Music From Patch Cord Productions

With their reissues of Mort Garsons body of work, Sacred Bones made it much easier for listeners to hear why he was as much of a groundbreaking electronic artist as better-known innovators like Raymond Scott. While the remastered editions of Ataraxias The Unexplained and Lucifers Black Mass were necessary, die-hard fans might be most excited by Music from Patch Cord Productions. The first glimpse into the huge archive of rare and unreleased material Garson left behind when he died in 2008 -- sadly, a few years too early to see his status as a pioneer cemented in the 2010s -- this collection finds him following his muse wherever it takes him. In the best possible way, it feels like a grab bag of Garsons styles and moods. There are mellow reveries (This Is My Beloved), electro-classical confections (Baroque No. 2), and journeys into the dark and mystical (Is He Trying to Tell Us Something?). Music from Patch Cord Productions also offers plenty of reminders of how Garsons extensive experience as a composer and arranger for a wide range of artists let him take his own music in any direction he wanted. The alternate takes from some of his best-known works offer fresh vantage points: Rhapsody in Green from Mother Earths Plantasia is even more soothingly spacey, while the instrumental version of Theme from Music for Sensuous Lovers Part I boasts sinuous melodic motifs that echo Ravels Bolero. Garson even harks back to his early days with a Moog-tastic version of Our Day Will Come that hits home how much the swelling melody and lush keyboards of his smash-hit composition for Ruby & the Romantics foreshadowed his later work. As entertaining as these moments are, the collections rarities are even more special (considering that Garsons most beloved album was first sold only at a plant store, calling these tracks hard-to-find really means something). Driven by an insistent beat and clouds of synths, Realizations of an Aeropolis borders on industrial music before giving way to futuristic lounge. Credited to the brilliantly named the Time Zone, Space Walker is a groovy interstellar hybrid of psych and surf rock. The graceful, erotically charged space-age pop of Cathedral of Pleasure presages the work of Broadcast and Beach House, while Dragonflys sparkling disco is so fun and funky that its a shame Garson didnt do more in this vein. By turns delightful, spooky, quaint, and forward-thinking, Music from Patch Cord Productions is a treasure trove for fans of an artist whose music is still revealing different sides decades later. ~ Heather Phares