All products

A masterpiece 4th album released in 2003. Limited clear vinyl edition.

Silence In The Secret Garden is an intensly personal and spiritual journey into the heart & soul of black music.

From the reckless dark minimalism of the title track Silence In The Secret Garden to the irresistible funk of Yesterday’s Party… this classicalbum has continued to surprise and inspire.

Smokey 2LP with limited edition Obi Strip to celebrate Peacefrog Records 35th anniversary.

First vinyl reissue since ’79 for the mystique-shrouded composer and his enigmatic songstress! Songstress Moon Ji-young remains one of the most enigmatic figures of Korea’s 70’s gayo scene. Her debut release from SRB Records would be her sole record. The record was produced in 1979 with SRB-affiliated composer/arranger Yon Seok-won at the helm. In addition to 5 songs for Moon, Yon also included tunes that had been released through his solo and group projects, the Outsiders among them. Standout tracks include the title track ‘Love Tactics‘, gained a new following upon its rediscovery among fans of 70’s K-Funk, the 2-part epic ‘Tree in Winter’, and the noir-inspired blues/jazz tune ‘Terminus’. The instrumental ‘When Love Comes and Goes’ is another interesting track that foreshadows Yon’s later excursions into jazz-based New Age/Ambient territory. Included as a bonus track is the killer funky banger ‘Unwavering Heart’ by the Outsiders.。

fully remastered from the original tapes** A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. Moon On The Water were a trio of percussionists based in Italy - David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, both American tympani players in the Scala Philarmonic Orchestra, with the legendary Italian jazz drummer Tiziano Tononi, who worked with everyone from Roberto Musci, to Muhal Richard Abrams, Pierre Favre (who later joined the group), Andrew Cyrille, Barre Phillips, and Steve Lacy. Drawing on a diversity of experience, joined collectively by a unified love of rhythm and sound, they assembled a percussion record of the highest order - an unclassifiable work which should be legendary, and leaves you confounded that it’s not.

Within the history of efforts dedicated to percussion, Moon On The Water’s debut stands apart. A singular work, made remarkable by the diversity and range of its sonorities and structures. The scope of its ambition is startling. Utilizing the full intellect, experience, and talent of its creators, it employs field recording against a stunning array of instrumentation - seemingly everything from which rhythm and resonant tone could be drawn. The result renders a remarkable effect. From the delicate pulse of nature, deep resonances and carefully placed tone, intricate structures and tempos as slow as they go, across its movements the album rewrites how composition for percussion should be understood, before giving way to consuming and ecstatic rhythms which reference the Brazilian tradition of Batucada, various trance and ritual traditions of Africa, and drum solos from Free Jazz and Rock. This is as good as percussion records get. A lost marvel - accessible while distinctly avant-garde. The throbbing pulse of creative joy, distilled onto two sides of wax.

Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary music solutions (Varèse, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural things that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and tubular woods.

The album also includes one of the sickest percussion jam we’ve heard from 1980’s Italy: the mystically-named In the Land of the Boo - Bam. Exploring a wide range of percussions, from mallet instruments to drums, the band tightly builds a hypnotic jam with a strong Mediterranean feeling, maybe partly provided by the «Tullio de Piscopo-esque» drumming pattern. As the song goes by, the vibe gets more and more shamanic, often changing directions before climaxing in an epic final. True uplifting trance music!

‘Reflections’ is the new EP from GRAMMY-nominated LA-trio Moonchild aka Amber Navran, Andris Mattson, & Max Bryk. Inspired by the band’s iconic Tiny Desk performance (now on 4.9 million views), the ‘Reflections’ project sees the band reimagine and revisit old songs, including some of the trio’s biggest hits. An essential collection for all Moonchild fans, ‘Reflections’ is available on black and limited edition mint vinyl and CD.

Talking about the new acoustic re-imaginings, Max Bryk from the West Coast trio adds: “Reflections, an EP covering our older songs, naturally shows some of our growth as musicians over the last 10 years. Amber’s vocals, in particular, are a fantastic example of that. A more subtle example of growth is our musical maturity and restraint. Leaving space for the music to breathe. I think that’s the main reason we created this new project, and we are excited to share Reflections with our fans.”

“Back To Me” sees the band go back to the beginning, highlighting a cult favourite from their debut ‘Be Free’ released in 2012. The new reimagining of “Back To Me” demonstrates how the band have refined their sound with every release over the past decade while still keeping their jazz-inflected soul and groove-heavy production, that introduced the band to the world, to their core.

Elsewhere on the EP is a spacious revisioning of “Money”, taken from Moonchild’s striking 2019 album ‘Little Ghost’. “Money (Acoustic)” acts as both the centrepiece and catalyst for the wider ‘Reflections’ project, as singer, producer, and woodwind player Amber Navran explains: “We loved the combination of the acoustic setup and the horn arrangements we had been playing at our live shows. We have so much fun rearranging the songs for the live show, so we were excited to capture it on this recording. The spacious, broken-down feel also leaves more room for the breathiness of my vocals to come through."

Moonchild have been teasing fans, drip-feeding versions from the project and from across their varied catalogue, including “The Truth (Acoustic)” taken from the band’s highly acclaimed 2014 sophomore album ‘Please Rewind’, as well as “Run Away (Acoustic)” and “The List (Acoustic)” from their renowned 2017 album ‘Voyager’, now considered a modern classic in the neo-soul genre scene. “The List (Acoustic)” was paired with a video directed and edited by the talented Phil Beaudreau (who’s also a phenomenal musician and producer in his own right). The music video acts as a visual postcard to a decade of Moonchild touring as a band, "In brainstorming, Amber came up with the idea of playing around with that old vintage U.S. National Park poster-style animation”, Andris adds. The band have just finished their second US ‘Starfruit’ tour in April, heading to new cities around the country due to the success of ‘Starfruit’.

All the acoustic releases showcase Moonchild’s appreciation for new instrumentation, the influence of their live shows, and their constantly developing creative perspectives. The series of acoustic songs follow Moonchild’s fifth studio album ‘Starfruit’ which was nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album at the 2023 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards. 

"Moondog's jovial H'art Songs was the first release not to incorporate his name in the title, but the record that forever proved his genius. A rare vocal album recorded by Moondog when he was in his sixties, these ten art songs blur the boundaries between classical and pop music. Moondog called this series of art songs 'H'art songs' -- Hardin's art songs. The musical content is on a higher level than most popular music, but has an appeal to a wide range of tastes, from the pop to the classical listener. This collection of piano pop songs written and recorded in 1977 made Moondogs' stunningly eclectic discography even more chaotic musically, it also featured some of his most mesmerizing wordplay. Telling tales that can be interpreted as metaphors for how to live -- sometimes political, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes nature loving - they are always intriguingly poetic, and helped push this album to the very top of all Moondog's releases."

The first album was released on Prestige in 1956. The music is avant-garde and more original than anyone else's in the 1950s, with field sounds from the street and birdsong, percussion and string instruments, and the voice of his wife Suzuko. I have no idea what kind of music was in the background, but it is a wonderful performance full of vitality and creativity born from the depths of humanity. The jacket is a reproduction of the original.

Originally released on Prestige in 1957, this is the third LP from NYC street performer and avant-garde/minimalist composer Moondog. Perhaps the least accessible of his early releases, this album is made up of percussive jams, usually on instruments of his own creation, street sounds, poetry, and Far East melodies, despite opening with a swinging number that is, oddly, the most bizarre thing on the album. Another classic from Moondog reissued with its original Andy Warhol artwork. Limited edition of 1,000 on purple and green starburst vinyl.

Formed in 1991 by David Callahan (vocals, guitars, samplers), also known for his work with The Wolfhounds, and New York musician Margaret Fiedler (vocals, guitars, samplers), Moonshake, named after Can's work, has released its debut album, Eva Luna, in a deluxe edition remastered from analog 1/2" tape. Moonshake, a band formed in 1991 and named after Can's work, reissues their debut album "Eva Luna" as a deluxe edition on blue vinyl, remastered from analog 1/2" tape!

Reverse side print. Re-issue of the Canadian band's only album released back in 1973 on the small Kot'Ai label. Moonstone came from Winnipeg, Manitoba and were a small cult band active in the early 1970s. They played mainly acoustic folk rock with psychedelic overtones and beautiful harmonies.

more eaze and claire rousay’s collaborations are effortlessly joyful, their music evoking the warmth and respect they have for each other. Their bond goes back to their youthful hometown of San Antonio, Texas where they played in country outfits and noise rock bands respectively, and each pushed their music to extend beyond the traditions and conventions of genre. more eaze (the moniker of violinist/multi-instrumentalist mari maurice) and rousay have spent the past decade pushing boundaries, standing together at the vanguard of genre-shattering music that thrills and surprises with its vulnerability and creativity. no floor weds their prowess as sound designers and masterful skills as composers with their skills as acoustic instrumentalists. Eschewing the auto-tune inflected pop-psychedelia and found sounds of their previous collaborations, no floor is collage music as pastoral melancholia, a lush tour into their own version of Americana.

The duo’s ever-widening sonic scope is centered in their mastery of collage. Known for their extensive use of found sound and hyper pop escapades, maurice and rousay employ a more traditional compositional approach. On no floor the pair created their own elaborate sound world rather than manipulating field recordings. “It was a conscious choice to spend a lot of time making fucked up sounds and then figuring out how they could be beautiful in another context,” notes maurice. “With this record I had no idea what claire would do on each track, and we were both trying to match each other’s ‘freak’ in terms of sound design.” Movements across each piece uncover the ecstatic in nuance. The album’s gentle arc explores feeling with minute gestures and textural swells, carried by maurice and rousay’s enmeshed sonics. rousay’s ostinato guitar patterns and acoustic strums swim through tides of maurice’s pedal steel. Glitching electronics burble in dynamic fits as dramatic strings add waves of tension and release. no floor’s pieces are atmospheric, living biomes that breathe and grow with each passage, rewarding close listens with the revelation of its emotional core.

The five tracks that make up no floor were named for seminal bars in the pair’s shared history, or as the duo humorously refer to them, “Pillars of our debauchery.” no floor is an introspective reflection on the emotional turmoil of youth as much as it is a celebration of a camaraderie forged in that turmoil. Freneticism dances atop the placid textures of pieces like “kinda tropical” and “limelight, illegally”, embodying the playfulness that comes with reveling in kinship at a shared safe space. The more reserved “hopfields” and “the applebees outside kalamazoo, michigan” reflect the less familiar locales of their namesakes, the former a sumptuous special occasion that glimmers with soft light and the latter a slow roil of the uncertainty and strangeness that comes with touring as experimental artists in one’s youth. “As we moved from being very close together to living further away and being involved in different scenes, we had more serious conversations,” notes rousay. “In the past it was more plug and play, where with this record we talked about every aspect before and while working on it.”

The pieces of no floor are born of the deep connection between more eaze and claire rousay, built from strands of familiarity and surprise, the two buttressing one another as they push themselves as instrumentalists, composers, and artists to unexplored boundaries. The wordless timbral compositions retain the duo’s lyrical approach to their craft. Infused with melody, the pieces are collages of sound and emotion. no floor exemplifies the duo’s shared skills in unearthing new and exciting sound arrangements, evoking the warmth and affection of their friendship and musical fearlessness.

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows. Strawberry Season (Leaving Records, November 9 2022) responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope). More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness. Strawberry Season begins with the softly sweeping gentle pets. Early intimations of Velvet Underground give way, indeed, to a string arrangement that John Cale might have saved for Paris 1919. The second track, Suped, features a kaleidoscopic swirl of grocery checkout scanners that eventually coalesce and release with the subtle strumming of a harp. On known, in the midst of a nearly elegiac outflow of feeling, a shower starts to run. Someone steps inside, pulling the curtain back, sending the plastic rings clattering. Moments later, the unmistakable sound of the showerer blowing their nose — an inclusion that is at once light-hearted and jarringly, movingly intimate. Strawberry Season’s second to last song, low resolution at santikos, serves as a sustained meditation on all that has come before it. Building slowly throughout its nine minutes, teetering, at times, on the edge of danceability, it dissipates suddenly, and Strawberry Season concludes with the rustling of clothes, snippets of distant conversation, creaking floorboards, an exhale and a sniff. There is a feeling of having arrived, of temporary reprieve in the face of uncertainty. A hint of a season yet to come, or one that is perhaps only now accessible in dreams.

Holy grail of US roots reggae released in 1979. Old-style tip-on sleeve replicating the original sleeve. More Relation started in 1977 in New York as a backup band for reggae artists such as Melodians, Larry Marshall, Carlton Coffee, and Ken Boothe, but soon they started crafting their own melodic & deep roots reggae. They released many now sought-after singles such as "The Light", "Solve Them" and one self-titled album.

Morgan Buckley and Ben Donohoe present SWORX, a dense and disorientating collision of paranoid electronics, fractured polyrhythms and dystopian ‘crowdrock’. Released via Wah Wah Wino, the record plays like a corrupted transmission from a near-future network overseen by the mysterious titular modem ‘Sworx’, endlessly sorting coded signals into hidden archives. Blending IDM textures, restless percussion and warped digital atmospheres, the duo construct a world where surveillance, malfunction and synthetic consciousness blur together. Equal parts hypnotic and unnerving, SWORX feels beamed in from a damaged post-fibre-optic reality where even your dreams are under observation.

A masterclass session of Japanese synth pop, new wave, and cosmic oddities from legendary Osaka-based DJ Mori Ra. Recorded live at ISC Records on Fairfax Ave. May 6th, 2023

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

Moritz von Oswald, who has laid the groundwork for a deep interaction between genuine Jamaican dub and Detroit-style classic techno through his collaborations with Mark Ernestus, dub techno legend =Basic Channel and Rhythm And Sound, is creating ambient techno. Moritz Von Oswald Trio, a legendary trio teamed up with Max Loderbauer of Sun Electric, the pioneer of , and Vladislav Delay, a master of avant-garde electronic music from Northern Europe and Finland. Stock up on the 4th album "Fetch" released in 2012 from London's prestigious !

The trio of Moritz von Oswald, Max Loderbauer (NSI / Sun Electric) and Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay / Luomo), with a third album, this time enriched and expanded by guitar contributions from Paul St Hilaire (also known as Tikiman), and double bass courtesy of Marc Muellbauer (via ECM).

Horizontal Structures is palpably a more open, more expressive album than the previous studio recording, Vertical Ascent. There is more contrast, more light and shade. St Hilaire and Muellbauer add fresh drama and swing to the intimate tonal and rhythmic interactions of the core grouping. The coherence of the five-piece is remarkable; the boundary between acoustic and electronic undone.

The group’s evolution is firmly signalled in the opener, Structure 1. There’s a lush, romantic quality to the playing and arrangement that we’ve not heard before: the guitar licks have a bluesy lilt, the bass imparts melody as well as physical presence, the synth sequences are more painterly, looser somehow, and Ripatti’s percussion roams feelingly. Structure 2 is like 70s spy-flick jazz or groove-heavy Krautrock stripped to its barest essence, Loderbauer and von Oswald’s electronics glistening in a sticky cobweb of reverb and delay. The languidly stepping Structure 3 faintly recalls von Oswald’s work with Mark Ernestus as Rhythm And Sound, with St Hilaire’s chords hanging thick above bone-dry drum machine drift. Lastly, Structure 4, the track structurally closest to techno, is pervaded by a sense of mischief, with Muellbauer’s strings — plucked, bowed, scraped — coming to the fore.

For all its complexity, this is also a very playful album, and the Trio’s increased confidence and empathy as improvisers allow them to indulge flights of percussive fancy, sudden about-turns, vectors into the unknown. Horizontal Structures sounds, above all else, free.

Moritz von Oswald, who has laid the groundwork for a deep interaction between genuine Jamaican dub and Detroit-style classic techno through his collaborations with Mark Ernestus, dub techno legend =Basic Channel and Rhythm And Sound, is creating ambient techno. Moritz Von Oswald Trio, a legendary trio teamed up with Max Loderbauer of Sun Electric, the pioneer of , and Vladislav Delay, a master of avant-garde electronic music from Northern Europe and Finland. The fifth album "Sounding Lines" released in 2015 from London's prestigious is in stock!

Moritz von Oswald, who has created a foundation for deep interaction between authentic Jamaican dub and Detroit-style classic techno through his collaborations with Mark Ernestus, dub techno legend =Basic Channel and Rhythm And Sound, is creating ambient techno. Moritz Von Oswald Trio, a legendary trio teamed up with Max Loderbauer of Sun Electric, the pioneer of , and Vladislav Delay, a master of avant-garde electronic music from Scandinavia and Finland. Stock up on the first album "Vertical Ascent" released in 2009 from London's prestigious !

Mort Garson is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. He is best known for his pioneering work in the field of electronic music - his albums from the 1960s and 1970s were among the first to use Moog synthesizers, and constitute a rich catalog in which the classic Plantasia stands proudly. In 1974, Mort Garson composed the music for the American neo-black action/blaxploitation film Black Eye, starring Fred Williamson. The Black Eye soundtrack shows yet another fascinating facet of Mort's remarkable composing talent. Strongly influenced by soul, funk and jazz, Garson cleverly fuses dynamic horn sections and funky bass lines with synthesizers, resulting in unconventional sonic textures that blend the classic sounds of the blaxploitation film soundtrack with electronic elements and experimental sounds.

Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives (Plantasia, Ataraxia, Lucifer) have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. For decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.
The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

-Andy Beta