Bruce Haack - 1970 - The Electric Lucifer

Quality: 5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5

Bruce Haack expended a lot of his efforts on children's and novelty music. Here, he tries to make a more 'adult' album, although the insane concept and sounds keeps it charmingly goofy. I guess you could say that this album sits at a crossroads among the Jefferson Airplane, the easy listening Moog stylings of Perry and Kingsley, and wacked out mysticism. No, that combination doesn't really make sense, but that's probably a good thing for this album. The album's concept has to do with 'Powerlove,' a force that is supposed to bring humanity together and reunite it with the forgiven Lucifer. Word up!

Despite the concept, this album comes across best as a series of great, and very out there, tunes. My favorite here is "Program Me," which really does come across like alien doppelgangers of the Jefferson Airplane playing rubber instruments in a glass moon dome. "National Anthem to the Moon," meanwhile, has a great minor-key melody and "Electric To Me Turn" features some awesome homemade vocoder. "Word Game" is sort of an even more deranged version of what Haack was doing with Miss Nelson. For a dose of pure psychedelic madness, I direct you to "Super Nova." You get your 'powerlove' anthem with "Requiem," although it entertainingly loses focus after each verse, and then ends with a bit of "The First Noel."

This is a pretty phenomenal album. It's certainly unlike anything else that you'll come across. Bruce Haack really was a mad genius. Although his approach and music was extremely different, I feel that Haack must have shared the same astral plane as Sun Ra (I like to think they still do). When I bought this one on vinyl, the fellow at the record store gave me a discount for the simple fact that I was buying The Electric Lucifer.