Friday Freak-Out: Electric Lucifer

[video link]

Friday Freak-Out: The Electric Lucifer is a quintessentially strange electronic music/acid rock record released 1970. Composed by Bruce Haack(1931-1988), it's a concept album that employs an array of instrumentation including, Moogs, guitar, voice, and a DIY vocoder to tell an epic story of the battle between heaven and hell. Above is a track from that album. Electric Lucifer Book II followed in 1979 and Haack also recorded Electric Lucifer Book 3 I.F.O. (Identified Flying Object) in rough, demo form, but it never saw an official release. Several years ago, San Francisco ambient DJ Dylan Yanez (aka DF Tram/Sound Capsule) had a chance encounter with Haack's friend and longtime manager Chris Kachulis. After getting to know one another, Kachuulis provided Dylan with access to the demos of Electric Lucifer Book 3 I.F.O., and encouraged him to mix and remix the raw material into his own vision for the final album in the trilogy.

DF Tram has just released this re-interpretation of the unreleased Bruce Haack masterpiece, Electric Lucifer Book III I.F.O., on a very limited-edition CD with original artwork by Smyle. For a taste, check out "When A Man Becomes Electric" in the player above. Dylan has been my favorite DJ for years, seamlessly mixing electronica, jazz, avant-garde, contemporary classical, and pioneering computer music into an immersive flow that's fresh, inspiring, and provocative. Electric Lucifer Book III I.F.O. is $12 on CD from Dylan's site.

Electric Lucifer Book III by Bruce Haack/SoundCapsule (DF Tram Blog)

The Electric Lucifer by Bruce Haack (Amazon)

• [Anonymous]

  OH GOd. I’ve never heard this before in my life … but it is CRACKING ME UP!!! I cannot stop laughing! Was this song the inspiration for the name of this site??

• [lewis stoole]

  simply delightful. sublime.
  must. have. more!

• [dr]

  Holy Cow, I have this on LP; it was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money. I haven’t listened to it in 35 years at least, but thanks to the reminder will probably clean it up and give it a spin this weekend. It was actually popular enough to warrant digitizing?

• [Anonymous]

  neat stuff ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VTdUMphzmhU#at=204

• [Nawel]

  Both versions are very good. Thanks for this post.

• [nagabrain]

  Down For The Real Ambient Music, I see!

• [Anonymous]

  sweeet rendition of Bruce Haack by the sound capsule. the whole album is a must hear! its like a missing piece of the puzzle…

• [SkullHyphy]

  also check out this interview with DF Tram about the album:
  http://www.strangus.org/?p=103

• [Anonymous]

  this is freakin sweet! thanks!

• [Anonymous]

  this other sound capsule track at that soundcloud link is great too

  http://soundcloud.com/the-sound-capsule/the-prophet

• [UncaScrooge]

  Oh, so it’s a proto-electronic freakout then? Time for some “White Noise”, “United States of America”, “Lothar and the Hand People” and, of course, “Silver Apples”.

  • [Anonymous]

    I think listening to some Wendy Carlos played at extra-slow speed may also be sufficient.

• [Anonymous]

  just in time for the rapture!!!

• [monitorhead]

  The documentary is pretty interesting (saw it on the DOC channel a few years back). Haack: King of Techno.
  Also just as good is the Dimension Mix album, which contains cover of Bruce Haack songs including “Funky Lil Song” done by Beck. pretty fun stuff!

  • [lewis stoole]

    i would be interested in seeing that.