Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra

Synergy | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 31, 1998)
• Original Release Date: 1975
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B00000612K
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,681 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Legacy

2. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue

3. Synergy

4. Relay Breakdown

5. Warriors

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This disc, originally from '75, doesn't have much to do with rock or orchestra, but it sure does have a lot of electronics--mostly of the faux renaissance variety so popular in the heyday of progressive rock. Electronic Realizations' most notable track is "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," a hilarious attempt to make this stuff sound arch. The next wave of kitsch, guaranteed. --Keven McAlester

Product Description

Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra was the debut album from Synergy and was seen as a huge step forward for synthesizers in rock music when it was first released in 1975 and received not only critical acclaim but also positive commercial acclaim also. This re issue has been re mastered for this release and contain sleeve notes by Larry Fast and will be the first in a series of re issues that will see the entire Synergy back catalogue re issued over the next twelve months.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Electronics that exude warmth?!!! Analog proof reissued., August 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra (Audio CD)

When I say I often use this album to fall asleep to I mean that as a genuine compliment. One can easily be enveloped in layers of gentle, textured, warm tones of Legacy, only to find by the time one's asleep, the compositions become bolder, creating the perfect soundtrack to the dreamworld of ones making. This was my experience back in 75, when I was an impressionable fifteen, right up to the present. I remember extolling the sonic virtues of Fast's synthesis and how with these compositions of his, and Slaughter On Tenth Avenue, that this disc would hold up a quarter century hence, and lo and behold, here we are. Whereas a lot of electronic music of the seventies, be it Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Jarre, Malcolm Cecil, Roger Powell, et al...still has an icy artifice about it, the warmth of Synergy is both immediate and gratifying for both classical and progressive music fans.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orchestrated Compositions Realized on Electronics, March 24, 2003

By 

Mark D Burgh "Music, Writing, Art, Film, Hist... (Fort Smith, AR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra (Audio CD)

The title of this album, criticized by some, is accurate. This is music realized by a "rock" orchestra. What else to call the battery of electronics that Larry Fast used to bring his compositions to life? A trained composer, an electrical whiz, Fast combined his fine musical sense with the potential of Synthesizers to create new orchestral timbres. No one else in the field of electronic, now or then, has done the same, with the exception of Wendy Carlos, Fast's friend and cohort.

Most people doing electronics fall into the throbbing gristle of sequencers, forgetting that music is more than rythym or effects. Fast's compositions are modern music, and could probably be played by organic instruments and sound good. Most Prog doesn't hold up not because it's Prog, but because the composition and orchestration are not up to standard, unlike Fast's music.

People who listen to this album and think its trance or ambient, are actually getting neo-romantic compositions orchestrated with new sounds. That's what electronic music was supposed to be about. Ah, well. Ah, me. Electronic Realizations still sounds good because Fast knew how to orchestrate, not because analog synths sounded better. (if you ever tried to play a 1972 Minimoog and keep it tuned, you know what I mean.)

If you like this album, check out Larry Fast's "Reconstructed Artifacts," reworkings of his Synergy stuff with modern equipment. Clearer sounds, heavier emphasis on rythyms, but still well-written music. Do another one, Larry, please.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ultimate 70'a Analog Synthesizer Music, January 7, 2003

By 

"w8je" (Pass Christian, MS United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra (Audio CD)

This album to me rates as one of the top 70's analog synthesizer, or electronic music albums. Long ago, I wore my vinyl version out and am overjoyed to see it out again on CD. The creations on this album brought many vivid images to my mind as I first listened to it as they still do today, amost 25 years later. Relay Breakdown is one of the most upbeat, royal sounding tracks I have ever heard, even after all of these years. It will leave you with the same feeling that Copland's Fanfare for a Common Man leaves you...excited, jubulant and charged with energy! Since I first heard it in 1975, it has remained one of my top five favorite tracks.

Warriors changes the mood from royal to ponderous power, as you are lead to feel awesomeness at the immensity of something much larger than yourself. It combines this with a sense of the mysterious, to paint a very rich tapestry of the human pagent.

Synergy is a light-hearted piece that showcases Larry Fast's virtuosity with the Moog synthesizer and then new electronic medium.

Legacy, the first track on the first side is a very powerful and emotional piece that carries with it a sense of urgency in a head long plunge towards a destination not yet known. The second half of the piece is built on opposing scale renditions, with layers upon layers of textured sound that strongly suggest minimalist influence on Larry Fast's composition style. Full of tension, full of power, full of motion, your spirit will ebb and flow like the tide as you get swept up in the cyclone of instrumentation.

Slaughter on 10th Avenue is one of my lesser favorite pieces, being a cover, it carries another's style, though with Larry Fast's usual virtuosity with electronic music and his style. As a teenager with a frustrated former progressive jazz musician for a father, in 1975, this track softened my parents to the Pink Floyd which I soon introduced them to!