At a time when everyone and their mother can be spotted at the local farmer’s market rocking a Plantasia tote, there’s never been a better moment to re-introduce Bruce Haack, who’s best remembered for his 1970 Moogsploitation opus The Electric Lucifer. Yet like his fellow minimalist synthesis Mort Garson, Haack contained multitudes far beyond the loosely Satanic sounds of that LP—in fact just four years later he unveiled a charmingly experimental children’s album called Captain Entropy, an educational journey entirely written and performed by Haack himself.
On August 25, Shimmy-Disc will release a vinyl reissue of the late musician’s record along with three new unreleased tracks (clocking in at 20 minutes of new material) on its digital component, all of it fully remastered by Kramer and available on streaming for the first time. “Captain Entropy is not simply a brilliant work of art and a pioneering ingredient in the history of electronic music,” the producer shares. “It’s also a unique ‘kids’ record and the perfect introduction to Haack’s work for listeners who have never heard of him before. It was an obvious choice, and there was no dissent among us over which LP should serve as the ideal introduction of Haack’s catalog to the indie-listening audience.”
Leading up to the release, the label is sharing the remastered version of album track “Music,” a playfully driving instrumental paired with Haack’s clinical-yet-human spoken-word vocals explaining what the whole deal is with music. We’re also getting a new music video directed by Ryan Hover that illustrates this proto-computer-voice narration with squiggly black-and-white imagery that almost looks like it’s been scrawled on a chalkboard.
“His decades-long work had always focused on tinkering, inventing, innovating, and creating, but at its very core, everything he has done, from start to finish, is about music, with a prime focus on how music can teach, inform, illuminate, and explain what life and what being alive is all about,” Kramer adds about the track. “His connection to kids—and in helping them to understand how the world works—couldn’t be more clearly articulated than it is in this particular song. Bruce Haack cared about kids, about community, about culture, and about everything he saw and felt around him, and ‘Music’ proves it. Bruce Haack was a composer, and Shimmy-Disc is committed to promoting his life's work as a composer. This is no ‘novelty’ release designed and marketed for oddballs and outsiders. This is music for everyone.”
Check out the video below, and pre-order the record here.
