William Strickland

Closing out a trilogy of releases initially readied by the Harriman, NY powerhouse Spectrum (following the Jack Tamul & William Hoskins titles) is this fantastic set of noisy synthesizer adagios, composed in the late 70s by William Strickland on Moog Modular, Organ, and Four-Channel Tape. Offering a pair of conceptual, side-length suites, a series of exceedingly lo-fi miniatures meets us on the A-Side; "An Electronic Visit to the Zoo" seems to almost ignore its own premise - despite the red-herring titles; "Apes", "Lions", "Elephants", etc. - offering a fairly rough & hissy take of over-gained & time-domain blurred synthesizer gristle, all but buried in grime & extremely distant voltage-haze - about as far away from an "Animals Christmas" / "Le Zoo Electronique" type exploito-Library affair as is possible. On the flip, the "Sound Hypnosis" pieces work a mix of weird, processed drum machine & extremely resonant-filter strategies not all that far removed from the later Nicholas "Nik Pascal" Raicevic Narco sides; it's about as "Hypnotic" as it gets without resorting to cod-New-Age cloud-float. "Repetitions with Distortions", indeed. Of the three Spectrum's we've had the pleasure of reinvestigating, this is by far the most elusive, confusing, & singular; very glad to have this C.P. reproduction in the fray.