Dick Hyman

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

Gatefold sleeve.

Dick Hyman was a working New York session pianist who had already ghosted for Benny Goodman and cut lounge records under a dozen names when he sat down in front of a Moog modular at the end of 1968. Walter Sear, Bob Moog's East Coast representative, did the patching; Hyman did the playing, and the difference shows. Where most 1969 Moog albums were novelty covers with the oscillators set to "cute," Electric Eclectics is nine original pieces that let the machine sound like a machine: portamento smears, sequencer patterns that lurch rather than swing, and a drum box splicing a waltz into a bossa nova underneath the eight-minute The Minotaur.

That track ended up on the Billboard soul charts, which tells you how open the ears were that year. The Moog and Me was later lifted by Beck for Odelay. It is space-age lounge, yes, but the kind that keeps wandering off into places lounge is not supposed to go. Laminated gatefold Command pressing.