BLACK MASS LUCIFER

It's unbelievable the amount of electronic albums Mort Garson had done since 1967 as of 1971 when Black Mass came out on the Uni label. He helped compose the Zodiac Cosmic Sounds album in 1967 for Elektra, did The Wozard of Iz, Electronic Hair Pieces (doing Moog renditions of music from Hair), the Signs of the Zodiac series, an obscure film soundtrack called Didn't You Hear, and a sex Moog album called Music for Sensuous Lovers. Those last two albums seem to be most obscure as Didn't You Hear was only available at Seattle movie theater lobbies when the film came out, and Music for Sensuous Lovers was obviously released privately (actually Sensuous Records, but I'm sure it was a private release) due to the content. For Black Mass, he records as Lucifer and creates an occult Moog album. After all, he did a sex Moog album, and a bunch of astrology Moog albums, a Broadway musical Moog, and a Moog album inspired by The Wizard of Oz updated to 1968 counterculture themes. Black Mass is full of creepy sounding synth and percussion sounds. Where The Signs of the Zodiac series tend to be pleasant, this stuff sounded pretty creepy. Much of it is on the experimental side, although classical style shows up on "Voices of the Dead (The Medium)". I also notice a part of one of the songs used on Signs of the Zodiac was used on the beginning of "Black Mass". I have often seen negative reviews of this album, but actually it's one of my favorites. For one thing, there's no narration or vocals, often I felt the narration and vocals on many of his other albums a bit hard to take seriously (especially the Signs of the Zodiac series), this one is all instrumental and so works in listener's benefit. If you do like this, don't forget to check out his The Unexplained (as Ataraxia) from 1975 on RCA (despite the four year gap, it's surprisingly similar). I love this kind of Moog music, sure beats a lot of those cheese renditions of pop and classical (for my tastes, some people like that cheesy stuff for kitsch value, for me most of that stuff doesn't hold up). Black Mass comes recommended by me.