ELECTRONIC HAIR PIECES

Since this was released in '69, Electronic Hair Pieces' heavily dated sound is understandable and passable, but most people nowadays I'm sure would mistake this as the long lost soundtrack to the original Pokemon games on Gameboy. To be fair, those soundtracks were fairly awesome.

In an era where a lot of electronic music was inaccessible with strong leanings toward the avant-garde side of things (Shostakovich, Schnitzler, Parmegiani, etc.), Mort Garson had created this reasonably accessible and poppy collection of synth tunes that is comparable to Cluster's pre-electro-pop masterpiece Zuckerzeit.

Each track on this album is short, averaging between 2 and 4 minutes, and display a very mechanical, robotic sense of melody but can be easily hummed. To be honest, considering that this album predates a lot of electronic pop music, I'd say that the melodies and overall structure of these catchy songs are rather sophisticated, even if the time period's technology results in a cheap, outdated sound.

Electronic Hair Pieces is relatively diverse too. Some tracks are lightly jazzy like "Walking in Space" and "Easy to Be Hard", some are forceful pre-dance music tunes such as "Hair", there is even an exotic quality like found on "Let the Sunshine In", but most of the album sounds like electronic-noir pop compositions.

It's a shame that Mort Garson remains relatively obscure because I'm confident that fans of electronic music or general instrumental pop music would find this album to be both accessible and sophisticated enough to warrant repeated listens. Especially, for anyone out there who enjoys Cluster's Zuckerzeit, then Mort Garson's Electronic Hair Pieces is a must have.

This is probably my least favorite Mort Garson album. Given I was never a fan of the music to Hair, it's no surprise that even Moog renditions of said play doesn't appeal to me. It's pretty much straight forward. Actually not all of Hair bothers me, the ones that pop artists took on I do like (other than "Good Morning Starshine" that Oliver had a hit with and the Strawberry Alarm Clock recorded versions of). "Easy to be Hard" was covered by Three Dog Night, and isn't all that bad. Quincy Jones done a rather great jazz version of "Walking in Space", and I do like Mort's version of it. Then there's of course "Age of Aquarius", the Fifth Dimension did a famous hit version, and Mort's version is great. But the more cheesy stuff, like "Good Morning Starshine" I could do without. Personally I felt Mort Garson shines the best when doing original material, like the Signs of the Zodiac series or The Wozard of Iz. This was the first Mort Garson album I ever bought, a cheap copy found in Eugene, Oregon. Luckily I knew not to give up on him, once I started finding his other (original material) albums I simply loved it. To me, Electronic Hair Pieces sounds like one of those dime-a-dozen pop Moog albums doing Hair. Even though not a favorite, I still keep it, because the less cheesy stuff ain't too bad, but not the first I go to if I want to hear Mort Garson.