Fountains Of The Dept. of Water & Power Dept.

Beaver & Krause - what were they for? Not hits. Not sold-out concerts coast to coast. Not T.V. and festival appearances. Yet they got a major label contract. There aren't any major labels any more, not in the sense of Warner Brothers, a bunch of hip professionals with access to the best musical, artistic and technical skills and facilities on the planet. Including the great Ed Thrasher, who art directed their Warners releases. These sleeves are gorgeous works of art.

So anyway. Beaver & Krause. Their pioneering use of synthesisers in a synthesis of traditional American music and cutting-edge electronics was seen as musical evolution, a way forward - again, something unimaginable today, when every recording references the past. The future has disappeared for this generation - it's somewhere they'd rather not look. But back then, the future was a good place to be. It was exciting and adventurous and fun.

If these recordings sound dated and even quaint, that's the listener's loss. The experiment was always just that, an experiment. Let's combine this and this and see what happens. Maybe something will grow out of it, something unexpected. It didn't, of course. Music was to turn in on itself in a self-referential möbius strip, and we have to look to the past for the new.

Download includes their Nonesuch Moog demonstration album [not shown - Ed.], half of which George Harrison stole for his Electronic Sound album, where it was as unlistenable as it is here.