Synergy is the brainchild of electronic synthesis wizard Larry Fast, who has contributed his keyboard magic to albums from Peter Gabriel, John Denver, and Kate Bush, among others. Patching modules of old analog keyboards together as well as creating many of his own instruments managed to get him not only his own company specializing in such feats, but praise from Robert Moog himself, for Fast's adaptive reconstruction of Moog's pioneering keyboards.

Computer Experiments Volume One is a project in which Fast created an interface between an analog keyboard and a computer. The concept was to have an artist enter into the computer a specific set of parameters, a defined set of notes that the computer could use as well as limits on tone duration, then let the computer compose a song. This sounds exactly like using pieces of tape to hold down random keys on a slow- attack sound on a keyboard and letting them go at non- specified intervals.

While the concept gives me fond memories of when I wrote a very similar program for my Commodore 128 computer in 1986, I think I find myself wishing more that I could hear my own primitive renditions than what Fast, under the name Synergy, let loose for three separate recordings in January of 1980. At least I have some sort of connection with the Commodore. While the technical challenge may be appealing for anybody geeky enough to try it, the end result is something you'll keep for memory's sake, not because you'd ever want to listen to it.

-Skaht Hansen

"The World After April"

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