[Music] Bruce Haack – Electric Lucifer


Canadian composer Bruce Haack is credited with being among the first electroacoustic composers to be influenced by psychedelic music with this Moog-heavy release, just reissued by Canadian record label Telephone Explosion.  From his Wikipedia page:

As the 1960s progressed and the musical climate became more receptive to his kind of whimsical innovation, Haack’s friend, collaborator, and business manager Chris Kachulis found mainstream applications for his music. This included scoring commercials for clients like Parker Brothers Games, Goodyear Tires, Kraft Cheese, and Lincoln Life Insurance; in the process, Haack won two awards for his work. He also continued to promote electronic music on television, demonstrating his homemade device encased in a suitcase on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1968, where he sampled a song by the Rolling Stones entitled “Citadel”. He released The Way-Out Record for Children later that year.

Kachulis did another important favor for his friend by introducing Haack to psychedelic rock. Acid rock’s expansive nature was a perfect match for Haack’s style, and in 1969 he released his first rock-influenced work, The Electric Lucifer. A concept album about the earth being caught in the middle of a war between heaven and hell, The Electric Lucifer featured a heavy, driving sound complete with Moog synthesiser, Kachulis’ singing, and Haack’s homegrown electronics including a prototype vocoder and unique lyrics, which deal with “powerlove” — a force so strong and good that it will not only save mankind but Lucifer himself. Kachulis helped out once more by bringing Haack and Lucifer to the attention of Columbia Records, who released it as Haack’s major-label debut.

As the 1970s started, Haack’s musical horizons continued to expand. After the release of The Electric Lucifer, he continued on Lucifer’s rock-influenced musical approach with 1971’s Together, an electronic pop album that marked his return to Dimension 5. Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate this work from his children’s music, he released it under the name Jackpine Savage, the only time he used this pseudonym.

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