Tonto's Expanding Head Band

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All Music Guide:

In 1969, engineers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff worked with synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog to develop additional modules for the centerpiece unit of Moog's keyboard empire. The result was T.O.N.T.O. -- the Original New Timbral Orchestra. Built into a collection of gently curving wooden cases, T.O.N.T.O. became the world's largest Moog synthesizer. While Robert Moog headed into the development of the Mini-Moog, Cecil and Margouleff took their baby onto the studio circuit, providing Moog elements for a bewildering variety of album projects and film soundtracks. T.O.N.T.O., like most Moog synthesizers, was notoriously temperamental, requiring constant adjustment -- reports mentioned Cecil being found buried in the back of the beast, tweaking oscillators and adjusting circuits. This bulkiness later led to the replacement of Moog parts with Serge Modular units.

In 1971, Cecil and Margouleff set out to record on their own, under the name of T.O.N.T.O.'s Expanding Head Band. The album Zero Time was a revolutionary piece of work that set out to explore the capabilities of the synthesizer with no regard for conceptions of pop success. Zero Time is still considered to be a turning point in the use of synthesizers in contemporary music. The following album, credited simply to Tonto, was the short-lived It's About Time, which came and went in a flash during 1972 (a fate that led to vinyl copies commanding high prices).

It's About Time was not the end of the T.O.N.T.O. story, however, as the duo continued to be very much in demand for studio work, with T.O.N.T.O. being called on to do everything from quietly replacing bass tracks to providing great washes of sound. Most importantly, Cecil and Margouleff began a long association with Stevie Wonder, whose Music of My Mind, recorded when he was 21 and just beginning a new Motown contract that gave him full control over his music, benefited from Cecil and Margouleff's work. Their influence on the subsequent course of black American music is often missed -- where Wonder led the charge, others followed suit, changing the way the music was produced, the way albums were formulated, and the overall sound. Many of the leading jazz/R&B artists of the 1970s and early '80s called on the talents of Cecil and Margouleff, including the Isley Brothers, Gil Scott-Heron, the Crusaders, the Gap Band, Quincy Jones, David Sanborn, Wilson Pickett, and the Rippingtons. T.O.N.T.O. was retired during the 1980s and was purchased by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh. In 1996, the Viceroy label combined both albums onto the single-disc CD reissue Tonto Rides Again.

Wikipedia:

Tonto's Expanding Head Band was a British electronic music duo consisting of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. Despite releasing only two albums in the early 1970s, the duo were (and still remain) influential because of their session work for other musicians (most notably Stevie Wonder), extensive commercial advertising work and the unique warmth and personality of their work.

The TONTO synthesizer [edit]

TONTO is an acronym for "The Original New Timbral Orchestra," the first, and still the largest, multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer in the world, designed and constructed over several years by Malcolm Cecil. TONTO started as a Moog modular synthesizer Series III owned by record producer Robert Margouleff. Later a second Moog III was added, then four Oberheim SEMs, two ARP 2600s, modules from Serge with Moog-like panels, EMS, Roland, Yamaha, etc. plus several custom modules designed by Serge Tcherepnin and Cecil himself - who has an electrical engineering background. Later, digital sound-generation circuitry and a collection of sequencers were added, along with MIDI control. All of this is housed in an instantly-recognizable semi-circle of huge curving wooden cabinets, twenty feet in diameter and six feet tall.

"I wanted to create an instrument that would be the first multitimbral polyphonic synthesizer. Multitimbral polyphony is different than the type of polyphony provided by most of today's synthesizers, on which you turn to a string patch and everything under your fingers is strings. In my book 'multitimbral' means each note you play has a different tone quality, as if the notes come from separate instruments. I wanted to be able to play live multitimbral polyphonic music using as many fingers and feet as I had."

TONTO was featured (as the "electronic room") in the 1974 Brian de Palma film Phantom of the Paradise. It was also used in the album 1980 by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson and was pictured on both the front and back covers of this album.

TONTO has been owned by Malcolm Cecil since he acquired Robert Margouleff's share in 1975. In the mid-1990s TONTO was moved to Mutato Muzika studios, the headquarters of Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo, leading to widespread rumors that Mothersbaugh had purchased TONTO but this was not true. Currently TONTO is located in its own studio in upstate New York close to Woodstock.

TONTO's influence [edit]

Tonto's Expanding Head Band's first album, Zero Time, was released in 1971 on the U.S. Embryo label (distributed by Atlantic Records) and attracted a lot of attention. Stevie Wonder in particular was impressed enough to subsequently feature TONTO in his albums starting with Music of My Mind and continuing through Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Jungle Fever; all projects which listed Margouleff and Cecil as associate producers, engineers and programmers (and winning them an engineering Grammy for Talking Book). Writing in Keyboard Magazine in 1984, John Diliberto asserted that:

"... this collaboration changed the perspectives of black pop music as much as The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper altered the concept of white rock".

The remainder of the 1970s and '80s saw TONTO featured on albums from Quincy Jones, Bobby Womack, The Isley Brothers, Gil Scott-Heron, Steve Hillage, Billy Preston, and Weather Report, as well as releases from Stephen Stills, The Doobie Brothers, Dave Mason, Little Feat, Joan Baez, and others. The TONTO synthesizer was also used in Brian De Palma's 1974 movie "Phantom of the Paradise" as well as appearing on-screen.

A second TONTO album, It's About Time was released in 1972.

In 1996 a CD "TONTO Rides Again" was released, which features all of Zero Time plus all of the tracks from It's About Time (mysteriously re-titled, apparently for legal reasons). In the liner notes to the re-release, Mark Mothersbaugh wrote:

"Once upon a time, TONTO represented the cutting edge of artificial intelligence in the world of music - Robert and Malcolm are the mad chefs of aural cuisine with beefy tones and cheesy timbres, making brain chili for those brave enough and hungry enough. Consequently, back in the cultural wasteland of the Midwest, the release of Tonto's Expanding Head Band was an inspirational indicator for starving Spudboys who had grown tired of the soup du jour. It was official - noise was now Muzak, and Muzak was now noise. So with TONTO "riding again" and the orb-of-sound resurrected, expect a healing. The masses are asses who need TONTO's glasses. Lookout, here comes TONTO!"

Also, Stevie Wonder said:

"How great it is at a time when technology and the science of music is at its highest point of evolution, to have the reintroduction of two of the most prominent forefathers in this music be heard again. It can be said of this work that it parallels with good wine. As it ages it only gets better with time. A toast to greatness... a toast to Zero Time... forever."

Virtual TONTO Live [edit]

Malcolm Cecil and his son, DJ Moonpup, brought Tonto's Expanding Head Band to the live arena performing at the Big Chill Festival on August 5, 2006. The festival was a 3 day affair held at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire, about 2½ hrs drive northwest of London. TONTO was not actually there - it's far too big and expensive to ship for a one hour performance - Malcolm Cecil created a "Virtual TONTO" and played live over pre-recorded backing tracks with a specially prepared visual show with hundreds of pictures of TONTO and Poli Cecil's art pieces. The performance was enthusiastically received by an audience of over 3,000 fans.