Saturday, May 27, 2006


My man Sharkey from Clockcleaner gave me a copy of the album "Electric Lucifer" by Bruce Haack over a year ago but I just finally got around to listening to it last week. You have no idea how facemelting this shit is.
Released in 1970, "Electric Lucifer" was composed by Bruce Haack and performed on electronic synthesizers that he built himself out of cheap parts he bought on Canal Street. Haack is mainly known as a composer of bizarre childrens music, especially since the release of the Dimension Mix tribute album where artists such as Beck and Stereolab cover Haack songs to raise money for autism research.
While some might argue that all of Haack's music would be unsuitable for children, "Electric Lucifer" is squarely intended for adults. In fact I don't think that hardly anyone is old enough to listen to it. My girlfriend Genevieve is so terrified by the record that she won't let me play it when she's in the house.
Thats because this is extremely weird electronic psych filled with unsetlling noises and tones and all filled with acidhead messages about God, the Devil, war, technology and unicorns. And dragons. Haack studied psychology, which shows out well on tracks like "Program Me", but what can explain the rest of his lyrics, which read like the back of a bottle of Doctor Bronner's soap?

"Lucifer -- I read that after the war you and your angels were sent out of heaven to Earth. Most of us like it here but we don't believe in war. Our newborn are beginning to understand mistakes of the old ones. Maybe the Angel People will all unite. The key is Powerlove"

Basically it sounds like if Kraftwerk composed the music for an evil robot circus and got Phillip K Dick, a late-era Phillip K Dick, when he was really off his shit, to be the singing ringleader after dosing him with speedy acid and locking him in a closet with only a pen light and a bible for 4 hours.
Haack was definitely on to something, though. There's a kind of mind-blown sense of duality here that rings quite true for me. And right around the same time L Ron Hubbard was building an entire religion based on ramblings even more far-out than Haack's. Haack was also quoted many times in the 60s and 70s that in the future most music would be made by computers, and that's when he would find his fame, when music would be "shared electronically" for free, obviating the need for record companies. What you know about that?
Theres a good Bio of Haack here, but I couldn't track down any Mp3s for you. Best to get a copy of the whole album to listen in sequence to hear the "story" unfold.