Bleep

Esteemed early synthesiser musician Mort Garson (Mother Earth’s Plantasia) composed Didn’t You Hear? for Skip Sherwood’s 1970 film of the same name, in the process coming up with one of the first film scores to be made entirely with electronic instrumentation. At the time the album was only available to purchase in the lobbies of theatres showing the movie, but despite its rarity Didn’t You Hear? is a crucial piece of the Garson puzzle, the combination of melodious keyboard work and impressionistic synthesiser exploration setting the tone for the pioneering work Garson would create in the next few years of his career.

Working heavily with one of the Moog machines which, at the time, were changing the course of musical history, Garson’s pieces here are at once highly melodious and also eerie and mysterious. While numbers like ‘Walk To The Other Side Of The Island’ and ‘Jeep Ride’ have a bouncy jauntiness about them, cuts such as ‘Bamboo City’ prefigure the more outlandish, proto-industrial tonal experiments Garson would undertake on the Black Mass LP that he would issue under the name of Lucifer a year after Didn’t You Hear?.

Perhaps the most enticing tracks of all on Didn't You Hear? are the moments in which Garson collaborates with vocalist Tom Muncrief. On the title-track and ‘End Title’ number we find Garson’s ornate Moog work elevated to new heights by Muncrief’s wistful tenor. It makes for a hugely evocative combination which chimes with the aesthetic that a young David Lynch was beginning to land on around the same time.

Out of all of the Mort Garson records which Sacred Bones have reissued, 1970’s film score Didn't You Hear? may be the most exciting of the lot. This is an endlessly inventive LP of electronic music from the Garson archives.