Eric Siday – Musique Electronique


I wrote a little review on J. Matthews’ Electronic Music a while ago on this site. Here’s another very cool one that comes in the same pre-1968 library format, 78rpm microgroove. This one has the same title, be it in French, but it is 5 years earlier, from 1960. It’s by Eric Siday, an English composer who had a big career in the USA composing product jingles. He was the one who bought the second Moog synthesiser in 1964. Apparently he composed the occasional library tune too, or Impress simply bought the rights of these pieces.

Anyway, the six short tracks on this disc are pretty amazing. They hold some of the wildest electronic sounds – on par with Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan’s Song of the Second Moon from the same year (of which the original release in Holland was called – here we go again – Electronic Music). Like Dissevelt and Baltan, it’s not at all only about sounds, space and time. The compositions are, despite their short length, full of interesting melodies and have excellent build-ups. Magnetic Field and Communication are the most abstract, the latter being composed from morse code and space communication patterns. There’s the bitter sweet Sweet and Sad that’s all about melody. Mood Seven, a nocturnal suspense theme, is perhaps the most accomplished and has a sound with a wide range of colors that very much approached a chamber ensemble. Then there are two parts of the spectacular scifi miniature Conflict, very ominious and machine like.

Listen to Conflict No 2

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