Bruce Haack
Tomorrow, Shimmy-Disc shares the posthumous reissue of Bruce Haack’s 1975 album This Old Man (Shimmy-2029). This is the second Bruce Haack LP that Shimmy-Disc has re-released, following Captain Entropy (Shimmy-2019), in August 2023. This reissue is the first time This Old Man has been released on vinyl since 1975, originally via the artist’s own label, Dimension 5.
To mark the occasion, Shimmy-Disc is sharing a video for the album’s focus track, “Thank You” as a Big Takeover exclusive. Bruce Haack’s greatest genius resided in his humble vision combined with a ferocious curiosity and idiosyncratic approach to musical experimentation. The directness of his prose and his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve is never more apparent than in this sweet apparition of a song. He means what he says, and he knows you know….who You are.
Bruce Haack (1931 – 1988) was a Canadian composer and electronic music pioneer whose creative output from the 1950s through the 1970s has been tragically under-appreciated.
Now considered to have been decades ahead of his time, Bruce Haack forged his music from glittering “new” computer landscapes of his own invention, long before the world was aware that such things were even possible. Welcome to his beautiful crucible of electronic sounds, wherein he illuminated his myriad of interests in science, the wonders of childhood, and the human condition, woven into a musical tapestry that shimmers like an exploding sun.
Most of the music on this album was programmed on a polyphonic music computer built by Bruce Haack from surplus parts furnished by Ver-Tech Radio of Philadelphia. The machine was made in 18 months – without diagrams or plans (Bruce Haack has never studied electronics) and will produce up to twelve simultaneous voices in changing sequence via a memory holding over four-thousand bits of information. It will also compose at random.
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