MERCURY

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.

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