WENDY CARLOS
Beauty in the Beast (East Side Digital)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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It's hard to tell how much of this disc is what it initially seems. From the outset, it sounds like an amazingly futuristic and progressive album to have come from 1986, which is when the album first came out. However, the liner notes mention that this has been "restored and remastered" by Carlos for the 2000-date release, and so I'm thinking that a lot of the cool, echoey choir effects are recent additions, or were cleaned up very significantly from the original 16-track Dolby recordings. Whatever the case, this is very cool, and it's obvious from the free way these "songs" are put together that Carlos was having just a blast experimenting with the expanding synthesizer technology that was almost on the verge of replacing "real" instruments in the early to mid-80s. The pieces are full of computerized blips and squeaks, bells ringing, fake horns, and haunting piano melodies, like faraway circus music at times, and mangled tribal chants at others.

© 2001 - Holly Day