#dead-cert

From the album: Electronic Music, Tar And Sehtar (Folkways Records / Dead-Cert Home Entertainment)

Soft sighs from the future. The pastoral dreams of yesterday drenched in the analogue of now and then, syrupy spirals of quixotic delight. Melding with that realization, the darker undercurrent beneath, light flutters tempered with foreboding. Bliss, if you would like.

Another precious find from Andy Votel’s impeccable Dead-Cert imprint, Kat Epple & Bob Stohl made music for Carl Sagan, composed sound pieces for Planetariums and scored nature documentaries in the early 80’s. Most of their recordings were only ever released on private edition tape, with this selection hand-picked by Andy Votel, remastered and cut by Matt Colton and available on vinyl for the first time ever. Operating in Florida from 1978 until Bob’s untimely passing in 1989 at the age of 34, the husband/wife duo were among the first to blend synthesisers and acoustic instrumentation in a home studio equipped with a variety of early synths and instruments. As lovers and collaborators, the couple created a rich and vivid parallel dimension of new age music borne from the ‘70s prog scene and probably best referred to as “Space Music”. Throughout their unfortunately curtailed career the couple earned a noble crust creating music and mood-pieces for nature programmes, most notably for the legendary Sagan, under the Emerald Web aegis (expect to hear more of this on Finders Keepers later on this year) while continuing to issue numerous tapes to friends and fellow musicians. Following contact with Kat Epple - who still plays concerts at venues ranging from MoMA to Ground Zero - Dead-Cert were made privy to Kat and Bob’s private tapes, drawing for five pieces ranging from brooding deep space scapes to shimmering, gaseous sonics and impressionistic sound murals streaked with progressive traits and an alien, yet pastoral nature. Recorded using an Arp 2600, Mini Moog, EML Synkey, Roland RS202 String Ensemble and Electro-Harmonix Vocoder, plus a range of woodwind (both Kat and Bob were trained flautists, making colourful use of Bill Bernardi’s innovative Lyricon I, a hybrid flute/synthesiser) with some guitar assists here and there by friend and co-composer, Barry Cleveland. Their music is rich and unapolagetically tethered to the Space-Age iconography of their age, the result being a warm and often highly unusual hybrid of Kosmische and Prog signatures, quite distinct from the more austere variants more recently associated with the era.