Back in the 1980s* there was an electronic composer called Larry Fast who performed under the name Synergy. Since few record labels were interested, he started his own, Audion. I bought a number of Audion recordings (on cassette), including some by Synergy and a couple by an English keyboard/programming wizard called Garry Hughes. The latter’s work really grabbed me; it reminded my of one of my favorite American synth instrumentalists, David Van Tieghem (who was on Private Music).
Time passed, and Audion failed, as most independent labels are destined to do. In the late 1990s I looked around to see if Gary Hughes’ and David Van Tieghem’s work was still available. David showed up at MP3.COM (remember them?), and I bought all of his CDs. Garry Hughes… nothing. A few comments on music discussion lists about “whatever happened to…”, but the trail was cold.
Last weekend I was going through a massive “media reorganization” at home: disposing of tons of books, moving CDs from racks to storage chests**, and so forth. At the bottom of a pile of forgotten stuff, I came across the Garry Hughes cassettes. I put them aside with the intention of eventually ripping them into iTunes, and that evening I decided to do a serious web search to find out what had happened to him. Fortunately the spelling of Garry with two r‘s is relatively rare, and I started to come across references to a producer by that name. Further searching revealed that he’d produced a group called Euphoria in 1999, and it then turned out that he was also a member of the group. Was it the same guy? According to Amazon.com, “Euphoria make slide-groove “guitronica,” blending spacey beats with looping spoken word, breathy vocals, multilayered guitar wash, and intense yet playful drum and keyboard programming.” A possible confirmation: one of my favorite Garry Hughes tracks was a piece called Inkstick, which features a sample of a woman saying, breathily, “I quite like that sound”, over and over.
It turned out that the first, eponymous album by Euphoria was available through iTunes. One short sample was promising, so I plonked down my electronic dosh and bought the whole album.*** It’s wonderful, with contributions from some of my favorite musicians and composers (Anne Dudley from Art of Noise, pedal steel wizard B. J. Cole, and Roy Babbington from Soft Machine). The basic sound comes from the interplay between Ken Ramm’s slide guitar and Garry Hughes’ programming. (And if it’s not the same Garry Hughes, the coincidence is remarkable.) Highly recommended. In fact I think I’ll just download their second album, Beautiful My Child….
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* I may have got some of the history wrong; I haven’t researched it recently. Corrections are welcomed.
** If the music is all on computer and iPod, may as well store the original CDs out of the way.
*** Some time I must write about how iTunes has finally killed the idea of deferred gratification.