REMIXES by BRUCE HAACK

Allstar lineup of contemporary artists remix tracks from early electronic producer Bruce Haack (1931-1988) !Haack's music was rooted in the idea that humans and electronic machines share a reciprocal relationship that manifests itself through sounds. He explored this dynamic through recordings released on his own label Dimension 5 Records from 1962 through the early 80s. In 2012, Stones Throw released the Bruce Haack anthology Farad: The Electric Voice, focusing on Haack's vocoder recordings. The cover of Bruce Haack Remixes, by Alexandre Korobov, is a "visual remix" of Haack's album Electric Lucifer. Haack spent much of the sixties assembling various electronic devices, as well as appearing on talk shows playing the novel eccentric genius. On Johnny Carson then Mike Douglas in 1965, for instance, Haack showcased the Dermatron, a synthesizer played by leading an electrical current through physical contact with another person. Haack threw himself in with the peace movement in 1970, skirting the metaphysical and the physical with Electric Lucifer, a rock concept LP centered on a utopian energy that would seemingly unite the world in the face of war. Electric Lucifer was released to critical acclaim, though it was subsequently lost amidst the rustic post-sixties Americana of the time – the likes of Jefferson Airplane and CSNY. And while that sort of flower-in-the-rifle-barrel idealism now seems rather quaint, the proto-electronics on Electric Lucifer sound almost fresh in their primitivism.