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Mort Garson – Ataraxia, Black Mass Lucifer & More
kilby on October 31st, 2008 at 3:14 am
courtesy of Musica Acida, Mutant Sounds, Egg City Radio, Lazy World… & Rabid Hummingbird
Album: Mort Garson’s Ataraxia, Black Mass Lucifer, Electronic Hairpieces, The Wizard of Id, Zodiac Cosmic Sounds, Music for Sensuous Lovers & Plantasia
Genre: Electronic, Psych
For fans of: Tomita, Residents, Giorgio Morder, Boards of Canada, OMFO, NES Scores
Audio Samples: See Bottom of Post
Ah, the awesome Moog sounds of Mort Garson. Even better, here is not only one Garson album here, but SEVEN albums available for download. This is some truly magnificent sh!t here, Any fan of early weird synth music should appreciate. Pardon the Wiki bio, but I was busy trying to get as much Garson audio as possible for everyone to hear. Each album is pretty different than the rest, from poppy stuff to electronic noise, weird sex music, movie scores and more. I swear several composers of the early Nintendo Entertainment System had heard some of Garsons work. Just something about some of the melodies that remind me of countless nights many years ago roughing my way through the lava pits in Metroid to the irritating jumping & humping monkey looking monsters of Castlevania.
Wikipedia Bio & info: Mort Garson studied music at Juilliard and worked as a pianist and arranger before getting pulled into the Army near the end of World War Two. He could carry out any or all of the musical chores on any given session: composer, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, and even pianist if that was required. He conducted the “Love Strings” on Liberty Records, arranged for the Lettermen on Capitol Records, provided background to Laurence Harvey reading poetry on Atlantic Records, accompanied Doris Day on Columbia and experimented with the Moog synthesizer on A&M Records, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With lyricist Bob Hilliard, he wrote one of the great lounge hits of the 1960s, “Our Day Will Come“, a hit for Ruby & The Romantics and more recently covered by K. D. Lang and Take 6 for the soundtrack of the movie Shag.
Garson spent the mid-1960s on a rapid succession of accompaniment jobs: two Doris Day albums (Sentimental Journey and Songs for Latin Lovers), Mel Tormé‘s great Right Now! album of contemporary covers like “Secret Agent Man,” Glenn Yarborough‘s highly successful cover of Rod McKuen songs, The Lonely Things, and Glen Campbell‘s even more successful “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He also appears to have been a favorite of producers when the job involved soft pop vocal groups and string ensembles, since his handiwork appears on albums and singles by the Lettermen, the Sandpipers, the Sugar Shoppe, the Hollyrdige Strings, the Sunset Strings, and the Love Strings.
If this were only my basement...
Highly prized albums among collectors and exotica fans are Garson’s electronic albums from the mid to late 1960s. The Zodiac : Cosmic Sounds – Celestial Counterpoint with Words and Music, a suite of Garson originals released on Elektra Records includes tracks for each of the 12 signs of the zodiac, and features Paul Beaver on a variety of electronic instruments with voice-overs by Cyrus Faryar. Zodiac was the first album recorded on the West Coast to make use of Robert Moog‘s new Moog synthesizer. Another moog album, Electronic Hair Pieces, covered songs from the hippie-influenced musical, Hair. The mod album cover art for Electronic Hair Pieces featured a model with a wired-up skull; liner notes were provided by Tom Smothers of the Smothers Brothers. Another album, The Wozard of Iz, a psychedelic satire based on The Wizard of Oz featured Bernie Krause providing a rich array of environmental sound effects and Suzy Jane Hokum voicing Dorothy. (The widely repeated claim ‘Suzy Jane Hokum’ is a pseudonym for Nancy Sinatra is untrue.)
With the success of the original Zodiac LP, Garson went on to compose and arrange a 12 album series of zodiac albums for A&M Records, one album for each sign. Like Zodiac, each album contained original tunes with heavy use of electronics. He released an album in 1976 called Plantasia that you were supposed to play to make your indoor plants grow better. Garson also released a record of music-and-moans to capitalize on the best-seller at the time, The Sensuous Woman by “Z”. He wrote an electronic Black Mass album under the pseudonym Lucifer that again featured the Moog. Garson followed Black Mass with an album titled Ataraxia designed to accompany meditations to the mantra of the listener’s choice.
Garson died at the age of 83 of renal failure in San Francisco. He left behind some truly awesome strange moog sounds that should not be forgotten….
Audio Samples
from Ataraxia (The Unexplained)
Deja Vu (download)
Seance (download)
I Ching (download)
from Plantasia
Plantasia (Download)
Mellow Mood for Maidenhair (Download)
from Black Mass Lucifer
Solomon’s Ring (download)
The Ride of Aida / Voodoo (download)
from Electric Hairpieces
Easy to be Hard (Download)
Hair (Download)
from Zodiac Cosmic Sounds
Aries, The Fire Fighter
Taurus, The Voluptuary
from Music for Sensuous Lovers
Climax One (Excerpt)
from The Wozard of Id
Leave the Driving to Us (Download)
I’ve Been Over the Rainbow (Download)
Related Media
Space-Age Futurism Fashion Mort Garson 60′s
Incredibly Awesome Video
The Music Man: Mort Garson Featurette
Mort Garson: Philosopher’s Stone
Mort Garson – Music To Soothe The Savage Snake Plant
3 Comments
Beezard | November 2nd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
“Grade Eighth Poetry Contest Winner” I write in stanzas to make Incarnate!
psychobabblebullshit seem
more important or interesting
even though I am masturbation
Knifefightingjesus.com » Blog Archive » Belbury Poly – The Owl’s Map | September 14th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
[...] Album: The Owl’s Map Genre: Electronic, Experimental Similarities: OMFO, Giorgio Morder, Mort Garson, Delia Derbyshire, Edzilla, Ludovico Technique (Late 90’s LT, not the horrible goth LT), [...]
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Is There Water In Hell?
“Dead as dead can be,” my doctor tells me
But I just can’t believe him, ever the optimistic one
I’m sure of your ability to become my perfect enemy
Wake up and face me, don’t play dead cause maybe
Someday I will walk away and say, “You disappoint me,”
Maybe you’re better off this way
Leaning over you here, cold and catatonic
I catch a brief reflection of what you could and might have been
It’s your right and your ability
To become…my perfect enemy…
Wake up (we’ll catch you) and face me (come one now),
Don’t play dead (don’t play dead)
Cause maybe (because maybe)
Someday I’ll (someday I’ll) walk away and say, “You disappoint me,”
Maybe you’re better off this way
Maybe you’re better off this way
Maybe you’re better off this way
Maybe you’re better off this way
You’re better of this; you’re better off this;
Maybe you’re better off!
Wake up (can’t you) and face me (come on now),
Don’t play dead (don’t play dead)
Cause maybe (because maybe)
Someday I’ll (someday I’ll) walk away and say, “You fucking disappoint me!”
Maybe you’re better off this way
Go ahead and play dead
I know that you can hear this
Go ahead and play dead
Why can’t you turn and face me?
Why can’t you turn and face me?
Why can’t you turn and face me?
Why can’t you turn and face me?
You fucking disappoint me!
Passive aggressive bullshit