I was trying to think of what I might have missed during my search and theorised that there must have been a Moog version of Jesus Christ Superstar. Coming at the start of the seventies and give the vogue for Moog versions of everything that moved in those days, surely such a huge hit would have been covered, right? Right! I quickly found Moog Superstar by Terry Wallace and his interstellar Moog Sounds, and his sounds were pretty stellar. Very good actually… This Wallace chap seemed to have some chops on the Moog, so, why hadn’t I heard of him before? Well, that’s because it’s a pseudonym for Eric Siday. You’re forgiven for not know who that is, as he largely worked anonymously on logos for TV stations and studios. There’s not enough space here to cover everything but, he started as a hot jazz violinist in London before heading to the states, becoming Moog’s second ever customer and making himself the go to synthesizer guy for advertising and corporate sound logo design.

Towards the end of his life (he died in 1976) Siday was exploring further into what was possible with electronic music. The Moog Superstar album seems at first sight to be typical hack work to make a fast buck, but as he had been very successful in his commercial music business this doesn’t make sense. I think he was just really into the idea. In the piece I chose you can hear some violin, showing that he was keeping his hand in on his first instrument to the end. Oh, and you may have heard of a short film about the Screen Gems sound logo called ‘The S from Hell’. That was by Siday, creeping kids out with his stark synthesizer tones.

I’ve been digging into the BBC Radiophonic Workshop output for a while now and as I have a peculiarly deep interest in the BBC Records label it was inevitable that I would find a rarely heard Delia Derbyshire radio project buried away on an LP called ‘50 Years of Religious Broadcasting’(1974). Amor Dei was the second of ‘Four Experiments for Radio’ carried out between 1964 and 1965 between Barry Bermange and Derbyshire.  In contrast to the children’s voices of From One Source All Things Depend, Amor Dei (love of god) took voices of people in an retirement home and skilfully edited interviews together with subtle musical backing designed to sound like “a gothic alterpiece”. Only Derbyshire could have done that. With tape recorders.

Long before I'd heard of Amor Dei I got hold of a CD reissue of ‘An Electric Storm’(1969) by White Noise and found an occultish electronic piece - ‘The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell’. White Noise was formed by BBC Radiophonic Workshop moonlighters Brian Hodgson, Delia Derbyshire and her then lover, David Vorhaus. They were just mucking around really, but there was a lot of interest in black magic at that time, even if only a very few were actually involved in it and even less to any degree seriously.

Back in the counter cultural epicentre of sixties San Francisco, Anton LeVay created his Church of Satan and along way wrote many books and released a few albums.  He had a background as an organ player and messed around with largely spoken word LPs back in the day, however the piece I’ve found for this selection was created much later, in 1988.

I’d heard of Mort Garson’s  Black Mass album when doing some research after finding his ‘Electronic Hair Pieces’(1969) album. Hair Pieces is a fairly typical Moog plays the hits affair, but the sleeve was another example of the head with wires on it (and I think I got that about the same time as Caldera, which was a nice co-incidence). Black Mass came out in 1971 and was re-pressed (and repressed probably) through the seventies. It was a cult, underground oddity that tapped into the same vein as horror films and heavy metal in the early seventies.

Coming from an entirely different place (Leeds!) is some paganistic music – Midwinter Rites - created for the early eighties television adaptation of The Moomins. Y’know, for kids. Thanks to Finders Keepers Records, a whole album of the music created by Graeme Miller & Steve Shill is at long last available. Their approach to electronic music was rudimentary and in true Leeds style, DIY in its approach. However, their work on the Moomins series necessitated proper studio time and, although the effect is charmingly basic sounding, they were experimenting with a fancy Harmonizer effect unit to get the guttural and animalistic sounds heard here.

This mix probably started with From One Source All Things Depend, the bonus track from the Japanese CD issue of Geogaddi by Boards of Canada (2002). A lot of that album is concerns itself with the occult and various religious and mystical symbolism. The track’s title is a quotation from a very obscure book and refers to the idea that everything is explained in terms of God. The children’s voices were taken from an album of about recording children’s speech and was previously sampled by none other than Grand Funk Railroad in their anti-Vietnam war song I can Feel Him In The Morning (1971). Back then I just thought it was weird that an electronic music track would deal with the subject of religion, so overtly.

Finally I have included an excerpt from Mike Oldfield’s Incantations album. Apart from the magical allusion of the title and the almost-creepy-but-not-quite, cult-like concert performances – which would have made it a contender for inclusion anyway - this piece was used as the title music for the BBC TV programme Sunday Worship: Jesus His Life and Teaching. This usage was lost to time, until a Channel 4 programme ‘It was alright in the 1980s’ aired and included a clip of the programme. Why? Well, in one edition they decided that the Sunday morning God slot on BBC1 was the ideal time to talk about self-abuse! It’s not actually an electronically created piece, but the way it’s played makes it seems so. And I like it, so it made the cut.

The Rites of Moog, a mix by https://soundcloud.com/shadow_factory

Accompanying Video: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x84jlqd

Tracklist
Artist/Track/Release,Year of release

Alan Hawkshaw – The Silent Witness, Opening Title (with excerpt from the programme narrated by Kenneth More) – The Silent Witness, 1978
Malcolm Cecil,  Robert Margouleff (TONTO) – Christ, When I Leave This Life - Caldera : A Moog Mass, 1970
Romuald Vandelle (Le group de recherches musicales de la R.T.F) – Crucifixion [excerpt]  - Musique Expérimentale, 1962
Gershon Kingsley – Maven on the Moog no. 5 – God is a Moog, 2005
Bruce Haack – Stand up Lazarus – Electric Lucifer II, circa 1979
Gershon Kingsley – The Jewish Experience pt. 2 – God is a Moog, 2005
Terry Wallace and his Interstellar Moog Sounds (Eric Siday) – Heaven in their Minds - Moog Superstar, 1974
Delia Derbyshire – Amor Dei – 50 Years of Religious Broadcasting, 1974
White Noise ‎– An Electric Storm The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell - An Electric Storm, 1969
Anton LeVay – Hymn Of The Satanic Empire, Or The Battle Hymn Of The Apocalypse – Satanic Mass, 2005
Lucifer(Mort Garson) - Exorcism – Black Mass, 1971
The Eccentronic Reaseach Council – If You Want To Worship - Go To Church - Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine... I'm Your Biggest Fan, 2015
Graeme Miller & Steve Shill - Midwinter Rites – The Moomins, 2017
Boards of Canada – From One Source All Things Depend – Geogaddi, 2002
Mike Oldfield – Incantations Part 2 (excerpt) – Incantations, 1978

 
Notes
“So straight it’s freaky. Or so freaky that it’s straight. And when was the last time you had a talk with The Man Upstairs?” (Billboard Magazine review of Caldera : A Moog Mass, November 14, 1970).

I’ve been thinking about this mix for some time. I’m not sure when it came together in my mind, but over the past couple of years I’ve been actively collecting pieces that fit into the theme of religious or occult inspired music created with electronics. Depending on where you view it from, that people would use synthesizers to produce music which is inspired by the supernatural either makes no sense at all or seems inevitable. No sense, because the electronic music has always been associated with the future, technology and science. But, inevitable because whether treated ironically, in all seriousness or done just for the hell of it, the supernatural is unreal and electronic music is, or at least was in the early years, equally uncanny.

Gershon Kingsley, Eric Siday, Mort Garson and the chaps behind TONTO were all early adopters of the Moog. They all took different roads, but all went through their own rites for one reason or another. The cult of Delia Derbyshire throws up black magic and old folks backed by the sound of a gothic alter piece. I love all this. It’s just so weird and wonderful and unexpected that I had to put it all together. I pulled in some newer gear by The Eccentronic Research Council and Boards of Canada who seem to be onto all of this. There’s also some serious Satanism from ‘Frisco, original musique concrete from France and in turns sublime and paganistic TV soundtrack work from Leeds and, err, Leeds! Finally things get a bit cult-like and sin-full. Read the comments for more details!

Modulations Podcast

Episode 03 - The Rites of Moog

MOD.03 - The Rites of Moog, a mix by Shadow Factory

Modulations is back — with a new musical direction.

In this next chapter, the podcast will focus mainly on live performances from electronic music artists who embrace a DIY approach to creativity — many of whom perform at EMOM and similar grassroots events.

Over the past few years, I’ve been attending various EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) events across the north of England. It’s at these gatherings that I’ve discovered some incredible talent — from both familiar and often unknown artists. This includes close friends, whom I’ve had the pleasure of watching take to the stage and perform for the very first time. The whole experience has been inspiring — and eye (or ear) opening, to say the least.

Click here for more information about EMOM and how to get involved: electronicmusicopenmic.com

In addition to live performances, I’ll occasionally upload DJ sets — from myself and a few handpicked others. No genre boundaries — just the good stuff.

If you create live electronic music — whether you play at EMOM events or elsewhere — I’d love to hear from you.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts

Comments

yanco bassdardo

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory

Shadow Factory