Category Archives: New Age

Happy birthday, Klaus Schulze

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

Before embarking on a synthly single minded solo career, Klaus Schulze was briefly a drummer for Tangerine Dream (see amazing video from 1969 below), and a founding member of Ash Ra Tempel, whose Krautrock classic, 1971 eponymous debut, features his drumming and synth talents, as well.




Crazy that footage of this bizarre pairing exists. Absolutely love it!




Song of The Day: Tangerine Dream – Love On A Real Train

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

Mr Robot kept up it’s streak of fine musical selections by paying homage to the famous Risky Business subway scene, with it’s own, sans sex, complete with Tangerine Dream.

Also, check out this Club Silencio remix, which adds just enough thump to get it across on a modern dancefloor.

There’s a documentary on synthesizer pioneer, Suzanne Ciani, coming soon. Until then check out these amazing vintage clips

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

In the editing stage currently, A Life In Waves, hopes to expose the groundbreaking work of Suzanne Ciani to a larger audience. If the name is unfamiliar, you have probably heard her work in various advertisements for some of the world’s largest companies, or possibly on the classic pinball machine, Xenon. Or maybe you caught her on Late Night With David Letterman, 3-2-1 Contact, or on the Peter Ustinov hosted Omni (which features her working on Xenon!), where she was a spokesperson for innovations in keyboard sound and design. “Missed those”, you say? Well, here they are for your viewing pleasure, decades later.

Here’s a video from this year of Ciani performing on a the Moog System 55 modular

There’s also footage of Ciani working on her album, Seven Waves, in 1982

http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/06/suzanne-ciani-interview

and the fully funded Kickstarter for the doc

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2100662212/suzanne-ciani-a-life-in-waves/description

Happy birthday, Vangelis

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

If my name were Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, I might go by a pseudonym as well. The synth sounds of Vangelis, first warped my mind when, as a pre-teen, I was taken to see Blade Runner, and summarily blown away by all it’s constituent parts, soundtrack certainly included. Years later, I would discover the further joys of Vangelis, including more synth scores, his work with Demis Roussos and Loukas Sideras in the Greek Prog Rock powerhouse of Aphrodite’s Child, and his deft hand at production.






Check out the recently discovered, twelve hours of tape, privately commissioned for Greek medical classes, known as The Tegos Tapes, much of which can be heard on this soundcloud page https://soundcloud.com/nev-dorrington
and the story of the discovery of said tapes http://vangeliscollector.com/movies_microneurosurgery.htm
and a couple of my favorite Vangelis productions



Vinyl Rip Download: Spell – Time Waves (1979)

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

1979 synthesizer madness from my home town of Jacksonville, Florida. Time were the duo of Jack Tamul and Joe Diehl and their sole LP was produced at the behest of The Alexander Breast Planetarium, a place where I spent many a night losing it to their phenomenal laser light shows. Well, that was a good few years after the release of the LP, but this music would be the ideal accompaniment to the psychedelic light show (I mostly remember Rock based shows, Laser Pink Floyd being the best and most popular). Featuring an array of synths and processors like the Arp 2600, Omni, Axxe and Pro DGX sequencers, a Moog, Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and sequencer, ya know, the kinda thing that tech heads, much more knowledgeable than myself, would freak on, Time Waves really captures the spirit of innovation of the seventies synth age. The fact that it was produced in collaboration with The Planetarium (in Jacksonville, of all places), also speaks of a bygone era.

And the sound? Classic late 70’s, private press, New Age / Kosmische and even a track, The Pawn (posted below), that would have been a perfect cut for an Italian Giallo soundtrack!

These days, Tamul continues his work with synths and computers, http://www.tamul.com/samples.html, and Joe Diehl is writing scores and working as an audio engineer on numerous film and tv projects http://www.joedeihl.com/

Dario Argento would love this

Full 320 rip here: http://www.datafilehost.com/d/6aecf2e5

David Muse, Tonal Alchemy, Vinyl Rip

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

Today’s rip is from David Muse, best known as a member of the 70’s Top 40, soft pop group, Firefall. On his 1981 solo LP, Tonal Alchemy, Muse leaves the pop trappings behind, producing a synth heavy album falling somewhere between New Age, Kosmische and Balearic genres. The influences of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis can definitely be heard, but as the cover artwork might suggest, there’s a trippy American beach vibe going on, and at times he does employ the sound of the surf to bring the atmospheric motif home.

If you’re at all familiar with Light In The Attic’s, I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990, (and if you’re not… http://lightintheattic.net/releases/943-i-am-the-center-private-issue-new-age-music-in-america-1950-1990) then you should check this recording out. Muse uses an array of synthesizers and electronics (Oberheim 4 voice synthesizer, Ob-1 synthesizer, Roland Jupiter 8 Synthesizer, Korg Vocoder), along with Soprano Sax, Flute, Fender Rhodes, and on the below posted, Narada Muni, Sitar and Tamboura played by Jonathan Medrick, to create his unique musical environment. Muse is definitely on some third eye vibrational stuff here: “The essence evolves only when certain harmonic structures conducive to crystallizing matter and spirit are arranged in patterns of progressions.”

Full rip @320 here: http://www.datafilehost.com/d/96a83617

Here he can be seen performing one of Firefall’s radio staples

R.I.P., Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream

Posted by Palmer Eldritch on

Everything about this video is perfection: mountains of synths, the glorious atmosphere of the Cathedral, trippy post-production visual effects, and a great set from the band.


What a concert this would have been, just Froese and his Oberheim, in a beautiful rustic setting performing to absolutely no one.



A quality re-edit of the Risky Business soundtrack’s, Love On A Real Train