Rewatched Midnight Cowboy for the umpteenth time last night and noticed that in - favoritest scene of many favorite scenes - the psychedelic Plastic Inevitable-modeled party / happening - it isn't just "Old Man Willow" by Elephant's Memory that's playing but some pretty cool electronic music.
And pretty cool electronic music pops up in a few other places.
But it's not on the soundtrack, which is all John Barry - plus that Fred Neil written / Nilssen sung tune "Everybody's Talkin'".
Seems those bleeps and bloops were built by Sear Electronic Music Production.
Founded by this guy Walter Sear
And here's an in-depth piece at Tape Op (but you'd have to pay to read the whole thing)
This is a whole album created by SEMP
Very much in the generic mold of the Moog-sluiced novelty albums of that time - groovy, Muzak-y toons lightly laced with a electronic tint.
The obit says Sear did a lot of electronic bits for movies - but BFI lists only Puzzle of a Downfall Child (never heard of it before - starred Faye Dunaway, apparently tells the tale of a top model's mental and emotional breakdown "in intricate flashback style" - all sounds very late Sixties!).
Anyone know of any other films containing Seartronica?
Another question for the massive: is "Old Man Willow" literally the only good thing Elephant's Memory ever did, ever? I grabbed the album on which it appears in a used record store in NYC back in the early Nineties only to be most disappointed to find that nothing else on the LP resembled "Willow" in the slightest. It was much more raw 'n' groovy psychedelic-backlash era rock. And then Elephant's were John & Yoko's backing band on one or other of the albums.
"Willow" is very much proto-Broadcast / Trish K in vibe - a sister-source to United States of America and White Noise.
Perhaps I should have included E's Memory, just for that one song, in this piece on synthedelia.
This record, newly Creeled, also fits the bill - Steve Dunstan's Magnetic Fields.
The Creel blurb also alerted me to another synthedelia candidate I missed - The Spoils of War
Here's an interview with Spoils of War main man James Cuomo
4 comments:
Puzzle is an unusual film, similar to Play It as It Lays-decadent melancholy. Jerry S did some cool stuff-Panic, Scarecrow. J and Y's London music is more captivating but The Elephants provided a rowdy, versatile base for Sometime and Approximately's impulsive, lively NYC radicalism. Never heard any of the Memory's own efforts though.
Tsk! 'Super Heep' is a cracking tune.
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