Album: Morton Subotnick, Electronic Works Vol 3 (Mode)

Morton Subotnick was a 1960s pioneer of classical electronic composition, using his Buchla modular system to access unique tones and timbres, rather than approximate the sounds of acoustic instruments.

While anticipating most of the subsequent developments in electronic music, he managed to avoid rigid rhythms and technical infatuations: there's a lyricism to his sound-sculpture on these two 1970s pieces that is rare in pulse-driven electronica. On the tape piece "Until Spring: Revisited", the wind-chime tinklings of glass harp lurk amid a shifting sussurus of white-noise. It's drifting music of depth and spatial presence, as is "Butterflies", whose animated dolphin-talk buzzes and flurries of liquid bleeps describe patterns that enchant without slipping into the lockstep grooves of technopop.

DOWNLOAD THIS Until Spring: Revisited; Butterflies