Digital Trip - Crusher Joe

Digital Trip - Crusher Joe (1983)

Now I don't know if you're familiar with it, but 60's bargain label Pickwick used to put out weird bootleg versions of popular film soundtracks. I've got a fifty-cent copy of their Clockwork Orange knockoff, easily among my oddest finds just because it sounds so unlike what you would expect from a cut-rate version of Wendy Carlos' classic. I can't imagine they made much money off of it at the time but it provides a precedent for this album. In the same series as the previous 'synthesizer fantasy' post, this is an earlier LP consisting of sequenced synthesizer covers of the soundtrack to the film Crusher Joe, an animated science fiction story based on a series of novels according to the wiki. Laid to tape in June of '83 according to the insert, this is 100% pure, delicious analog synth. Were I to guess, it was probably done on Roland synths with multiple MC-4's given the complexity of the programming/compositions and the sequencers available at the time. Could be some Juno-60s off DCB, could just be a stack of monos running off CV. Only thing I'd be willing to lay odds on is that drum machine being an Oberheim.

I've got a few more of these I'll be posting in the future, and I might try tracking some others of the series down from Japan if my limited import connections find them in stock. If anyone happens to have one I don't, I would be interested in picking it up.

This is highly recommended (required?) listening for anyone who is a fan of John Carpenter, the Legowelt soundtrack sideprojects, italodisco (Bloodbath Highway, Panic in Disco), and analog synthesizer recordings in general.