Great Hits Of The 70's Moog Style: Contour 1974

'Great Hits of the 70's Moog Style'? Well it makes a change from a load of hits played 'Hammond Style' I suppose, but even so I have to take exception to that title in this context - there were any number of 'great hits' in the 1970's, and true this came out in 1974 so it's necessarily limited to the first half of the decade only, but come on; 'The Wombling Song', 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep', 'Long Haired Lover From Liverpool', 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon', 'You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me' - hits they may have been, but to call them 'great' would be using a different definition to the one I'd have in mind. But horses for courses I guess.

 

For those unaware, the Moog synthesiser came to prominence in the late sixties through albums like Wendy Carlos' 'Switched On Bach' and the treatments of Rossini and Beethoven she did for the soundtrack for 'A Clockwork Orange'. These recordings still sound like the future even now, but 'Great Hits of the 70's Moog Style' sounds very much of the past. Why? Well Moog synthesizers are famously monophonic, meaning they can only play one note at a time. Carlos' work on the above involved painstaking layering and multitracking of the instrument to build up the sound and show off its full range and power. Unfortunately, very little of that innovation of on display here.

 

The artist or artists behind this piece of work are not namechecked anywhere so I've no idea who they are, but rather than go to the trouble (and presumably expense) of creating a veritable 'wall of Moog' in presenting the songs, the input of the machine is reduced to plunking out the main melody of each song one harsh note at a time while a perfunctory cabaret band plays underneath to keep the beat and fill in the gaps. As a showcase for Robert Moog's machine its dire stuff, but that's not a criticism per se - I don't think the people behind this were out to push any envelopes, but it does mean the whole record has a tacky, rinky dink feel that makes every track sound like the theme music to some godawful sitcom that never made it past the pilot, reducing bubblegum pop to just plain, flavourless gum with no bubble. Listening to this actually hurt my ears and I bet the folk on the cover don't actually have this playing in the background while they're jigging around.