Thursday, October 11, 2012

Chrome Canyon...like the future sounded in 1976

Morgan Z Whirledge, ex of the wildly theatrical Apes & Androids, has a new synthy, crescendo-happy project called Chrome Canyon, whose first album Elemental Themes has been getting a work-out on my stereo lately. It's futuristic, but in that cool, slightly retro way of old sci fi movies -- very likely because of all the theremin.

In an interview at Percussion Lab, actually a pretty interesting piece, Whirledge says:

I knew I was in love with this retro-futurist idea of music à la Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, etc... but I guess until I actually got myself some analog gear I wasn't really able to find the right sound. Once I got my first analog synth (a Juno-60) and started to mess around with it I realized that I was making a lot of this spacey, cinematic sounding stuff and thought I should give it a serious shot and put some stuff out just to see what happens. I feel like it was the first time I was making the unabashed nerd music I had always kept bottled up. Hence, Chrome Canyon was born.





The new album is out this week on Stones Throw Records.

3 comments:

Jean-Luc Garbo said...

This is the first record of the year that I've wanted to turn up all the way. It sounded good even on my laptop. That interview was interesting, especially his solution to live drums. It sounds like a great live show, but at least the record is colorful enough on its own.

jenniferpkelly said...

Yes, I don't usually like super synthetic stuff, but this is kind of cool.

Jean-Luc Garbo said...

I was worried what you'd say when I saw it here, ha ha.