Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies announces the official reissue of Dutch electronic music pioneer Tom Dissevelt’s influential 1963 release, Fantasy In Orbit. The album will be issued as a double LP, containing both mono (Fantasy In Orbit: An Astronaut's Impressions While Orbiting The Earth) and stereo (Fantasy In Orbit. Round the world with electronic music by Tom Dissevelt) versions of the album, as they were originally released.
Adored by David Bowie and sampled by the likes of DJ Premier, Cyprus Hill, Klaxons, RZA and David Holmes, the music of Tom Dissevelt holds a prominent and influential position in the long and complex history of electronic music.
Fantasy in Orbit is a concept album of sorts, sonically detailing a trip into Earth’s surrounding space, and it is a rather apt title for these extraterrestrial entities. It contains an endless supply of dissonant synths which filter in and out, Dissevelt adding layers whilst simultaneously stripping them away, rooted by some highly strung bass frequencies. It's meandering mid-century avant-garde electronics, shrouded in mystery and bombast. Lots of odd layers of bleeps and thrums converse sporadically, painting the spectre of madness that being alone in space surrounded by flashing equipment would bring. As sound collages, the tracks exhibited here are both vivid and unsettling, but ultimately careful and rich. If Dissevelt set out to convert the unfamiliarity that space travel would bring then he is definitely successful, but his mastery doesn’t end there. Each individual ‘instrument’ is beautifully crafted, showing off the man’s synthesis skills from track 1, all the more impressive considering how early this appeared in the history of electronic/synth music.
RIYL: Raymond Scott, Delia Derbyshire, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, Mort Garson, etc. This will definitely appeal to the early electronic bods who like totally out-there shit.
