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An Electric Storm cover

An Electric Storm

White Noise

pop avant-garde psychedelic pop sound collage art pop uk
Island

Recorded

1969

Released

1969

There’ve been a lot of weird pop collaborations over the years, but this team effort between jazz bassist/electronic engineer David Vorhaus and notable BBC Radiophonic Workshop veterans Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson — best known for their groundbreaking electronics work on Doctor Who — has to rank up there. Technically a pop record but filled with uncanny effects, weird moans, and surreal poetry on the first half and absolutely jaw-dropping ambient compositions on the second, it all culminates in an improvised piece called “Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell,” which sends 21 gigawatts of electric current through the River Styx. Unprecedented at the time, shocking even now.

Jeff Treppel

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