William S. Fischer - Circles (Embryo, 1970)

I was watching a great old movie on TV the other night, "Born to Win," a 1971 film about NYC junkies starring George Segal, and I noticed that the rather cool jazzy/funky score was by William S. Fischer, which reminded of this, the only album Fischer ever released under his own name. In fact, though I didn't notice it when I was watching, I've read that parts of the album were used in "Born to Win." Fischer was the arranger and conductor for tons of progressive jazz and soul jazz artists in the '60s and '70s (Eddie Harris, Eugene McDaniels, Roy Ayers, etc.), and in fact continues to work in that capacity to this day. Circles was his chance to shine on his own, and was actually produced by Herbie Mann, another guy with whom Fischer had worked.

There's quite an interesting and disparate cast of characters here; Hugh McCracken and Eric Weissberg on guitars, Billy Cobham on drums, Ron Carter on bass, and others. The music is almost shockingly wide-ranging. One cut is heavy, psychedelic rock, a couple are funky soul numbers with vocals, there's some early jazz-rock fusion, and most strikingly, there are a couple of extended electronic pieces. These are pretty much solo synthesizer freakouts, played by Fischer himself on an early (presumably modular) Moog--it's in fact the only instrument he plays on the album, his primary role being that of composer and arranger. They're totally avant garde tracks, and make for a pretty wild ride. In fact if they had turned up on a contemporaneous "New Music" avant garde album on a label like Nonesuch--like the last record I wrote about here, by David Rudin--nobody would have batted an eyelash. Hard to believe he never made another record of his own after this, but I doubt this kind of stuff payed the bills.

Andrew Rudin - Tragoedia (Nonesuch, 1968)

Rudin is a composer who started out with electronic music but moved onto orchestral compositions. He was born in Texas, but settled in Philadelphia, where he taught at the University and founded their Electronic Music Center. Today, only hardcore electronic music aficionados might remember Tragoedia, but when it came out in '68 it apparently got a lot of attention (for an avant garde electronic recording, anyway). This might also have to do with the fact that there weren't that many people getting into the act yet. This was only the second electronic piece to be commisioned by Nonesuch for recording. It was done on early Moog modular equipment, and Robert Moog himself at one point singled it out as one of the better works recorded with his invention. A visit to Rudin's website shows that it got a lot of positive reviews at the time, including one in the NY Times. Nevertheless, I have a suspicion that you could freely swing a dead cat in any direction to your heart's content today without fear of hitting someone who knows about this record.

It's essentially an electronic serialist piece based around the theme of classic Greek tragedy, in which Rudin apparently had an abiding interest. There are four movements, two on each side, representing different human qualities that combine to result in tragedy (excess, pride, obsession, and then tragedy itself, each given their original Greek names). Though the overall effect is pretty abstract, as this sort of thing tends to be, there's definitely a method to Rubin's madness, as elements of one piece are reproduced and expounded upon in another, and there's definitely a structure to the whole thing, even if it's not easy to tell. He does a nice job wringing an interesting and very visceral variety of timbres from the Moog, and employs a sense of dynamics that seems very appropriate to the theme. Most importantly, he leaves plenty of space and often keeps things quiet, so that even in the most harsh, strident moments, the piece never becomes overwhelming.