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Wendy Carlos: A Biography by Amanda Sewell

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In 1968, Wendy Carlos was thrust into the limelight with her synthesizer interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach. The LP Switched-On Bach caught the attention of both classical and non-classical music listeners alike.

As a child, Carlos began playing piano and eventually composing her own works. At the same time, she also developed a keen interest in electronics. By the time she was in high school in the early 1950s, she had built her own home computer.

Her interest in both music and electronics led to her studying composition at Columbia University with two pioneers in electronic music – Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening. It was during this time that she learned the trade of working in a recording studio and eventually met up with Robert Moog.

Her relationship with Moog was a fruitful one in which she provided much feedback to the electronics engineer regarding the design and construction of devices which would eventually be incorporated into Moog’s modular synthesizers.

Carlos’ meticulous sound construction process would eventually lead to her experimenting with producing a piece of music by Bach. The concept of an entire album of synthesized Bach works was presented to Columbia Records by her long-time collaborator Rachel Elkind and it was agreed to issue the set on their Masterworks classical label.

After its release in October of 1968, the set was so popular that it held the number one spot on Billboard’s Classical Music chart for three years. By the mid-70s, its sales surpassed a million copies in the US alone.

In 1969, she released a second LP entitled The Well-Tempered Synthesizer which included works by Bach and other classical composers.

1972 saw the release of an expansive double LP set entitled Sonic Seasonings. Here, she devoted each side to a different season and used a combination of real-world nature recordings combined with synthetic sounds to produce evocative soundscapes. This was well before Brian Eno introduced his concept of “ambient music” on such recordings as Discreet Music and Music for Airports.

It was around this time that Carlos was invited to record music for Stanley Kubrick’s upcoming film A Clockwork Orange. In the end, only a small portion of her recordings made its way into the film and original soundtrack album. But, she eventually released her own works on a separate LP.

In the 1980s Carlos began working with digital synthesizers and created her album Digital Moonscapes. The versatility of the digital domain also made her want to experiment with alternate keyboard tunings such as microtonal scales with as many as 35 notes per octave. This resulted in the LP Beauty in the Beast. As the ’80s drew to a close, she collaborated with “Weird Al” Yankovic on a unique take on the work Peter and the Wolf.

The 1990s saw Carlos enter a partnership with the label East Side Digital where she would eventually re-issue remastered versions of her older albums (and previously unissued material) as well as her final album to date entitled Tales from Heaven and Hell.

Of course, one cannot cover the life and work of Wendy Carlos without acknowledging the path of her personal life. The most obvious aspect of which was her gender transition which took place over several years. Author Amanda Sewell does not side-step this part of Carlos’s life and treats the subject with care and respect. This includes the effect which is had on both her personal and professional life.

The biography of Wendy Carlos is an engrossing read about a musical pioneer whose work helped to bring attention to the world of electronic music and provide a vision of music’s future.

Silent Records Lives Again

Silent Records was the brainchild of label founder Kim Cascone. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Silent issued many recordings of interesting music spanning several genres including ambient, industrial and beat-oriented sounds.

In 1996, Kim invited me to issue something on his label after becoming familiar with my work on the FAX label from Germany. So, twenty years ago(!) my album Distant Rituals was released on Silent Records.

It was around this time that Kim left the label and sold it to an employee. Unfortunately, this change of hands did not work out well and the label folded in 1997. So, for nearly 20 years many great recordings have remained out of print.

Fast forward to 2016 and Kim has decided to re-boot Silent Records. In recent months, he has managed to track down most of the core artists who are still living and active. That includes me.

In the coming months, many of the long out of print recordings will start to make a reappearance via various media platforms. In addition to this, he has also managed to create a brand new compilation release entitled From Here to Tranquility 6. This latest installment in the series includes recent recordings by many of those core artists from years gone by. My work entitled Onlooker will be featured on the set. It will be available for download or as a limited edition CD release.
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There will also be a second volume of this set which features artists which have some relationship with the label (but, not as a core artist). This release will be made available as a download-only item.

In addition to re-issuing Distant Rituals, Kim has inquired about the re-release of some of my other long out of print material. Stay tuned as there will be more information coming in the future.

At the present time, Silent Records now has its own devoted streaming channel via SomaFM. Please visit the site to hear some wonderful ambient sounds from the past. This is just the beginning to the channel. Musical content will soon be expanding.

It’s all very exciting news and I wish Kim Cascone the best for his venture in the future!

The Silent Channel on SomaFM

Brian Eno – An Interesting Interview

Anybody who has known me for the past 40 odd years will probably recall that one of my favourite artists back in the ’70s was Roxy Music. They formed an interesting hybrid of both musical and visual styles which I found immensely unique and intriguing.

In 1973, band member Brian Eno left the group and started his own musical career. His path was even more interesting to me as it spanned rock music and electronic sounds. I was also very lucky to be able to sit in on a live radio interview that he did on CJOM-FM in Windsor, Ontario back in July 1974. It was there that I discovered a common interest in German bands of the day such as Can, Neu!, Cluster and Kraftwerk.

Eno’s experiments with sound – ambient, long-duration works etc… – eventually became an integral touchstone for the music which I would begin to create a few years down the road.

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