The Gleeson Planets

Cyndustries put online the Jan/Feb 1977 issue of Synapse.

In it Patrick Gleeson has a rather technology oriented interview including discussion of his 1976 synthesized version of Holst's "The Planets' called "Beyond the Sun" (never CD released)

http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/intro.cfm

see the Jan/Feb 1977 issue

It's a facinating album because you can tell it took a lot of technical work and achievement, but all the work is into doing it all technically. I don't hear much being expressed other than getting it all down.

It's interesting that he's talking about doing "Rite of Spring" next (in 1977) just as Tomita announced it for sometime after Dawn Chorus (post 1984). Neither did it. Gleeson did a more commercial "Star Wars" (not for the same label I recall) and eventually did an all digital "Four Seasons' as his other major classical album some years later.

As I discussed in the old Yahoogroups Tomita list (archived right here), Gleeson was quite upset by the comments by the composer commissioned to extend the "Appocalypse Now Redux" score to add never recorded music for edited out scenes. In Keyboard Magazine the guy creating the music to match the existing "Appocalpse Now" music assumed the original music was trying to sound like Tomita and created his music with that in mind. Of course the original music supervised by Gleeson was anything but trying to sound like Tomita. The missassumption occurred because Coppola contacted Tomita for music production (Tomita of course is a very accomplished film score composer not a session producer) and Tomita explained he takes a very long amount of time to record and couldn't in Coppola's time frame. But perhaps why it seemed so obvious (but wrong) was that Coppola and his father came up with a main theme that was quite similar to Holst's "Mars" and then had it performed on synths. So that would be something very associated with Tomita on the surface, but might be more a combination of factors that make one think of Tomita.

 

In the Gleeson interview, Gleeson mentioned that he was working on an (unnamed) instrument. I wonder what that was? It's also interesting to note that in the same issue of Synapse, there is a review of Tomita's Planets:

http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/jan1977/synapse31.gif

 

As for the instrument he might be working on, it's possible he meant what was to become the Emu Audity considering he was the most advanced Emu-user out there. Though I have more of a 1978-9 date on that. The Audity, a programmable multivoiced synth eventually got too expensive to become a viable project and Emu decided to build the first low cost sampler instead... but that was after a few years of trying to create a viable Audity.

As for the Tomita Planets review, I pretty much grasped right away regarding the "Land of Hope and Glory" melody that essentially Tomita is noticing Holst himself is quoting it in his melody so he's having the alien voices take note of that, you know, "hey, did you hear that?" 'what?',"you know" - hums it.

 

Isn't it "I vow to thee my country" that is sung to the tune of Holst's Jupiter (now World in Union for rubgy fans). "Land of Hope and Glory" is Pomp and Circumstance (forget which one) by Elgar surely (although both are often played together in popular concerts eg Last Night of the Proms).

 

I'm sure you're right. I just assumed they got the I.D. on that melody correct in the review.