Quatermass (1964) ...
Electronic suite by 'sound organiser' and electronic music composer Tod Dockstader. Originally released on Owl records in 1966, this is Dockstader's tour de force ...Song and Lament ...
Parade ...
Flight ...
Second Song ...
The 45 minutes of Quatermass were drawn out of 12 hours of recordings ...in the process two 'moons' emerged ...
Two Moons of Quatermass: First Moon ...
Two Moons of Quatermass: Second Moon ...
The ultimate Tod Dockstader creation however was the monu-mental 46 minute opus Quatermass (1964). Too long for an album originally, two of the surplus edited-out works made it onto the CD release as a bonus: Two Moons of Quatermass, these two 4 minute pieces offer a taster to the awesome power of Quatermass itself. To quote Tod himself 'Quatermass was intended, from the start, to be a very dense, massive, even threatening, work of high levels and energy' - it was pure coincidence that in Britain at the time there was a sci-fi TV series called "Quatermass", as this would have made the ideal soundtrack. It's scarcely believable that virtually none of the sound sources are electronic, many of the textures are created by unlikely things like balloons, vacuum cleaner hoses, toys and the like, as well as the stable selection of percussive devices. This is dark nightmarish music, of great power and phenomenally dynamic execution, with astonishingly complex rhythmic and sequential passages, crescendos of such vigour, and use of stereo panning and bouncing that's far too dizzying to listen to on headphones... Alan Freeman, Audion magazine ... Audion#32
Dockstader's notes on Quatermass ...
Dockstader archive on Ubuweb ...
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