Matt Jones

Sonic Seasonings

I can’t stop buying original vinyl records at the moment. Yesterdays purchases:Enter The Dragon OST - The classic movie soundtrack composed by Lalo Schifrin.Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli: The Quintet of the Hot Club of France: 1930’s swing jazz guitar. I can definitely see myself collecting more music from this era, it’s so uplifting. Walter Carlos: Sonic Seasonings - Walter Carlos [who decided to change his sex and call himself Wendy in 1979] pioneered electronic music-making in the late sixties with her experiments with classical music using Moog synthesizers [the ones that were the size of a small house]. Much of it sounds very dated now though; listen to the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange and you’ll see what I mean. However, Carlos’ best work was when she composed her own music like the haunting soundtrack for The Shining and the album Sonic Seasonings eight years earlier. This double LP contains 4 tracks, each corresponding to the 4 seasons and is mainly field recordings with quiet electronic ‘atmospheres’ over the top. The last track, Winter - containing the voice of Rachel Elkind - is stunning.