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icky sticky Buchla à la Mode. peace and love to my friends at Humboldt Relief :)
As one presses play, they peer over the precipice into a brilliant, variegated and churning ocean. On Buchla à la Mode intrepid explorer and composer, Derek Gedalecia (Headboggle), works out on the famed Buchla Box/100 prototype - Morton Subotnick created the epic Silver Apples of the Moon using the Buchla 100 series - at Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. Traversing a dense entanglement of tones, textures and hallucinogenic iterations, Headboggle brings order to chaos. Derek's dynamic, flowing soundscapes enlighten the head with a welter of discombobulated energy; razed structures; scrambled signals; rumbling oscillations; blips; buzzes; and vacillations. Buchla à la Mode is composed of outtakes and demos, with other keyboards and electronics recorded elsewhere. Right away I'm overtaken by the smooth, dank rhythms as the tape commences. I begin to imagine Jeffrey Osborne rising from the writhing, squirming mass. Lively, cascading notes drift into the ether. Shortly, persistent beeps and pulses transport one to their heyday. Flares and flashes of luminous light abound in this animated climate. Morphing signals and rumbling oscillations go into overdrive. Over all the Headboggle tapes to which I've listened, one thing is as clear as day to me: under the mesmerizing, lustrous amalgamation of electronic energy and ideas resides a peaceful, beautiful voice capable of making moving music. The flip gets spacey from the outset and hits a fine groove early. Tangential keys sporadically appear. Subsequently playful tones not dissimilar from that which an organ produces are juxtaposed to decomposing emanations. Before long, Derek has me up out of the chair dancing! Ascending and descending tones abut warped notes. I've always been a proponent of experiencing Headboggle's music by diving in head first. A good, proper active listening session with Headboggle usually leaves my mouth agape.
Highly recommended like the prized greens that adorn this page, Derek, along with Christopher Merritt, are two artists making some of the best synthesizer music around. Buchla à la Mode is truly sound in which to lose oneself. Released in an edition of 100 tapes, Buchla à la Mode features artwork on heavy blue stock with gold ink by Carrie Sullivan and cassette lettering by Madalyn Merkey. Copies may be purchased directly or through Tomentosa.
peace and love, friends :)