MAGNETIC WEB

Back when I was a small kid (1979-1980) my father would occasionally buy odd and unusual, or just obscure albums. He wasn't exactly a music expert, so I was often wondering if he bought it because he liked the artwork or the title, or maybe the instruments used? The Internet obviously didn't exist, couldn't find info on this stuff, you pretty much had to go by word of mouth, or perhaps the owner of the record store. My father's more normal record buying habit at the time was Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young), Neil Young, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and It's a Beautiful Day, and for electronic music, it was Jean Michel Jarre. Magnetic Web was one of these odd obscurities he bought at that time, really strange electronic music, with a warning sticker on the shrink wrap that stated: "Do not listen to this album if you are stoned" (I don't recall his copy having that warning, or the shrink wrap). He got rid of it (I wished he didn't because I liked it, though I didn't know why then, looks like even at age 7 I wanted to hear the unusual), and all these years I was starting to wonder if my mind was playing tricks that there was an album called Magnetic Web. In 1984, my father bought a copy of Jarre's Magnetic Fields, which I knew wasn't the album I was thinking of (but then he was into Jarre, so it was expected he'd buy that one), besides that one was released in 1981, and Magnetic Web was released in 1973. Years later, comes the Internet, surprised to find the Magnetic Web album in an entry of the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock and to find out the artist was named Nik Raicevic. Well, in 2006 I was able to acquire me a copy and it came with the shrink wrap and warning sticker, which made me an ever happier owner.

Perhaps this album was too strange for my father's taste. This was his fourth album, and by this point he acquired an ARP 2600. The title track starts off with some cheap sounding drum machine before the synths kick in. It's basically a bunch of pulsing. He really got some reedy sounds off the ARP. "Light Stimulus" features a bunch of computer-like sound (of the trippy '70s variety), while "Edge of the Unknown" features strange droning sounds and trippy organ at the end. "Dance of the Supernatural" has this mechanical pulsing sound, while "Interplanetary Beings" features strange laser sounds. This one could have been easily used on the movie Fantastic Planet. "Cosmic Aura" really trips me out with those bizarre Moog leads, but the song ends abruptly leading me to think he simply ran out of tape before he finished recording it.

He only recorded one more album, Zero Gravity in 1975 before retiring (it's been said he sold his synths to Steve Roach, then a San Diego race care driver).

I love this stuff. Very unconventional stuff that reminds me a bit of Mort Garson at his weirdest (like Lucifer - Black Mass). It's pretty safe to say if you like Mort Garson's more off-the-wall stuff, you'll like this!