Subtitled
"Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult", this album by Ataraxia
was an idea to designing music to accompany meditations to the mantra of
the listeners choice. This concept became the album The Unexplained. It
was the Moog-wizard Mort Garson himself, who followed up his Black Mass
album from 1971 with this strange opus. But Garson changed his
pseudonym from "Lucifer" to "Ataraxia", and this, his second (and last)
occult-themed instrumental Moog-album, was released by RCA in 1975.The
result was another great piece of Moog-music much in style with his
previous album, mainly less sinister but more melodious, and it also had
better and more complex drumbeats. Each title was named after an occult
phenomenon or theme, and this time the titles seemed to suggest that
the lighter side of occultism was in focus. Even the cover featuring a
mystic but calm "aura" face was very fitting to the album's content. The
enigmatic Mort Garson touched down on only a handful of records, but
they where varied and splendid wonders. In his specialty, occult Moog,
Garson's work is unrivalled; Ruth White was the only other to make more
than one occult-Moog LP. Unfortunately, most of Mort Garson's greatest
records came late in his career; the liners yield little if any insight
into the man behind the music. After this album Garson left
occult-themed music behind, recorded one more album; Plantasia in 1976
(an album with the goal of helping plants grow with the aid of the
soundtrack music!) and then seemed to just vanish out of the public eye.
Mort Garson, a really strange but amazing composer and conductor, ranks
as one of the real geniuses of 20th century music. Line-up / Musicians Mort Garson/All Instruments Discography The Unexplained 1975
