From: http://www.wendycarlos.com/+sslms.html

When Sonic Seasonings was composed, there was no existing category for music of its kind: "a third, viable alternative to acoustic and musical environmental presentations." What became a catch-all of laid back, ephemeral styles, "New Age Music," was yet to come-over a decade in the future. We thought of it simply as another promising new way to make electronic music. We wanted to combine instrumental and other performed layers, with those taken directly from nature, and thus unperformed.

Since the term "Sound Design" was a concept that didn't yet exist by name, we had to innovate, working over and designing aural qualities and effects, building raw timbres from the ground up. Today no one would blink. Back then it was unproven and pioneering.

It was Rachel's and my goal to find a way to assemble music that had a much longer span and overall arch than most contemporary music of the time. We also wanted it to avoid the label of Classical music; these were not intended to be mini-symphonies, except in the subtlest and most analytic way. They were not intended as Popular music, either, as the extreme length of each movement will prove. They were also not Jazz, although some improvisational elements form an integral and essential part-while other elements are strictly composed and notated before recording them.

The music was deliberately minimal-this before the category of Minimalistic Music had been developed and in vogue. It was intended to work on a timbral and experiential level, so the sound could "flow over you," not a cerebral exercise like so much of what is now seen to be a wasteland of serious music from mid 20th Century until recently.

Fortunately, we made the recordings and mixes using the then state-of-the-art equipment available, and the master tapes still sound damn good. It is a pleasure to be able to go back and extract the essence from them in such a clean way, coming up with a digital master that sounds as fresh today as the master did then. No, it's even better, as the equipment has improved, and we can optimize and perform very subtle noise reduction. All those awful compromises of equalization and limiting that the LP required are gone. This is the way I'd hoped the original release could have sounded. It just took a little while longer...

There is a long-overdue demand for a definitive two track stereo re-release of Sonic Seasonings. New developments will make it possible to do a real multichannel stereo surround version soon as well (note: multichannel DVD-Audio has just been standardized -- yeay!). That will be personally very satisfying to me. After all, back in 1971 I had requested that CBS release the album using the then new CD-4 true Quadraphonic system. CBS refused (after all, JVC along with "the enemy", RCA, had developed CD-4!), wishing to use their imitation, pseudo-quad compromise, SQ. A standoff. Another big surprise after all these years is that two track stereo is still the standard, most popular method of music reproduction found in the world, a status not about to be replaced anytime soon. This deluxe edition therefore will satisfy that genuine need.

We have used every possible care to assure the integrity of this digital master to the original mixed tapes. The actual 3-M tape machine used to record those first generation surround masters was painstakingly refurbished and brought up to spec. Other than Dolby, no auxiliary equipment was placed in the circuit path into our high resolution A/D convertors. The 4 to 2 channel "fold-in" reduction was fed directly to the DAW, replicating the process I'd developed originally for our CBS two track masters, including that "nearly surround" property. I hope you enjoy hearing all the details, clarity and sonic depth that remained inaudible up until now.

--Wendy Carlos, 1998

Track Listing:

Disc one
"Spring" – 22:28
"Summer" – 21:44
"Fall" – 21:08

Disc two
"Winter" – 20:42
"Winter (Outtake)" – 5:23
"Aurora Borealis" – 19:58
"Midnight Sun" – 19:57

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retagged from up by backdoorman on Jul 09 2009

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