Music Review - Synergy - Cords

There's nothing like finding that you reviewed an album twice. This one is from 1998 for pay and the second is from 2013 for my own site so I guess I'm excused.

Originally released in 1979 on clear vinyl, Cords by Synergy gained a cult following among the rare few who knew of its existence. Created by electronica pioneer Larry Fast, keyboard player extraordinaire for Peter Gabriel, the Synergy project encompassed a series of all-synthesizer recordings in the late 70s and early 80s. The last recording was in 1987 and since that time, recordings from this series have become increasingly difficult to find. That is, until March of this year when Polygram reissued the entire set on compact disc, a medium, arguably, for which this all-digital music was destined.

"But hold on," you may be tempted to think to yourself. "Why would I want to listen to computer bleeps from the seventies?" Were these the standard fare of this album, you would be justified. However, twenty years after their creation, the Synergy recordings still sound suprisingly fresh and original. Far from being novelty music full of electronic bleeps and burps, Fast has composed classically based compositions embedded with elements from jazz and rock. The synthesizers do not attempt to mimic the sounds of a conventional orchestra but they do work together to create a unique yet full, orchestral sound.

Cords is composed of ten movements that are related by musical ideas, or cords, that run throughout the recording. Opening with "On Presuming To Be Modern I", Fast creates a thematic center for the rest of the work. Sounding like a 21st century string section, the movement is both expansive and heroic. The following piece "Phobos and Deimos Go To Mars" is a baroque-like, percussive, angular piece. "A Small Collection of Chords" is an intimate chamber piece. Simple and pretty, the bell and woodwind timbres create a delicate mood. "Full Moon Flyer" is an adventure in contrasts, one moment sounding like a gentle drifting through the night sky, the next an eerie, percussive dance. "Trellis" is an energetic, intricate weaving of melodies that play off each other in harpsichord-like tones. Of this album, my favorite piece is "Disruption in World Communications", a bit of program music that I have long wanted to arrange for marching band. Starting with a sweet, dainty melody on bells and flute, everything is fine and orderly until you hear a short, ugly glitch. The music ignores this intrusion, continuing merrily on its way, adding more instruments and parts to the communication system. The glitch multiplies, infecting the various parts of the "orchestra" until the whole of the "world communications" is seething in a chaotic mass of dissonance, pounding away with the theme of the original glitch. The work ends with a final "On Presuming to be Modern" which combines musical quotes from the other pieces into the original theme, bringing the piece to a satisfying close.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, September 1998.

Music Review - Synergy - Reconstructed Artifacts

I'll forever be indebted to Synergy for the enjoyed they, well, Larry Fast, gave me in my adolescent years. I wish he'd write and record some new music but in the same vein, I wish I would write and record some new music as well.

My first experience with Synergy was compliments of a Sunday midnight headphone show on WXKE (LONG LIVE THE INDEPENDENT RADIO STATIONS!). It was the mid 80s and keyboards were all the rage but presented before my ears were sounds that definitely were not organic in origin. Instead of the squeaky, poppy sounds of popular music these sounds were lush, textured, and arranged into exciting combinations and cinematic forms derived from classical music.

The mind behind these exciting sounds belongs to Larry Fast, a man who has lent his sound to well-known recording artists such as Peter Gabriel, Hall & Oates, Freedy Johnston, Better Midler, and Blue Oyster Cult. When Fast started recording synthesized music in 1974 about all that existed in the genre was Walter/Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach. Roland, E-mu, Kurzweil… all were mere babies or perhaps not ever yet a twinkle in some engineer's eye. Thus Fast constructed much of his own analog synthesizers and music processing equipment (plus writing his own software for the Apple IIe), ultimately creating a unique and personalized sound. From 1975 to 1986 he sporadically unleashed magical albums upon a largely ignoring world and then, like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, one day the music stopped. Until now…

Reconstructed Artifacts is Fast's first album in over fifteen years. Instead of new material he has chosen to revisit classics from his earlier works, rerecording them with today's digital synthesizers and digital recording equipment. While in their day they were cutting edge, compared to the expanded audio width of this release, the earlier recordings sound as if they were recorded in a tin can. The familiar timbres of Fast's signature sound is full and fat, filling the aural spectrum and exposing nuances that long lay hidden under the hiss of analog recording technology.

Selections include "Relay Breakdown" and "Warriors" from the ground-breaking 1975 Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, "S-Scape" from Sequencer (1976), "Orbit 5", "Ancestors", and "Flight of the Looking Glass" from 1981's Audion and an abridged collection of tracks from the 1986 release, Metropolitan Suite, one of my favorite instrumental albums of all time. Compared to the primitive digital synths of 1986 (a whopping 8 bits!) the sound of this new recording is simply mind numbing although without the complete suite the emotional impact is not completely realized.

If you like instrumental electronic music, this is a great album to experience Larry Fast's Synergy. Unlike most synthesizer-only music which is often dreary new age drivel, the pieces on the album range from contemplative to driving with complex rhythms and never leave you in a catatonic state of boredom. This high-recommended album is available from www.synergy-emusic.com.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, June 2002.

Review - Synergy - Metropolitan Suite

I don't know why Larry Fast stopped making his Synergy albums. I mean, they were completely unlike anything else being made. They weren't bland New Age snoozefests like a lot of the electronic music of the time (and unfortunately Amazon still lists Synergy albums under the New Age category) but rather they were serious classical compositions with touches of pop and rock. But regardless of why he stopped, his final album, Metropolitan Suite was his crowning achievement.

The first half of this album is a stunning, sweeping, orchestral tone poem depicting New York in the early 20th century. The five movements are his Ninth Symphony, his magnum opus. The first movement is filled with wonder, like turning a bend in the road and finding a city suddenly spread out in a valley before you. The second is filled with uneven progressive, choppy rhythms with comparisons to "Breakdown in Modern Communications" in spades. The other three movements are equally varied but the common melodic themes woven throughout form a very gratifying listening experience especially for fans of Copland and Gershwin.

The second "side" of the album are his usual unconnected compositions. "Into the Abyss" is packed with energy but retains the majestic feel of the first side. "Prairie Light" could be a Peter Gabriel track and "Redstone" is pure energetic synth rock with tidbits of surf guitar and The Car.

The liner notes are also fun to read, at least for old gear heads like myself. "Sound Generation" lists Moog modular synthesizer, Memorymoog, Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, Oberheim Expander Module (old version), Yamaha DX7, Yamaha TX-216, Emu Systems Emulator II. "Sound processing" has such early digital units as Deltalab DL-2 Acousticomputer, Lexicon PCM-60 digital reverb, Roland Dimension D, Yamaha SPX-90 digital multi-effect Processor, AMS RMX 16 digital reverb, EMT 140 plate echo, Eventide digital delays and more.

Music Review - Synergy - Cords (1977)

I first heard the music of Synergy, a.k.a. Larry Fast a.k.a. Peter Gabriel's keyboard guru, on a late-late night Headphones show (can't remember the name... Psychedelic something?) on 103.9(Rock 104, for those in the know), a local album-oriented rock station. The piece played was "Disruption in World Communications" and it blew me away! The next day I was on the phone to the local Wooden Nickel to see if they had a copy. They did... on clear vinyl.

Getting the platter home and onto my turntable I was delighted to hear more of the same. Since this was around 1987 I was surprised to hear such well developed synthesizer sounds coming from a 1977 album. Wasn't that supposed to be the era of blips and beeps? Well, it mostly was but Larry Fast is a genius who built his own hardware, laboriously combining tracks to create these symphonic masterpieces. Often with early synth music the sounds pull you out of the experience. Not so here. The entire package is so extremely well executed that you can focus on the music, not the way it is delivered. This was also at a time when I was just getting into classical music so I was amazed to find music that used "modern" synthesizers in an instrumental format.

So about this "Disruptions" piece that so grabbed me. It still grabs me. It starts off with a light rhythm played on chilled bell tones while a flute-like sound overlays a calm melody. A malevalent sound intrudes briefly and the calm melody continues. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Another beautiful melody is introduced alongside harpsichord tones but is soon interrupted but dissonant tones. Not to be outdone the original melody returns, attempting to recover control, bolstering itself with brass bass tones but soon the chaos returns, attempting to merge itself with the original melody. The struggle continues but ultimately the chaos wins out as the song grows more and more dissonant.

What could be a mere novelty composition is, in the hands of Larry Fast, an amazing and engaging work. At one point I attempted to turn this into a marching band piece for a composition class. Can you imagine the nice, straight lines of marchers slowly dissolving into chaos on the field? But I wasn't able to transcribe the song well enough and it now sits somewhere in a box in my attic.

You can get your hands on this album for as cheap as a penny (plus shipping). Oh joy!