Wendy Carlos - Sonic Seasonings [1972] (2 x CDs)

WENDY CARLOS

Wendy Carlos - Sonic Seasonings [1972] (2 x CDs)

Sonic Seasonings is a studio double album by American keyboardist and composer Wendy Carlos, originally released under her birth name, Walter Carlos, in 1972 as by Columbia Records. The album features four ambient music tracks, each loosely based on one of the four seasons, combining various field recordings with sounds from a Moog synthesizer. It marks a departure from her previous two albums which featured synthesized renditions of pieces of classical music. The album reached No. 168 on the US Billboard 200. In 1998, it was remastered for CD with two previously unreleased tracks. This is the 1998 version.

Before there was ambient music, in a time before the New Age, there was Wendy Carlos's Sonic Seasonings, a double LP released in 1972. Taking the form of Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Carlos orchestrated four side-long soundscapes designed, according to producer Rachel Elkind, to be "part of the decor." Using only her Moog synthesizer and environmental sounds, Carlos created prototypical ambient music, predating Brian Eno's similar work by a few years. Carlos weaves gentle, often reedy synthesizer melodies through chirping birds on "Spring," phase-shifted church organ drones across crystalline bells and wind on "Winter," and she seems to simulate an alien space landing on "Summer," mimicking nature with her synthesizer. An added treat on this special double CD is a 40-minute, unreleased, two-part suite from 1986 called "Land of the Midnight Sun - Aurora Borealis and Midnight Sun." Using her Synergy synthesizers, Carlos orchestrates slow-motion melodies and overlapping minimalist layers that recall Steve Roach's "Structures from Silence." In attempting a music that wouldn't draw attention to itself, Carlos achieved a prescient work of subtlety and depth on Sonic Seasonings (Amazon)

A sonic masterpiece of the moods and sounds of the four seasons performed entirely on the Synergy synthesizer. Widely regarded as the first ambient album, but this is way more complex than that.

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Track lists

CD1

01 Wendy Carlos Spring 22:28

02 Wendy Carlos Summer 21:44

03 Wendy Carlos Fall 21:07

CD2

01 Wendy Carlos Winter 20:41

02 Wendy Carlos Winter (out-take 2) 5:23

03 Wendy Carlos Aurora Borealis 19:57

04 Wendy Carlos Midnight Sun 19:56

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