Walter Carlos

condition (records/cover): NM / VG (general wear)

Gatefold sleeve.

Four side-long pieces, around twenty minutes each, one per season, weaving Moog drones into field recordings of birdsong, thunder, surf, wolves and insects. Carlos and Elkind wanted to break with the Bach-arrangement franchise, and Sonic Seasonings was the result: extended-duration ambient texture made six years before Brian Eno's Music for Airports coined the term.

Spring opens with rain on metal. Summer is the strangest of the four, near-toneless cicada drift with slow synthesizer arrival. Fall sets sustained Moog chords against surf. Winter features Elkind's wordless choir. Cliff Morris mastered the Terre Haute pressing. Cover attributed to Kōrin Ogata's Islands of Matsushima screen. The 1972 LP stalled at Billboard #168; the 1998 ESD remaster (2CD with outtakes) is the most complete edition.