MERCURY

Highly collectable obscure Electronic releases from the 80's.Celluloid was actually a moniker created by a young American teenager named Chuck Minuto.Reputedly he performed his music only armed with a mellotron.His first effort saw the light in 1982, a long Electronic suite entitled ''Mercury'', privately pressed for Wax Museum.

Side A includes the first part of the ''Mercury'' suite, split in three moves.The first one ''The Formation Of Space, Land, And Sea'' is pure dark Electronic ambiences, hard to believe the sound comes out of a mellotron,it is more like long monotonous analog synth music,the second one being ''The Melting Of Stars'', yes, this is mellotron here along with sound effects, really more interesting than the boring move 1.The closing move ''The Arrival Of Man'' flows in the same style, mellotron-drenched electronic soundscapes with sampled spacey choirs and bells, which gets more into electronic soundscapes towards the end.Really sinister stuff.

Side B consists of the second and last part of ''Mercury'', the 15-min. ''The Civilization Of Planets''.Big surprise here,Minuto's mellotron (really sounds like organ here) is supported by his vocals, a good combination of haunting Electronic stuff with spacey vocals and choirs until the middle.I definitely hear some loops afterwards and surpsingly again Minuto delivers some sort of brass section, much in THE BEATLES' mood (!), before the 3-min. spacey outro.

For a one-man effort this album is decent enough, but no that decent to spend three or four digit-bucks to purchase the original LP.It is somewhat far from the essentials of the genre,still if you like muddy mellotron-drenched and dark Electronic/Ambient stuff, ''Mercury'' deserves some hunting at a reasonable price...2.5 stars.

CELLULOID was the one man project of American Chuck Minuto. He managed to release two studio albums in the early 80's before calling it a day. CELLULOID is often mentioned when the topic of mellotron in music is brought up. He owned an M400 mellotron, and while he shows on the credits for this his debut that he also uses a computer, that is misleading. A computer in 1982? Anyways, in reality he rented a synclavier which was all the rage during the first half of the 80's with many artists checking it out and using it their music like Frank Zappa and Laurie Anderson for examples.

Chuck was 17 years old when he recorded this record and it really feels like amateur-hour to me. There is almost nothing for me to latch onto here. The mellotron choirs very late on Part I and that's it. Most of the time I find the sounds he is producing to be really annoying. And that Part I is broken down into three sections and there's actually no mellotron at all on the first movement called "The Formation Of Space, land And Sea". This is the synclavier in action folks. And he will generate sounds like strings, brass, organ and really almost whatever he wanted to make. Although hovering atmosphere seems to be the dominant theme on this record.

His second and final release called "Neptune" is a true mellotron album as he had run out of funds to rent the synclavier again. In fact even the pressing of that album was cheaped-out on. As for his debut "Mercury" I found it to be really lacking in almost every way possible. In fact he sings and speaks on Part II and it's painful to listen to. To each their own but 2 stars is all I got for this one. A big disappointment. I am impressed with one thing though, and that's that he thanked Edgar Froese in the liner notes.