Wendy Carlos On Track

Wendy Carlos On Track Synopsis

Wendy Carlos is one of the most influential electronic musicians of the 20th century, whose ground breaking LP, Switched-On Bach, was pivotal in elevating the Moog synthesizer to iconic status. At the same time, her highly evocative score for Stanley Kubrick's film, A Clockwork Orange, redefined the sound of electronic music for a generation of popular musicians in the US and Europe. Known in particular for her adventurous sonic re-imaginings of the music of classical composers from Bach to Beethoven, it is often forgotten that Carlos was also an accomplished composer in her own right, whose original work on albums such as Sonic Seasonings, Digital Moonscapes and Beauty In The Beast deserves equal recognition for its progressive compositional innovations and sound design techniques.

With the aim of addressing this imbalance, this book offers a detailed track-by-track survey of all Carlos's unique album releases from Switched-On Bach to Tales of Heaven And Hell, placing each recording in context in relation to musical influences, technology and thematic concepts, as well as providing many analytical pointers to assist the listener in navigating her classically influenced musical aesthetic. To provide a fully rounded picture the last section of the book considers a number of Carlos's miscellaneous one-off projects and evaluates the remastered editions of her earlier LPs released on the East Side Digital label during the early 2000s.