Galen Herod is one of the central figures of the American cassette culture synthesist tradition, a Phoenix, Arizona-based electronic composer who spent the years between 1979 and 1982 building a substantial body of solo tape work with handmade equipment, distributing it through Eurock and direct personal networks. Alongside his collaborator Greg Horn in Tone Set, he represented a genuinely singular voice within the American underground: music rooted in abstract electronic experimentation rather than the pop or punk frameworks that dominated even the more adventurous strands of the US DIY scene. His solo work, in the words of VOD, shares qualities with Conrad Schnitzler in its austerity, but the Phoenix desert heat gives it a character entirely its own.

This second double LP (VOD139.GH3/4) draws on four of Herod's tapes from 1980 to 1982: Patterns for the Outside Surface of a Cube (1980), The Trouble with Bill (1982), Meditationes Algebraicae, and Life on this Earth. The material shows a composer moving from the more purely abstract early work toward something with greater rhythmic definition and occasional melodic suggestion, while never sacrificing the formal rigour that makes the whole body of work so compelling. Edition of 500 copies with hand-numbered certificate, also available as part of the 4LP box Modular Electronics: Galen Recordings 1979 - 1982.