outside of the Academic / Economic ones, natch. A really great set of pieces; mis-firing Moog blasts & noise / tape-hiss abound - a must for any fan of Early Synthesizer Weirdness & I don’t see why this shouldn’t appeal to the same folks who convulse over all that Xian-Psych Private-Press gold.