Eight Electronic Pieces

They Say...

Review by Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide

The following are notes from the diary of a progressive teenager, arriving at his 16th year of life on this earth. The location is Boulder, Colorado. "Jan. 4, 1970: It is the night of my birthday and they are at it again. "They" being the new radio station, KRNW. The disc jockeys don't sound at all like the ones on the Top 40 stations, who speak so rapidly. These ones take a long time explaining what it is they are playing, separating phrases from time to time with "Like...uh...." "Jan. 13, 1970: They call it an "underground" radio station, but I know it is located right downtown on Pearl Street and is in fact upstairs. They are at it again, what they call a "music trip." Sometimes they say "Like...uh...we are going to do another of these trips." This means they are going to play a bunch of records, going from one right to the next, sometimes playing one right on top of the other. "Tonight they did this with Pink Floyd, which I recognized, but then the music got much weirder. I have to say it didn't do much with this problem I am having sleeping with the lights off, the results of some bad acid I took a few months ago. Maybe it wasn't even what they said it was. Anyway it is also the reason I am sleeping with the radio on all night, something happens inside my head if there is silence and it feels like I am falling. "The finale of the trip tonight was all these strange sounds, like a bunch of robots meeting to discuss strategy. Then sometimes the sounds were normal, like water dripping, except it isn't normal to hear this on the radio. This is the kind of stuff we are hearing on the radio now, however, thanks to this new radio station. The "like..uh.." guy comes on and announces something about the last piece that makes me feel better about it all: the record is actually made by someone who lives right here in Boulder. His name is Tod Dockstader. "February 23, 1970: The music trips are really helping me get through this intense winter. Dockstader is the only one you can count on to show up, trip after trip after trip. It always seems to be the climax, too, after pretenders such as Pink Floyd have shot their wad. Exposure to Dockstader has made me really critical of the music my friends are listening to. But I am still too scared to buy the records themselves, some of which are put out on a record company right here in Boulder, Owl. "April 1, 1970: The only competition that Dockstader has for airplay on this station is Miles Davis. One of the sides of Bitches Brew is nearly 30 minutes, so they put it on when they are going out for a smoke, grabbing a pizza or visiting with good old "Bill Poo." None of these disc jockeys seem to realize about ten minutes into this side, the record starts to skip for awhile. This use of Davis to cover a slack-off period seems to be the direct opposite of the way Dockstader is played on the radio, these are the moments when listener and disc jockey are totally engaged, because it is just hard to believe sometimes that these sounds are coming out of the radio. Mainly, though, it is a thrill to know the person that did this music lives right here in town. He is not a big star off in Hollywood. It sort of makes me feel like anybody could do this, if somebody right here in Boulder can. Maybe I could do something like this, too. " The diary entries go on, eventually hitting a tragic point when the radio station sells off its entire collection of music and becomes a golden oldies venture. By this time, the chronicler was living too far away from Boulder to take advantage of said sale. Most likely, the Dockstader sides were too worn out to buy, considering the amount of airplay they used to get. It is indeed gratifying to see Dockstader rediscovered by new generations of electronic music fans, but not surprising. He is simply one of the best practitioners of this tricky art, a genuine innovator. While his discography is not of the sort that could bury a healthy cabbage plant, the recordings he made are consistently brilliant, the music retaining its capacity to astonish. This Locust CD makes an album originally released by Folkways available once again. The recording consists of eight pieces that fit together as a suite, not revealing the gaps between them to any but the most concentrated listener. From an initial few seconds done in a kind of cheery, accessible sonority, Dockstader slips in the door like a costumed burglar and begins to create a sound world both real and unreal -- plumbing the mind, and minding the plumbing, so to speak.