David Merrill – Golden Oranges of Mars

There’s something charming and honest about electronic music made with old vintage lutherie, in the sense that it’s not trying to “replace” acoustic instruments, but to create inimitable sounds. I’m not saying that contemporary synthetic lutherie is all about imitating violins or booming basses (far from it!), but rather that with the ARP 2500, Buchla and other old Moogs, the boundary was well marked and the temptation to make strings without having to pay real musicians was non-existent. 

It’s in this “retro-pioneer” spirit that Brooklyn-based David Merrill operates. For some people, and connaisseurs, Golden Oranges of Mars, the title of this album, will recall Morton Subotnick’s classic Silver Apples of the Moon, one of the first purely electronic albums to achieve “popular” sales figures, back in 1967. 

The sounds explored and developed by Merrill are indeed steeped in retro colors and textures, absolutely charming and playful. To quote the composer, the album’s seven tracks are “sonic sculpture paintings, using sound as a 3D plastic artform always responding to space, color, and time.”.

Grayish waves in the bass, swelling and shrinking more or less regularly, are interspersed with splurts of bold colors, textured like surfaces in changing relief. 

The spontaneity you’ll detect in the composer’s sound constructions is no illusion: Merrill improvises his paintings and builds dendritic edifices with instinct rather than a pre-established program. He starts by generating a sound, then adds another, and if he likes the result, he continues the process. Nothing could be more organic, and all in perfect symbiosis with the analog nature of his lutherie.

Since we mentioned it, here is Part A of Silver Apples of the Moon by Morton Subotnick, 1967

This is fun, old-fashioned style music making and sounding, with a touch of modern savoir-faire.