MORT GARSON Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Canadian composer, arranger, songwriter, and electronic music pioneer Mort Garson just keeps on giving, even now, 15 years after his death. Archival releases since have come not-so-thick-and-fast, but occasional and well thought through, with Journey to the Moon & Beyond the latest example of this. Not, as the cover and title might suggest, the score to some forgotten 1970s animated classic, but instead a collection of stuff very few will have heard before, let alone had opportunity to buy, it's really something special. On the track list, then, you'll find the soundtrack to 1974 Blaxploitation movie Black Eye, or at least part of it. Similarly splendid, but in a very different way, are the grand tones of 'Zoos of the World', originally made to accompany a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. Then there's the music he wrote for the 1969 moon landings, as used by CBS News at the time. History bottled, or rather pressed, get it while it's fresh (and in stock).

Review: To understand Didn't You Hear the soundtrack it's important to get a bit of the back story behind this obscure and genuine rarity. Didn't You Hear the movie was a little-known and unarguably strange 1983 cinema release that barely made it to many screens, but was notable for two reasons - it's one of the earliest acting credits given to Gary Busey, and it features one of the first all-electronic scores, by non-other than Canadian composer and synth pioneer, Mort Garson.

The work still sounds impressive. For the most part it clearly feels like a film score, but some tracks more than stand up on their own grounds. The subdued chaos of 'Bamboo City' could be used by techno and electro DJs today, 'Virgil's Theme' is a reflective slice of melodic ambience, while 'Death Talk & Jeep Approach' is a sparse, minimalistic electronic-classical masterpiece.

Review: Canadian composer Mort Garson enjoyed an eclectic career, though in electronic music circles he's most celebrated for a string of experimental electronic albums he produced using early Moog synthesizers. "Mother Earth's Plantasia" is a bizarre but brilliant beast: a 1976 set that was designed to be played to plants to help them grow (really) and was given away free at a Los Angeles garden store. As this first ever reissue proves it remains a dizzyingly far-sighted set. Sometimes symphonic, occasionally spacey and always intoxicating, much of the material is far quirkier than contemporaneous synthesizer-fired sets. Highlights include the pulsing ambient spaciousness of "Ode To An African Violet", the twinkling, cascading beauty of "Rhapsody In Green" and the jaunty cheeriness of "You Don't Have To Walk a Begonia".