Bruce Haack | Farad: The Electric Voice

Up until now, you’ve probably never heard of Bruce Haack. And that’s a crime. But it’s a name you’ll be hearing more and more in the coming months and years.

Proto-hiphop, proto-vocoder, pre-dating Kraftwerk. Building his own modular synths in the 60′s. Writing surreal, hallucinatory children’s songs. Experimenting with peyote and making a psychrocktronic concept album about Lucifer and “powerlove”. What a fascinating character.

Stone’s Throw and Peanut Butter Wolf are putting out Farad: The Electric Voice on October 19.

From the label:

Haack’s music is rooted in the idea that humans and electronic machines share a reciprocal relationship that manifests itself through sounds. In order to further explore this dynamic, Haack dropped out of Juilliard to pursue a more experimental course in, surprisingly, educational children’s music. He later released material off his own label Dimension 5 Records in 1962, which allowed him to mix kinetic energy, infuse psychedelic philosophy, and pluck sounds from various genres across the board. Haack used homemade synthesizers, proto-vocoders, and the skin-touch sensitive Dermatron to expand his music into a realm of technological creativity.

Farad: The Electric Voice specifically focuses on tracks using Haack’s self-made vocoder, which he named “Farad.” This was one of the first truly musical vocoders, and first to be used on a pop album, pre-dating Kraftwerk’s Autobahn by several years.

Just listen to this stone-cold hip-hop jam, “Party Machine”, recorded in collaboration with Russell Simmons in 1982. And pretend you’re at this amazing party.