Mort Garson Mother Earth’s Plantasia | Pink & Green

Description

15th Label AnniversaryLimited Caladium pink and green vinyl.

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 Garsons 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 Campbells 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 didnt want to do pop music anymore. Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Societys West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, thoseidearscould be transformed.

My mom had a lot of plants, Darmet says. She didnt 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 goodidear. Novel as it might seem,Plantasiais simply full of good tunes.

HearingPlantasiain the 21stcentury, 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 betotallypleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time, Darmet says ofPlantasia’snew 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 hes not really noticed, just like a houseplant. – Sacred Bones Records