You need to listen to Laurie Spiegel’s masterpiece of early ambient music

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Spiegel for the site. To prepare for the interview, I spent a lot of time in recent weeks revisiting Spiegel’s records, notably The expanding universehis 1980 masterpiece that blended synthesizer experimentation with early examples of what would eventually be called ambient music and algorithmic composition techniques. It is a marvel that is both nostalgic and avant-garde.

Tracks like “Patchwork” and “A Folk Study” use bouncy arpeggios that beg comparisons to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” while “Old Wave” and “East River Dawn” evoke early M83 or Boards of Canada. The palette she draws from is vibrant and timeless, rarely dating in the same way as her (also excellent) later record Invisible worlds does, as it occasionally touches FM bells.

There are also slower forays into more typical ambient sounds like “Appalachian Grove II” or “The Unanswered Question”, whose melodies move at such a glacial pace that they can sometimes seem almost completely random. Tracks like these and “Music for Dance II” wouldn’t be out of place on modern-ambient Instagram or modular synthesizer YouTube, scenes that obviously owe a lot to Spiegel’s pioneering works.

Although the vast majority of tracks completely lack percussion, there are a few exceptions, notably the fast, polyrhythmic “Drums.” But what stands out for me is “Clockworks,” which ventures into the kind of proto-industrial grime and rattle you’d find on a Throbbing Gristle record or even a modern Trent Reznor score. The fact that it doesn’t appear to have been sampled (at least according to WhoSampled) and reused as the backbone of an underground hip-hop track shocks me.

While The expanding universe does not necessarily present a coherent vision, it nevertheless appears as the singular expression of an artist at the peak of his art. The 2012 re-release adds to Spiegel’s legacy by including over 100 minutes of additional material that was not included in the original release.

Although the idea of ​​experimental ’70s synthesizer music might scare casual listeners, there’s something inviting about many of the works on The expanding universe. Sure, some tracks, like the one-two punch “Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds” and “Wandering in Our Times,” aren’t afraid to sit for long periods of time in dissonant, conflicting tones, but for the most part, Spiegel’s compositions are tuneful and accessible.