Thursday Tunes

Isao Tomita is another of the innovators in electronic music from the 1970s. His early career was defined by his electronic interpretations of various classical composers such as Stravinsky, Debussy, and Holst.

The following piece is Tomita's version of the Mars movement from Gustav Holst's famous symphony, The Planets. The recording is noteworthy for two reasons. Artistically, it was one of the very first attempts to combine purely electronic, non-musical noises with a musical recording -- a very common practice among electronic house and trance performers nowadays. In this case, talking and singing "Martians" and a "Martian" rocket launch provide a whimsical lead-in to what is really a pretty linear interpretation of Holst's original composition, varying little from any number of widely available symphonic recordings of the movement.

Not everyone was happy about Tomita's innovations, however. When it was first released in 1976, Holst's daughter threw a temper tantrum, claiming it was a debasement of her father's work. Wanting to avoid public spectacle over the matter, Tomita withdrew the recording from production. A decade later, after the prickly Miss Holst was safely ensconced in the arms of Lord Dirt, it was re-released on CD.





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