Derek Power
I'm very pleased this album has been made available again after twenty-five or so years. Like with TEU, there is harmony between various contrasts but this takes it to another level.
Favorite track: Strand of Life ("Viroid").
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Laurie Spiegel’s second full-length album, Unseen Worlds, arrived just over ten years after her debut album. Having realized the pieces found on The Expanding Universe (1980) on an instrument no longer available to her, the GROOVE System at Bell Laboratories, Spiegel moved on to composing and developing for the Alles Machine, alphaSyntauri, McLeyvier and various other instruments before creating an instrument entirely her own. Spiegel created “Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument” on a Macintosh 512k so that she could have an instrument that was not general purpose but a small, specialized, and well defined musical instrument for and by her that she did not have to compromise on or risk losing access to it. While it was a very personal instrument for Spiegel, demand among friends and colleagues nevertheless grew until “Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument” became a commercial product for the Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari personal computers with a devoted popular following that continues to this day, despite the obsoletion of those platforms. At the time of her Unseen Worlds album’s original release in 1991, the issuing record label turned out to be going out of business, dissolved and disappeared, sending the album immediately into obscurity. Outside of a private CD edition issued by Spiegel on her own Aesthetic Engineering label in 1994, this new edition represents the first proper commercial release of Unseen Worlds.
“Unseen Worlds is not so much based on melody and rhythm as it is on textures, pulses, and sonic environments. Sometimes dark, sometimes light, its drama pulls in the adventurous listener who wants to take a musical journey. Using computer software she wrote in order to implement a unique musical vision, Unseen Worlds blends the artistic and the technical, the cerebral and the sensual, and revives the virtually abandoned tradition of electronic music. Unseen Worlds is the work of a sonic explorer whose music can both challenge and caress. Those looking for other worlds of sound can put on headphones and find them here.” - Craig Anderton
credits
released January 18, 2019
All compositions composed, produced, mixed, and coded by Laurie Spiegel
Mastered by Paul Zinman
supported by 214 fans who also own “Unseen Worlds”
The real title of this album is "Carl Stone songs you can cry to." Sonali will make you dance, I guess, but then you'll start crying again after that. Paul Klee
supported by 176 fans who also own “Unseen Worlds”
All the fun throwing-it-against-the-wall-seeing-what-sticks experiments. Dong Il Jang tries 15 ideas and 3 of them work, Shibucho (ultimate brain tickler) tries 15 ideas and 12 work, and Shing Kee just works forever into the infinite annals of your memory Paul Klee
Available commercially for the first time since its initial 1991 release, Spiegel’s fantastic “intelligent instrument” album testifies to the power of an artist who pushed the boundaries of electronic music to unexplored territory. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jan 11, 2019
This Chicago quintet use classical and contemporary instrumentation to craft this beautifully contemplative ambient release. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 2, 2023