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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fuzzy warbles., 26 Feb 2005
This is the album that prompted Stanley Kubrick to hire Carlos and producer Rachael Elkind to create the music for A Clockwork Orange. Listening to the first few fuzzy, electronically enhanced bars of the opening Sinfonia to Cantata # 29 here, it isn't hard to see why Kubrick was so bewitched, especially given the bold juxtaposition of warm, soulful instrumentation, broken by a mechanical, dehumanised approach to performance, which, of course, seems perfectly suited to Kubrick's directorial style and to the literary sub-text of the film aforementioned. If you've seen A Clockwork Orange and discovered the soundtrack album, you'll be fully aware of the style of music Carlos creates, with her central ideology being the transformation of classical works via electronic instrumentation. This album was released in 1969, so it's all fairly primitive by today's standards... but for me, there is an abundance of charm found in these recordings, which, to my ears, are still enjoyable, intelligent and deeply enriching, and demonstrate that classical music isn't something to be feared, but rather, something to be enjoyed.This was a revolutionary work at the time and it still works unbelievably well, with Carlos performing much of the material here on an early variation of the Moog synthesiser, an instrument integral to the 70's ambient and prog-rock movements with bands like Yes and Soft Machine putting the Moog to great rhythmic use, whilst people like Brian Eno from Roxy Music and former Soft Machine member Robert Wyatt really pushing the Moog as far as it could go in terms of creating musical textures. It even came back into fashion (briefly) in the mid-1990's, with the band Weezer using the Moog throughout their second album Pinkerton, as well as the band The Rentals, who composed much of their first album on the very same device. However, it is Carlos who here unlocks the possibilities of the Moog, enriching the bold compositions and stirring arrangements of Bach with these grinding, pulsating, very early-70's (but in a good way!) reinterpretations. There's also a certain minimalism to it, with certain moments bringing to mind an electronic take on people like Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and Michael Nyman, whilst the use of droning, fuzzy, electronic and perhaps hypnotic instrumentation could possibly be seen as a prelude to the shoegazers (people like the Jesus & Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, who made droning, heavenly noise seem like the most entrancing thing in the world!!). Admittedly, it's not for everyone, with those already "switched-on" to Bach no doubt seeing this as something of a novelty, whilst others may just find the entire notion of these full orchestral works being pared down to a simple Moog to be rather pointless or boring. I don't see that myself (and I'm an admirer of Bach's work, particularly St Mathew Passion and Goldberg Variations)... for me, the album is like a great, alien reinterpretation, as well as an ambient experiment into electronic recoding techniques. If you happen to have seen A Clockwork Orange and loved the haunting and surreal soundtrack... then you're going to want a copy of this album.
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~ Wendy Carlos
~ Wendy Carlos
~ Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
~ Tomita
~ Claude Debussy
![Switched On [BOX SET]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41F6SEA79EL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
