Tonto’s Expanding Head Band

Does anyone remember Tonto's Expanding Head Band, the electronic band created by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff in the 1970s? They produced two very interesting experimental electronic albums ("Zero Time" in 1971 and "It's About Time" in 1975), which featured "The Original New Timbral Orchestra": the world's first (and still the largest) multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesiser, designed and constructed by Malcolm Cecil.

They don't seem to be listed on this site, yet they seem MUCH more worthy of inclusion for their challenging experimental nature - also with a good sense of melody! - than the Beatles! This was true prog or proto-prog or electronic prog or whatever you want to call it!

I know lol - but it's true!! I looked them up on Wikipedia - apparently the TONTO synthesiser Cecil created was used by Stevie Wonder on several albums including "Songs From the Key of Life".

I've downloaded some tracks on LimeWire - the second-hand CD of "Zero Time" is over £300 to buy! - and the music sounds quite dated now, but it still deserves some place in the history of prog...

Wow. Blast from the past.

A friend of mine had their first album. I was
beginning to wonder if I got the name right because I
never seen anything mentioned about them
anywhere. I've spent a few years trying to remember
if that was the name of the group or if it was the title
of the album or if it was some alcohol induced
hallucination. I loved this album. I was in college at
the time and didn't get a chance to tape it off of him. I
lost contact over the years and when we met up
again, he didn't remember the album (well, he did
have over 4000 or so albums.) and he sold his vynil
years before, so it was pretty much a lost cause... or
so I thought.

I've got to look again trough limewire.

Thanks for reopening this memory and giving me
hope I will hear it again.

 

           I had "Zero Time"; I bought anything with synths back at that time.  I kept the album for several years, mainly because of the last song, "Tama", a quiet, melodic, repetitious track.  My main problem with the rest of the album was their use of typical, in fact cliche, synth sounds.  One would think that their huge modular system would be capable of many new sounds (incidentally, strange, unique analog synth sounds are my specialty), but I suspect that Malcolm and Robert didn't spend too much time searching for new sounds.  Of course, nowadays young people are loving all those cliche sounds, as evidenced by Moog Cookbook-style tripe, and the CD re-issues of 60's hacks.

           I bought the second album, but unloaded it quickly...

 

 

                                                                          

With a name like that I trust them to be added here!!

Yeah just been listening to Tama!!

A nice elctronic piece!! also combines Prog/Symphonic too!!

Best electronic I've heard in a while!!

Let's add them as Electronic Prog, alongside the likes of Tangerine Dream, JMJ, Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze.