Bruce Haack
Farad: The Electric Voice
Although the first vocoder was patented in 1939 by Bell Labs’ Homer Dudley, it wasn’t until 1970 that the device was introduced to a mass audience by Wendy Carols and Robert Moog on the soundtrack to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Bruce Haack’s vocoder was of his own touch-based design, and he named it ‘Farad’ after 19th-century physicist Michael Faraday. He’s long been a cult hero, but the past several years have seen an official resuscitation of Haack’s music in the form of reissues and compilations; Australia’s Omni Recording Corporation recently released Electric Lucifer (1970/2007) and the previously unissued Haackula (1978/2008) on CD, lovingly remastered and historically framed for posterity. Stones Throw, known for releases by the likes of Madlib, J. Dilla and Dam-Funk, has tossed its hat into the Haack arena with Farad: The Electric Voice, a collection of vocoder-based recordings made between 1970 and 1982. Haack’s music was practically made to be forgotten and rediscovered; catchy yet futuristic in the extreme, it appears now as the template for retro-fetishists like Stereolab and Black Moth Super Rainbow. Farad demonstrates how a device like the vocoder could be used to lend coherence to the most diverse musical material; this striking invention has had a long afterlife in genres that otherwise have little or nothing to do with each other. Like Ken Russell, the British director of Tommy, Haack turned to psychedelia less for its countercultural value than as a medium for his expressive, baroque vision of human life. Electric Lucifer, represented on Farad by three songs, is necessarily a masterpiece of it’s genre, it being the only one of it’s kind: an avant-garde children’s concept album based on the dichotomy of Heaven/Hell and the all-conquering force of Powerlove. Farad also collects three tracks from Electric Lucifer Book II, the unreleased 1979 followup. The selections from Together (1971) are in an entirely different vein, innocuous but enjoyable folk-pop bolstered by the synthetic likeness of acoustic guitar and banjo. Haackula saw the inventor in a darker vein, Bite (1981) was released with cleaned-up versions of it’s often vulgar and cynical lyrics; of these tracks, “Program Me” is by far the most spectacular, a hypnotic hymn to the machine age whose vocal duties are shared by 13-year-old Ed Harvey. The compilation finishes with “Party Machine” (1982), Haack’s proto-hip-hop collaboration with Russell Simmons and a perennial dance favorite. While none of this is new per se, Farad does unearth two singles I was previously unfamiliar with: “Rita” (1975), a fun tune utilizing the simple rhythms and chord progressions of garage rock, and “The King” (1982), a swaggering dirge whose heavy vocoder almost bypasses lyrics entirely to become a pure wash of sound smeared across Haack’s synthetic bass line and drum machine. Even if most of his lyrics remain unintelligible, the composer might remind us that it’s merely the devil who resides in the details. Seth Watter

Farad the Electric Voice - Stones Throw
FILTER Grade: 85%

An early pioneer of primal electronic music, Bruce Haack’s career weaved in and out of notice-ability throughout the ’50s and ’60s as he tried to find a place for his music that didn’t involve game shows and TV ads for cheese. Stones Throw has put together this insane, dark and deeply funky compilation of the material he made from the ’70s through the early ’80s. These are the years when Haack seemed to sadly accept his fringe status, hid behind an early vocoder (named Farad) and made the most alien sounds of his career. The resulting music runs from the lysergic pulse of “Electric To Me Turn,” the maxi-minimalist robo-funk of “Stand Up Lazarus” and his final shot at mainstream glory, “Party Machine.” Any fan of early synths, retro-futuristic robo-funk and outsider figures of the ’70s should get these songs implanted into their brain. Jon Pruett

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Farad: The Electric Voice
[Stones Throw; 2010]
7.1

MP3: Bruce Haack: “Electric to Me Turn”

Reissue releases usually oversell the now-clichéd story of a misunderstood musical genius. Farad, Stones Throw’s retrospective of electronic music eccentric Bruce Haack, does peddle that tale to a certain degree, much like the 2004 documentary Haack: The King of Techno. But the real pleasure of the disc, covering music released during the later part of his career from 1970-82, is that it doesn’t try too hard to define Haack’s compositions and philosophy or spend extensive time wondering, “What if?” It instead exposes the raw components of his odd career, an improbable, colorful circuit board resembling the wiring to some Rube Goldberg device.

A musical prodigy from a Canadian mining town, Haack was all-encompassing in his approach. He had composed far-out children’s music and pop songs, experimented with classical/synthesizer hybrids, and hand-crafted a studio’s worth of electronic instruments (including a proto-vocoder, Farad, named after inventor Michael Faraday) by the end of the 60s. Few can claim to have demoed electronic instruments for Fred Rogers and written a song covered by Beck (“Funky Little Song”, not included on this album). But his scattered biography goes a long way toward explaining the playful weirdness and the philosophical underpinnings that made Haack so refreshing. Even on his psychedelic excursions or the stone cold electro funk of “Stand Up Lazarus”, there’s a sense of wonder and play, and he doesn’t stay perpetually plugged-in, letting folk and country twang find its way into his music.

The tone of his tracks veered from suspended, bubbly escapes (“Rain of Earth”) and silly sing-alongs (“Maybe This Song”) to a Kraftwerk-worthy electro jam with a pre-Def Jam Russell Simmons (1982′s “Party Machine”) or the Byrds-like tinge of “National Anthem to the Moon”, one of a handful of tracks on the comp taken from his 1970 album The Electric Lucifer. Haack took to the vocoder like Jim Henson took to felt, imitating a guttural monster on “Noon Day Sun” and bending his voice into that of a cheesy lovelorn cyborg on “Rita”. On the jaunty, “Electric to Me Turn”, Haack gets philosophical over steam organ synths, declaring, “Electric to me turn this night/ Reflecting universal light/ All I knew that should be true/ Is reality in you.” Hindsight may render some of these tracks a bit silly or indulgent, but this patchwork of music showcases a true believer and a talent that deserves recognition among his early synthesizer peers. Patrick Sisson

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Bruce Haack
Farad: The Electric Voice [reissue]
(Stones Throw)

At this day and age in the advent of Auto-Tune and artists as diverse as Thom Yorke, Kanye West and Cher exploring the boundaries of voice modulation, the utilization of the vocoder is as ubiquitous in pop music as actual singing. And the man you can thank (or blame) for bringing robotic crooning to the airwaves is Bruce Haack.

Since 1962, this Canadian-born inventor and musician was pivotal in the implementation of touch pads, synthesizers and rhythmic pulses to recorded sound. He got his start by making educational children’s music, a craft for which he dropped out of Julliard but wound up as a guest on such shows as The Mike Douglas Show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and The Tonight Show. What helped Haack gain notoriety amongst the likes of Madlib, Peanut Butter Wolf and the late J. Dilla, however, was his grown-up material, bookended by his 1970 acid-rock epic Electric Lucifer and his 1981 electro-fied swan song Bite.

And it was through this more esoteric end of Haack’s work that “Farad” came to be, a self-made vocoder that predated Kraftwerk’s Autobahn by several years. Farad: The Electric Voice finally brings to light the genius of this unsung hero of electronic music. Working in conjunction with his estate, this 16-track compilation gathers together songs from his run through the seventies featuring Farad in the cut, including several previously out-of-print and unreleased tracks, including an eight-minute collaboration with a pre-Def Jam Russell Simmons from 1982 called “Party Machine.” Ultimately, this is the definitive overview of a most remarkable man (Haack passed away in 1988) and his extraordinary machines.

DOWNLOAD: “Incantation”, “National Anthem to the Moon”, “Man Kind”, “Snow Job”, “Party Machine” RON HART

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Pioneering synth-pop that still cuts the mustard

The diversity of Bruce Haack’s musical output is breathtaking: ranging from jingles for 60s commercials on American TV to Broadway show tunes. He was also a pioneer of electronic music, creating and crafting songs in a home studio with the same dedication and inventiveness that Kraftwerk deployed in Germany.
This collection brings together Haack’s output from the 70s and is a smouldering cigar of invention. The National Anthem Of The Moon – taken from the famed 1970 LP The Electric Lucifer – sounds like a song by Love at their peak and arranged by French pop duo Air. On the other hand, Maybe This Song is electronic Beach Boy perfection. Most of the vocals are either treated with an early vocoder or shyly-applied, which gives tales of visiting aliens, Lazarus and the worderful Rita a real warmth. Party Machine is taken from the 1978 classic Haakula, and its electronic beat, twanging bass and use of space sets a course for hip-hop and modern electronica. Indeed, Haack is some kind of musical godfather to British synth-pop acts such as Human League and Depeche Mode, as these songs all have human blood pumping through their electronic veins.

Stones Throw | STH 2221
Reviewed by Ian Shirley

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Bruce Haack – Farad (The Electric Voice)
Source: The List (Issue 667)
Date: 15 September 2010
Written by: Sean Welsh
(Stones Throw)

Listening to the bizarre, bewitching and above all unique work of ‘lost’ electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack, it’s tempting to trace his influence through Cabaret Voltaire, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and any number of psychedelic electronic futurists. However, it’s hard to say if they had even heard of him, such is the obscurity of his reputation. This compilation, now one of the few places to discover his home-made, otherworldly music, is an indispensable portal into a mind-bending world of proto techno and fried pop. It’s all evidence that the time is long overdue for Haack to take his place beside Joe Meek and Bob Moog as one of the key progenitors of electronic music.

original article

BRUCE HAACK
Haackula (1978)
“Outsider electronica”
milestone, reissued
American Bruce Haack was one of the pioneers of early synthesiser pop – his Electric Lucifer, released in 1970, was concurrent with White Noise’s An Electric Storm and bristled with sanguine possibilities for an Aquarian dwan of Moog-inspired future pop. Come ’78, however, and Haack languished in embittered commercial failure. Made the same year as Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine. Haackula is synth-driven yet abtithetical to the serene spirit of the German pioneers. Tracks like “Blow Job” and “Play Me Your Album” flip the bird to the record industry that had long ago spat him out. DAVID STUBBS
(also reviewed in this issue Haack King of Techno)

BRUCE HAACK
Haackula (The Omni Recording Corporation)
Wow. This is a real “believe it or not” release. We thought we knew all about eccentric electropop pioneer Bruce Haack (1931-1988). Omni’s reissue of Haack’s 1969 psychedelic synth classic The Electric Lucifer was an automatic Record Of The Week for us. But we’d never heard of Haackula before. However, it lives up to its billing as a “lost classic of outsider electronica” for sure. At first, we weren’t sure what to expect, putting it on with some excitement and trepidation… rest assured, we now have big smiles on our faces. Haackula is playful and perverse, and perhaps more than a little bit paranoid. Imagine Perrey and Kingsley on some bad acid. Haack’s electronically effected vocals here continue the wordplay that he delighted in on The Electric Lucifer but now, shockingly, some swear words have crept in, for instance he drops the f-bomb in the first song “Lie Back”, wherein he also rhymes “schizoid” with “shitzoid”!
Bruce Haack unleashed his Moogs (and warped imagination) in his bedroom studio to create Haackula back in 1978, but it remained officially unreleased until now. Possibly ’cause a large portion of Haack’s discography consists of records for children, we were really surprised by the R-rated content of Haackula. And the R isn’t just for robotic. There’s a song called “Blow Job” fer chrissakes. Perhaps this is why it never saw the light of day in Haack’s lifetime…
Haack’s homebuilt synths and rhythm machines bleep and bloop, shuffle and shudder, conjuring an alternate universe of electronic computer funk wackier and weirder and way more off-kilter than anything Kraftwerk was up to at the time. The musical sense of childlike innocence with which Haack was so adept is still happening here, these tracks are as tuneful and catchy as ever, but his mystical ideas are joined by sexual themes… where The Electric Lucifer was astrological, Haackula is scatological. Adult realities are confronting the outsider, making Haackula’s haunted house electronics all the more eerie, while the bizzaro-factor (plus Haack’s aforementioned songwriting skills) insure that it’s all very entertaining, gleefully so.
And if Haackula itself wasn’t cool enuff, there two equally mindblowing bonus tracks. First there’s Bruce Haack’s 1982 proto-hiphop collaboration with Def Jam’s Russell Simmons, an 8 minute track entitled “Party Machine” that features funky Herbie Hancock “rockit” style grooves and deep distorted vocals laying down such science as “Haack attack is back… Bruce Haack… Anti-wack.” Damn!
The other bonus track included is an epic 32:15 piece called “Icarus” that would have made a fine release all by itself. Commissioned in 1979 to accompany an avant-garde art exhibition in Guadalajara, it’s a sensational soundscape of everything from mad scientist laboratory burbling to faux-classical fantasias, frightening noise and groovy beats…
Omni has done their usual nice job with this. It’s remastered from the original master tapes, and includes a thick booklet. Extensive, informative liner notes tell the story of Haack’s “lost years”, about his psychological ups and downs, how his passion for music and technology (and the two together!) never flagged despite his lack of major label success after The Electric Lucifer failed to take the world by storm… we also learn how he hooked up with hiphop producer Simmons, though we’re left wondering if any DJs back in the day ever got their hands on it. As well, the cd booklet includes vintage photos and lyrics to all the Haackula songs.
Like we said, believe it or not, it’s true. Haackula lives!!

Various Artists

Dimension Mix: A Tribute to Bruce Haack

7.9

If we honored the Wright Brothers’ first flight with an elaborate Blue Angels air show, would it humble their accomplishments? Better yet, how would Muhammad Ali feel if his commemoration meant having to get in the ring with Lennox Lewis? The Dimension Mix obviously intends no such harm to Bruce Haack or anyone else (in fact, proceeds from the record go to Cure Autism Now), but there’s an element of ironic tragedy in hearing artists, all of whom in some way owe their success to Haack, covering the same songs that could never bring him the deserved recognition.

— Adam Moerder, October 23, 2005

original article

Haack: King of Techno
(Docu)
By DENNIS HARVEY

A Seventh Art Releasing presentation of a Thinkbubble Films production in association with Dimension 5. Produced by Melanie Moreau. Executive producer, Philip Anagnos. Directed by Philip Anagnos.
With: Miss Nelson, Praxiteles, Chris Kachulis, Money Mark, Mouse on Mars, Tipsy, DJ Me DJ You, Anubian Nights.
An eccentric composer best known for his idiosyncratic children’s songwriting, the late Bruce Haack has recently been rediscovered by sample-happy DJ’s. While its title emphasizes that ongoing legacy, Philip Anagnos’ “Haack: King of Techno” wisely focuses primarily on the subject’s own life and works. This fun dive into a bizarre creative sensibility will send viewers out combing racks for such obscure LPs as “Funky Doodle” and “The Way Out Record for Children.” Specialized play in urban-hipster centers is possible.
A scholarship student at Julliard, the Alberta-born Haack was first drawn to electronic music simply because he could control it more fully than he could unruly live musicians. Soon he was constructing instruments, and, partnered with kids’ dance/music educator Miss (Esther) Nelson, used them to create numerous memorably loopy ’60s-’70s participation records featuring songs like “Unicycle Show” and “Jellydancing.” He’s seen here demonstrating his musical gadgets on TV shows “Mr. Rogers” and “I’ve Got a Secret.” Later, depression, drugs and alcohol fueled an all-synth fantasia on Columbia Records, “Electric Lucifer,” before leading to his death at age 57. Entertaining docu is enlivened by apt animated graphics.

Camera (color, B&W), T. Antonio Somodevilla, Anagnos; editors, Anagnos, Kyle Yaskin; music, Bruce Haack. Reviewed at San Francisco Indie Festival, Feb. 15, 2004. Running time: 70 MIN.

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Listen Compute Rock Home:
The Best of Dimension 5
Restrospective collects some of the strangest children’s music ever recorded.
History lesson: In the early ’60′s, Bruce Haack was working as a peanut store and inventing weird, theremin-like gadgets that no toy company had the nuts to buy. By the late ’60s, Haack was scoring commercials for Kraft Cheese, dabbling in Satanism, and recording children’s music with homemade electronics and synths. DIY visionary? Maybe. Freak? Without wuestion.

Listen Compute Rock Home is proof, culling tracks from two decades of Haack’s little-known band, the Dimension 5. Most of these records were for kiddies: Haack played for grownups under his own name with albums like The Electric Lucifer. Dimension 5 records mixed up everything from Eastern hippie riffs to oddball electronic-hillbilly jams, introducing characters like Captain Entropy and delivering lines like “I bring you peace/and a little green worm.”

The earliest recording included 1964′s “Jelly Dancers” (faux-Arabian electronica with classic lines like, “Nice lady, nice gentleman buy my delicious shish-kebab/Drop a penny into my jug anf make a wish-kebab”), the latest, 1974′s “Army Ants in Your Pants.” which begins with a proclamation of “War is often fought by the human passengers of Spaceship Earth,” before directing the listener to “wiggle your hips.” Electronic banjos, drum machines, samples of kids fighting and spaced-out background vocals take it from there as we learn about vicious female ant societies whose male citizens do nothing but mate. Ah, utopia. Jogn Pecorelli

Bruce Haack: Hush Little Robot
By George Zahora

If you’re not familiar with Bruce Haack, here’s a potted history. A gifted musician and composer of everything from musicals to musique concrete, Haack was also a prodigious inventor, constantly creating electronic/instrument hybrids and developing new ways to manipulate sound. Despite having no electronics training, Haack designed and built many unique instruments and devices, most of which would make today’s batch of analog keyboard fans wet their pants out of sheer awe.

Haack’s work took him everywhere from television studios to children’s dance classes. It was in one such class that he met teacher Esther Nelson, with whom he’d go on to create many albums of popular children’s music.

Haack and Nelson’s records were largely unique for one simple reason: they addressed their youthful audience as human beings rather than baby-talking simpletons. The songs stressed imagination, role-playing and creativity, routinely paired with infectious, futuristic melodies. Last year, Emperor Norton released a Haack/Nelson retrospective, Listen Compute Rock Home, which is well worth tracking down.

Hush Little Robot is Haack alone, once again creating, as the album’s liner notes put it, “an electronic musical-poetic treat for children and high school people, revealing more wonders of our earth-ship.” The phrase “earth-ship” speaks volumes on what to expect here—the perspective is very bohemian. Front and center here is a polyphonic music computer, hand-built by Haack over 18 months. Capable of multiple voices and random on-the-fly composition, it would be nothing more than a massive paperweight today.

If this is your first Haack experience, you may find yourself slack-jawed during the burbling electronic interference of the Haack-ified “This Old Man” or amused by the analogue baroque leanings of “Four Dances”. Haack’s vocal approach varies between Dr. Science-style Atari-karaoke and an electronically-modified predecessor to Tom Waits. He’s really not like anyone else you’ve heard before. Though it wouldn’t seem that unusual to today’s experimental rock fans, this stuff must have been utterly mind-blowing in the sixties. If you listen carefully—the production’s a bit muddy—you’ll get to play (“Word Game”), learn (“Elizabeth Foster Goose”, “Program Me”) and explore touchy-feely body-language concepts (“Bods”).

Haack even closes the album with a “Thank You” to children and teachers who’ve supported his previous records. Ever heard an artist do that before? Somehow I don’t see Barney being as genteel.

Would Hush Little Robot work for today’s kids? Unless they’ve been raised in seclusion, probably not, though it’s their parents who are likely to be the naysayers. Haack’s approach here is a little too “weird” by the standards of the Teletubby Generation, and some of the concepts here—the sinister, titular lullabye that concludes “Four Dances,” or the ominous “Song of the Death Machine”—are better suited to the “primitive” 1960s than the “liberated” 2000s. Imagine trying to release a children’s album today with a song on it called “Song of the Death Machine”…

Honestly, kids might love Hush Little Robot, though I’d suggest testing the waters with the more accessible Listen Compute Rock Home first. Hush… is probably better suited for adults, unless you’ve got kids who sit around the house tinkering with vintage keboards.

Rating: 8/10

original article

THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER
(COLUMBIA RECORDS)
BRUCE HAACK

I guess back in the minds of us all the thought has been lingering. The synthesizer is going to speak one day. But how. And who will the mon be who finds the way. And will it be just a gimmick, or will it be a musically valid expression ond a saleable commodity.

This week Columbia is releasing a pretty fantastic new record. But like most exciting discoveries, it didn’t happen overnight. Back on July 12, 1969 the beginnings of what was eventually to become “THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER” (CS 9991) were written up in Record World:

“ADAM II, A NEW ELECTRONIC DE VICE CREATED BY BRUCE HAACK THAT, AMONG OTHER CAPABILITIES, CAN REPRODUCE THE HUMAN VOICE WAS INTRODUCED HERE LAST WEEK. IT COST FORTY-EIGHT DOLLARS TO BUILD.”

Even though human voices are used on the record, and even though the electronic voice sings on some of the music producing some very exciting pre-language electrical words the whole paint of this new album is that it is good rock that has advanced possibilities of very wide appeal.

This recording has material that undeniably lends itself to creative programming. It is lyrically attractive to underground buyers, and melodically it will turn on MOR and good music as well as Top 40 heads. All of this is above and beyond its unique quali ties as a snythesized work. It deserves a special introduction at radio stations as a progressive production, and although somewhat far out it is just far enough to be a programmer’s dream.

“THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER” is totally unlike anything ever recorded before. It is truly a voice of the future. Listen to “Electric To Me Turn” and the anti war “War.”

The credentials of the creator of “THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER” album are as diverse as they are fascinating. Bruce Haack was born in a mining camp called “Saunders Creek” in the Canadian Rockies. There were no roads in or out. I guess one either way would have served both. But only the train came in once a week to pick up coal. As a child Bruce turned-on to the mountain wind, the screams of golden eagles, the mine tunnels and the one electric light forever shining outside the mine supply store (the symbolism zonks me). After striking out for the nearest town as a young man, Bruce soon learned to turn his natural inventiveness, especially at the piano, into his own means of expression. He went to the University of Alberta where he majored in psychology and extra-curricular activity, mostly performing and composing. He was always into something; two weekly radio shows, a performing group of piano, bass and drums. Club dates. Playing real country piano for real country dances. He even won a gold literary award. Then encouragement, even insistance from the renowned actor Charles Laughton compelled Bruce to go to New york. Since then he has earned an imposing list of credits- (his compositions have been performed at Carnegie and Town Halls, he has written ballet music, Broadway music (“How to Make a Man”), off.Broadway music (“The Kumquat in the Persimmon Tree”), pop songs (he penned three of Teresa Brewer’s hits). Bruce has created hundreds of singing commer cials and is the inventor of “dermi tron,” an electronic device which allows the human body to be played as a musical device by means of skin contact. Wow. His music for the Nicolo Marionettes and Bliss Displays are heard on a national scale.

But despite all this,. Bruce devotes mast of his time to working with, and inventing fascinating electronic toys for, children.

Bruce invents, builds and plays his own electronic musical instruments. He composed and performed all the music on “THE ELECTRIC LUCIFER” as well as creating the synthesizer on which he performed. He picked up the parts for less than 50 bucks on New York’s Canal Street.

And although there is a lot of meta physics in the messages of his songs, the album’s appeal will be the beautiful mix of music and magic. Good rock. The appearance of the electronic voice on the album could be the most revolutionary thing about it. But as for me, I just dig it musically.