Lothar & The Hand People
Space Hymn

Lothar & the Hand People were a five-member beat-band from Denver (Colorado) formed in 1966 by the keyboardist Paul Conly and the New York singer John Emelin; they stood out from all the American psychedelic realities of the time for their peculiar and pioneering use of certain whimsical electronics, far from the academicism of Cork Marcheschi and Joseph Byrd, more closely linked to chemical trips and "flower power".

The Hand People used a small synthesizer provided to them by Robert Margouleff of the Tonto's Expanding Head Band, the prototype of the Moog muSonics (Sonic Five), not yet equipped with a keyboard but operated through a "ribbon controller" by Paul Conly. Another electronic instrument used by singer John Emelin was a Theremin, the well-known device capable of producing a range of variable sound frequencies by modulation and pitch. In the pop world, the Theremin had been relaunched by the Beach Boys forty years after its first public appearance; they made good use of it in "Good Vibrations"; the Hand People went further, promoting the quirky box as the sixth element (Lothar itself) and making it a veritable circus attraction during their spectacular concerts in 1966 and 1967. They also spread rumors that Leon Theremin himself (the inventor of the Theremin) had handed his incredible invention to Conly's grandfather and that after decades of being confined to an attic, the boys decided to dust it off and make it an honorary member of the group.

In 1967 the band, formed by the aforementioned Conly and Emelin, along with drummer Tom Flye, bassist Rusty Ford, and guitarist Kim King, moved to the fertile avant-garde city of New York, where they signed a contract with Capitol Records and released three unconvincing singles. In their debut LP (Presenting... Lothar & the Hand People), the songs are less inflated and predictable with some good covers and an overall sound reminiscent of the Chocolate Watchband. It was with the second album that the five captured all their most brilliant inspirations in electronic music and psychedelic rock; "Space Hymn" was released by Capitol in 1969 and contains, for the time, an astonishing combination of space sounds and beat tunes. The beautiful piano sonata of "Wedding night for those who love" caused a sensation on the radio, with blips, bloops, and space-time echoes, not to mention the stratospheric journey of "Space Hymn" with its mantra-like synth stasis, visionary sitars, and hallucinated reciting voice, all excellently ahead by a couple of years on the "space prog scene". The content is so varied that it also includes a blues ballad in "East Coast" style (Sister Lonely), a "sergeant-pepperish" song like the "Pepper's Beatles" (Sdrawkcab) all always enriched by the phantasmagoric effects of the Theremin and some daring maneuvers with magnetic tapes; yet another cover of the R&B hit "Heat Wave" and other enticing pop in "Say, I Do!" and in "What grows on your head?".

After two more singles released in 1969, Conly entered Harvard University where he contributed to the establishment of America's first computer music studio, and the band was completely lost to history.