Well, rubber soul, you have really come up with a curiosity here! If we were giving club members points for what they selected, you’d get 10/10 for finding this quirky obscurity.
Unfortunately, the music itself doesn’t score quite so highly. It’s a very individualistic excursion into the possibilities of electronic music – apparently from the early days when musicians like Wendy Carlos were discovering how best to use their new instruments. Bruce H’s album really jumps around between genres; I noticed classical, disco pop (probably pre-dating disco pop itself), Beatles-in-India psychedelia, proto-Krautrock, early Floyd, with a kids’ singalong song and a bit of Christmas carol thrown in right at the end for good measure. To put all that together in one album is an achievement: special bowdown to the track about 18 mins in, which has Penny-Lane type trumpets over an electro-Aboriginal rhythm section. Full credit to Bruce H for conceiving of, then executing such an eclectic sound.
Of course, a lesson we learn from science but sometimes forget when we talk of “experimental music” is that some experiments succeed and some don’t – and that’s how I felt about Electric Lucifer: extremely inventive from start to finish, but some parts sound a little laughable to me, while there are other short moments of wonderfully soaring or collapsing sound that made me think of Tangerine Dream.
As for the lyrics, they seemed to fall into 3 styles, with the best (imo) at the top:
i) So modified by electronics that I couldn’t really work them out
ii) Very of-its-era singing which was ok, but with rather too many profound declarations about Love, etc. for my liking.
iii) Spoken word
Will I play this album again? Definitely, just because it is so weird! 8.5/10
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
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