Morton Subotnick: Electronic Works – Volume 1 & 2 sets
(DVD-Video)
Picture: C+
Sound: B Extras: B- Music: B
Nonesuch was one of the most innovative and daring small
labels of all, with their compilations of world music and new kinds of music. Morton Subotnick was eventually signed to
their label as well and was early on along with Frank Zappa, coming up with
interesting ways to use multi-channel playback to forward music itself beyond
any gimmicks. Mode Records has issued
two double disc sets of his worked under the Electronic Works name and
it goes all the way back to Nonesuch 4.0 music from 1969.
Touch is ironically titled, the idea of humanity in a
totally electronic world. Work like
this eventually found itself seeping into some of the most important Science
Fiction film music around, like Beneath The Planet Of the Apes, THX-1138,
Zardoz, Demon Seed, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run and
many others before Star Wars-type space opera music made a comeback that
was good for a while before it became tired.
You’ll find many of those soundtracks reviewed on this site. This kind of sound eventually combined with
Punk to become New Wave as electronic instruments became cheaper. This standardized their range, however, so
this earlier work is still distinguished.
The Volume 1 DVD is DVD-Video on one side, DVD-Audio (minus MLP)
on the other. A CD-ROM bonus disc is
included of Gestures: It Begins With Color. Touch runs about a half-hour in two parts, while A Sky
Of Cloudless Sulphur is about 27 minutes.
Gestures runs 16 minutes with a vocal accompaniment.
Volume 2 has two discs, separating the
DVD-Video and semi-DVD-Audio (again with no MLP) as maybe the idea of a
precursor to DualDisc did not work out, as they may have wanted it to. This part digs back into his earlier work
after Touch, offering Sidewinder from 1971 (4.1 here) and Until
Spring (5.1 here) from 1975, both running about a half-hour each and in two
parts. Again, this is innovative work
for the time and we can add that some of the ideas here found their way into
Horror cinema as well. The visuals for
the early works in particular are not bad, but unnecessary. The music and these amazing mixes stand out
for themselves.
The video is all analog NTSC 1.33 x 1 and not so great,
but these discs exist primarily for their music, all offered in 2.0 and
multi-channel versions. Both volumes
have PCM 96kHz/24Bit 2.0 Stereo for its DVD-Audio side, while Dolby Digital 5.1
(and sometimes 4.1) are offered for the DVD-Video. Volume 1 offers DTS than Volume 2 sadly lacks. That’s a shame, since the second volume is
the equal of the first. Still, the
Dolby is stronger than usual because it is being pushed for the audio. Too bad MLP is not anywhere in either set.
Extras include interviews on both DVD-Video segments,
lasting 90 minutes each on both volumes, booklets and other text inside the DVD
cases and DVD-ROM extensions noted above.
All of Volume 2 and Touch from the preceding set are from
their original Quad sources and have held up stunningly well, though the new
volume extends the mixes a bit. A
Sky Of Cloudless Sulphur was from an 8-track source with well-respected DBX
noise reduction and the tape is a 1-inch reel, recorded at 15
inches-per-second. Touch was a
half-inch master with no noise reduction, also at 15 ips. Gestures is recent and digital. Volume 2 sounds like it is sourced
from materials similar to Sulphur, but the interesting details are
nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, if
you are looking for multi-channel music material with a difference and of some
merit, you will want to check out both installments of Electronic Works.
- Nicholas Sheffo
