Angel Rada - Solar Concert For Bhagavan -1985- (LP, Uraniun Records), Venezuela

Angel Rada is a mythical Venezuelan master of electronics. He is one of the only people from his country to create electronic music since the seventies. He even played in some of the best psychedelic groups from the sixties in Venezuela like (The) Gas Light (great name for a Venezuelan group). As a sonology student he went to study in Germany where he got acquainted with the Kosmische Krautrock legends from that time like Ash Ra and Klaus Schulze. Shortly after he produced the legendary first album Upadesa (please listen to that masterpiece).

This was Angel Rada's third album and as the title tells us it's a concert for Bhagavan. This is very much overlooked and put in the realms of New Age electronical music. The cover doesn't uncover the musical beauty that is hidden on this vinyl. Sure it could be viewed as an early example of New Age music but it totally exceeds that genre. What's present here is a tropical electronic masterpiece.

The music is based upon analog synthesizers and even energetic drum computers. It sounds like Sun Ra jamming along on one of the more cosmic songs of NDW legends Stratis/39 Eyes while the studio engineer was Innovative Communications' Clara Mondshine all set in the Caribbean. But ofcourse, Angel Rada is one of a kind and doesn't sound like any other artist. He has found a way to blend the Venezuelan feeling into beautiful pieces of electronic music in which a lot of emotions are invoked. The first two tracks are combined into a cosmic piece in which cosmic melodies suddenly start to interact with an analog drumbeat elevating the song into cosmic dance music. The song Pegasus (Night Flight Over Tokyo) is an example of pure emotion through cold analog machines.In the third song called I Ching the poem I King by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges is recited in Spanish over cosmic synthesizer music accompanied by a vocoder. This is an overlooked South American masterpiece.

¡Señor Rada! ¡Usted es grande! ¡Muchisimas Gracias!

Highly Recommended

HERE

Various Artists - Magyar Elektronikus Zene - Hungarian Electronic Music -1979- (LP, Hungaroton), Hungary

This is one of Hungary's greatest compilations of electronic avant-garde music together with this one which I will post later if it's not around somewhere. There are five Hungarian composers of electronic music present here: Zoltán Pongracz, Péter Eötvös, Iván Patachich and a combined piece by Máté Victor and Péter Winkler. A great piece on here is "Mese", meaning fairy tale, in which the sentence Egyszer volt, hol nem volt, meaning Once upon a time - the classic opening line of a fairy tale - is being processed looped and cut-up.

As you can guess electronic music from behind the iron curtain is quite an obscure thing. Nevertheless, many composers from the countries of the ex-eastern bloc had the possibility to travel to the west so they could study with people like Karlheinz Stockhausen or others. Usually these things were considered legitimate in the name of science, academy or high art. Also almost every big city in Eastern Europe had an experimental radio or television station studio in which they experimented with sound. From Warsaw to Bratislava to Beograd they all had their own kind of Radiophonic Workshop. Loads of cool Hungarian modern composed avant-garde stuff here.

This record has been uploaded to youtube, but has less than a hundred views and my copy happened to be in slightly better condition. This blog may lose a bit of its orthodoxy just to be able to keep on going with new material. Sometimes it might be available somewhere, but as a worse rip or practically not to be found. I will post some of these recordings by doing my own rips and I will shed my own light on those releases.

Get it HERE