Bruce Haack
The Electric Lucifer

"Electric to me turn this night, reflecting universal light, all I knew that should be true is reality in you... turn, turn to me electric"

Bruce Haack, an eccentric character unknown to most, is undoubtedly one of the most important and visionary pioneers of electronic music. Not surprisingly, a recently dedicated documentary refers to him as "The King of Techno".

Bruce was born in 1931 in Canada, starting piano lessons and composing his first melodies at the age of 12, a precocious talent... later, he graduated in psychology and in the '50s began his career as a composer for theatrical productions and children's soundtracks, with original, eccentric, and "alien" melodies.

However, it was in the '60s, with the growing and widespread interest in synths, musical experimentation-intuition, and electronically modified sounds, that his fame grew exponentially, earning him a couple of appearances on national TV.

Bruce Haack, completely alien to the mechanisms of the nascent showbiz and above all to any form of label and external imposition, was used to personally building strange synthesizers and other bizarre and innovative instruments always in search of new sounds (such as the Dermatron, capable of generating modulated sounds by bringing electrodes close to human skin).

"Electric Lucifer", dates back to 1970 (despite being released by Columbia) it is an extremely anarchic, unconventional, subversive, and innovative album...it's Captain Beefheart, meeting Syd Barrett and Red Krayola, taking an acid trip with Silver Apples and Suicide; it's Haack's electrifying encounter with psychedelia and acid rock, an encounter in which it is always him setting the coordinates and dictating the pace.

The album, released in a period of full psychedelic fervor, is a true concept album, focused on the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, between paradise and hell, between the Divine and the electric Lucifer.

The bizarre and surreal lyrics are sung by his friend-producer Chris Kachulis, while good old Bruce has fun messing around with Moogs and various sound boxes.

The highest peaks of the album, in my opinion, are: the amazing "Electric to me turn", 1.53 minutes of pure madness, which opens the concept, then in random order "Program me" and "Super Nova" - it's hard to believe that Kraftwerk and all the krautrock brothers didn't give it a listen, and finally "Incantation" and "National anthem to the moon", closer to the experimentation and sound of groups like Pearls Before Swine, Spirit, or The Incredible String Band, thus more exquisitely acid.

In conclusion, a character I strongly recommend to those who haven't had the fortune to listen to him yet... and apparently, I'm not the only one, considering the large number of admirers, from Beck and Mouse on Mars, to Luke Vibert, Peanut Butter Wolf, and Mark Oliver Everett, of Eels.