NATIONAL ANTHEM TO THE MOON: The story of Bruce Haack

The pioneer at work.

Today we are delving back through the crypts of space-time to find out more about the lesser known electronic explorer, BRUCE HAACK. He really was an architect of all things analogue and one of electronic music's most groundbreaking individuals.

Born in the isolated mining town of Rocky Mountain House in Alberta, Canada. Haack had all the time in the world to experiment, and it did not take him long to search out his passions. At the tender age of 4, Haack started toying with his parents piano, experimenting with simple melodies and soon after - aged only 12 - he found himself in his first band The Swing Tones. While playing with The Swing Tones people began to notice Haack's some-what supernatural memory. He had the ability to listen to something and within seconds play it back with a great amount of precision.

Rockin' it with the kids.

Through his studying as a teen at the University of Alberta, Haack was awarded a scholarship to join the Juilliard school, New York. Which led him to be taught by the composer Vincent Persichetti who's former students included the likes of Philip Glass. But the restrictive system of the school was too much to bear, and he quickly departed going on to score dance productions and compose songs for pop labels like Coral and Dot. 

"DECK THE HALLS" is played on the head
of a pretty lass by Bruce and his red-buttoned
instrument called "M".

Haack also found another means of expression in creating broad-minded, children's educational records. Along with some of his friends he started a record label called DIMENSION 5, on which they released a whole series of records call Dance, Sing & Listen. These records would prove a surreal collage of instruments, sounds and ideas that were a definite precursor to the direction bruce would later take.

Although Haack had almost no conventional training in electronics he created many of his own instruments, including the Dermatron (see right), a touch and heat-sensitive synthesizer that he demonstrated on CBS's I've Got A Secret by securing it to the foreheads of twelve "chromatically tuned" young ladies. He shed some light on his creations while staring on Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood, a children's television program, and scored a few different commercials for Kraft Foods and Parker Brothers. He was quite the clean cut commercial figure up until this point, despite his experimental electronic leanings, and the release of his "Electric Lucifer" album surprised many.

"You couldn't dance to it. You could, however, trip balls to it."

His major label debut on Columbia was not music designed for the younger generation. Far from it. After being introduced to the psychedelic under-belly of the 1960's by his manager Chris Kachulis, Haack got to work on his groundbreaking concept album. The main concept concerning Earth's struggle for survival in an epic battle between Heaven and the depths of Hell. Sonically it feels laced in acid, chaos and dread, but, with Haack's home-made instruments and modular gadgets (literally crafted from whatever he could lay his hands on) the sounds and production have a distinct other-worldly quality. Electric Lucifer featured a homegrown, prototype vocoder and unique lyrics, which deal with "powerlove" a force so strong and positive that it would not only save mankind but even save Lucifer himself. Some say that Electric Lucifer was the album that conceived the popular synthesised and sample based music we hear today. What's assured, is that if Bruce did not push the limits of music at the time it would have been a much slower progression into synthesised music. He pushed the boundaries forward at a time when electronics were in their infancy and alien to most of the world. What really tops it off is that, in the vain of a certain Mr Tesla, he pushed the frontiers forward with nothing but his own two hands.

Bruce Haack - Electric To Me Turn by brucehaack

By the time the 1970's were in full swing Haack's musical horizons were broader than ever, though still dabbling in children's Sci-fi laced records. In '71 he released the album "Together" in the same vain as Electric Lucifer and perhaps, in an attempt to differentiate this work from his children's music, released it under the name Jackpine Savage (the sole occasion he used this pseudonym). He also befriended composer and fellow instrument inventor Raymond Scott, and the two proceeded to experiment with Scott's Clavivox and Electronium. Sadly no known recordings of the collaboration remain, and the mind is left to wonder what new, weird and wonderful sounds the two experimentalists indulged in.

HAACK-ATTACK!

In the later half of the 70's as the rest of the world were finally beginning to catch up, Haack returned with something as conceptually satisfying as Electric Lucifer. The record in question "HAACKULA" was a striking collection of songs that caused a bit of controversy with Haack’s outrageous songwriting and lyricism. Rife with anti-establishment sentiment, unhinged sexual references, conspiratorial warnings, venomous attacks on his critics and those who he viewed as insincere or intellectually inferior, and more expletives than was customary prior to the rise of so-called “Gangsta Rap”, Haackula is still something of a shock to the modern ear. The some-what shocking lyrical content caused the record to be denied it's release until over an incredible 20 years later! His music would reach an entirely new crowd post Haackula, and in 1982, Bruce recorded what many describe as his swan song, a proto-hiphop collaboration with Def Jam's Russell Simmons, entitled "Party Machine".

Sadly, Haack died in 1988 from heart failure, but his label and commitment to making creative children's music still survives to this day. With the help of compilations (Stones Throw, Mute) and documentaries like the brilliant "Haack: The King of Techno" his music, along with his influence, continues to spread through-out the new music world. With a host of artists sampling his work and many a tribute record honouring his name, the luminary figure of Bruce Haack is destined to resonate in the electronic ether long into the unforeseeable future, he so often penned in song.

"You left your courage in a tree, and history gave you a blow job" Bruce Haack.