Favorite Vintage Synthesizer Albums and Why?

[regenerativemusic]

Was curious what everyone's circa 1965 to 1971-ish vintage moog/synth records are. This thread is not for the Krautrock/TD stuff.

[Svetonio]

Fusion, blues & psych meet Moog, very progressive album for its time.

[philsunset]

Wendy Carlos' Clockwork Orange

[spacefreak]

A short list of mine:

White Noise "2: Concerto for Synthesizer"
Ruth White "Seven Trumps From The Tarot Card"
Delia Derbyshire "Electro Sonic"
Joel Vandroogenbroeck "Biomechanoïd"
Walter Carlos "Sonic Seasonings"
Laurie Spiegel "The Expanding Universe"
Gunner Møller Pedersen "Et lydår"
The Zodiac "Cosmic Sounds"
Head "Head"
The Wozard of Iz "An Electronic Odyssey"
and of course the Beaver & Krause mentioned above by Sventonio,

[Rarebird]

Wendy Carlos - Switched on box-set

Alas the only stuff I have by her.

[Trane]

out of the demanded time-frame but JMJ's Oxygène and Équinoxe albums are vintage enough for me.

[walt]

Andrew Rudin-Tragoedia
Warner Jepson-Buchla Christmas(recorded in 1969,released in 2010)
Douglas Leedy-Entropical Paradise

[BobM]

Synergy - Games

[Rarebird]

Synergy - Games

Great album, but hardly vintage, I think.

[Mister Triscuits]

Morton Subotnick, The Wild Bull (1968) - super dramatic and exciting. Everyone remembers Silver Apples of the Moon, but this follow-up grabbed me more.

[bigbassdrum]

Not an album, and a little past the desired timetable, but I liked 'Hot Buttered Popcorn' from 1972.

I also liked the synth-driven music from Disneyworld's fireworks and light show that was from 1975

[rcarlberg]

Re: Beaver & Krause, Gandharva is excellent but I think I like In A Wild Sanctuary even better. There's a track, "The Walking Green Algae Blues" I believe, that combines sound effects with musical instruments that points forward to a whole genre that came into being decades later.

Re: Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Boxed Set is excellent but Sonic Seasonings is groundbreaking. Combines, as does B&K just mentioned, sound effects with the barest wisps of music. This 1972 album has stood the tests of time and still remains utterly unique all these years later. A Clockwork Orange has some of her best composing ("Timesteps" et al) but it is not as groundbreaking.

Douglas Leedy - Entropical Paradise is deadly boring to me. Leedy uses a VCS3 if memory serves and the two-LP set is an endless series of random bleeps and bloops.

For my suggestion, I will put forward Schaltkries Wasserman by Peter & Daniella Wasserman of Switzerland, wonderful sequencer-based electronic music that, to my ears, puts Tangerine Dream to shame.

[Dave (in MA)]

Some of my fave earlier synth classics would include Oxygene, Cords, Timewind, Rubycon, among others, but they fall after the called-for timeframe.

Irrlicht and Zeit fit timewise, but feature more conventional instrumentation.

[Mister Triscuits]

Re: Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Boxed Set is excellent but Sonic Seasonings is groundbreaking. Combines, as does B&K just mentioned, sound effects with the barest wisps of music. This 1972 album has stood the tests of time and still remains utterly unique all these years later.

Absolutely my favorite Wendy, and groundbreaking indeed. I always think of it as being from a couple of years later than it actually was.

[Lopez]

Moog - The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman
Zero Time - T.O.N.T.O.'s Expanding Head Band
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company

[rcarlberg]

"Topless Dancers of Corfu" woo-hoo! Good choices Lopez.

[regenerativemusic]

I'm discovering new stuff all the time. There were actually probably about 30 pop synth albums released in this time zone.
Current Fav:

Switched on Bacharach by Christopher Scott (Decca 1969)

[walt]

Another gem from Warner Jepson.From 1970.Not an album,but an audio/video creation.Music by Warner Jepson on the Buchla.I have a 2cd retrospective of Jepson's synthesizer and musique concrete works.They're generally not academic sounding stuff,which, i suppose, is why i dig them.

[rcarlberg]

Current Fav: Switched on Bacharach by Christopher Scott (Decca 1969)

God help us all.

[walt]

Don Preston recorded this piece in 1967 on a synth of his own making.




By the way, this cd is well worth checking out.

[PeterG]

In modern day use the word vintage is often either:

a, misunderstood by lots of people i.e vintage does not mean antique, veteran or retro
b, is used incorrectly to mean old, antique, veteran, retro.

Vintage means:

a, of good quality
b, classic (cars, albums)
c, of a certain period, and that is how it is correctly used here in the description in the OP i.e. "...circa 1965 to 1971-ish vintage..."

[regenerativemusic]

Quote Originally Posted by regenerativemusic
Current Fav: Switched on Bacharach by Christopher Scott (Decca 1969)

God help us all.

He did by sending us this album.

[rcarlberg]

I'm going to go hide the scissors.

[Dana5140]

Definitely Cosmic Sounds of the Zodiac.

[Progbear]

At 1973 it’s a little past the cut-off date, but I’ve long been a fan of Roger Powell’s Cosmic Furnace:



Note that An Electric Storm by White Noise is all tape electronics, thus is not a “synthesizer album.”