Tuesday 19 May 2015

Kevin Lazar ‎– "Mutant III" (Vekazar Product ‎– K.Zar) 1982




Top marks for packaging goes to Mr Kevin Lazar for this retro-futurist minimal synth cassingle from 1982.
There seemed to be a rule in the late seventies/early eighties,which I blame on Kraftwerk, which sellotaped synthesiser music with the Naff cheese-fi of Battlestar Galactica. This usually involves vocalising in a monotone android stylee as if the singer is a robot. As fine as Kraftwerks electro-pop tunes were, their lyrics were cringingly awful. "We are the Robots" ranks up there with "I am an Anarchiiiist" as one of thee most embarrassing moments in pop poetry. Best heard in the German version,if you can't understand German.
This Kevin Lazar tape suffers the same fate.Three great minimal analogue synth tunes which would have benefited greatly from becoming instrumentals!


Tracklist:

A1Living On Another Planet(6.19)
A2Mutant Generation (6.33)
B1Transmutation (13.28)

DOWNLOAD the science of cheese set to classic vintage electronics HERE!

8 comments:

Kenny said...

The end of Transmutation ends abruptly; sounds like it was cut off. Is that how the tape plays? Thanks

Jonny Zchivago said...

Well spotted Kenny,no it doesn't end like that! I must have forgot to move the end cursor when i was editing it!It fades out normally. I may re-dit it,but i quite like the sudden ending.

Richard Zimmerman said...

oh hell yeah, Kevin Lazar rocks! This is probably the first time I actually recognize the artists presented. I am kind of shocked though, I always assumed that "Mutant Generation" was a recent record just with a retro feel. Anyway thanks a lot as usual!

Jonny Zchivago said...

Absolutely, Lazar is the real deal,from the pre-midi age.Retro-futurism, i made up that genre myself.

the saucer people said...

Great to see the Kevin Lazar tape posted here - this guy was a complete genius and thank god VOD had the good sense to reissue his sparse discography (which you know is limited if VOD could only make a single LP out of it!). A friend sent me a rip of the Mutant Generation LP and Transmutation just blew me away - retro-futurism on steroids! It was like the first time I heard the early Bernard Fevre albums, you have to remind yourself this was recorded decades, not minutes ago.

A little like the two Cybe tapes you posted, it makes you wonder just how many artists gave up after one or two releases simply because the sound was too futuristic for people to appreciate at the time (and like great art, people are just getting round to discovering it, hence the increasing interest in Conrad Schnitzler, Rudiger Lorenz and the aforementioned Bernard Fevre).

Excellent post, even with the chopped off end of Transmutation, which if you didn't know it would just assume it was how it was made!

the saucer people said...

Actually, I am having difficulty picking out the ending of Transmutation - I found a rip of the VOD release that is not cut up in individual tracks and it is really hard to work out where Transmutation ends and where the next track 'Insane O Tronic III' begins as they seem to segue into each other without a definable break to my non-musical ears.

- I keep trying different variations in Audacity and none of them seem to sound right - but with the original tape currently on sale at Discogs for £170, I think it is something I will learn to live with!

LR said...

"You need access
Request access, or switch to an account with access. "

Jonny Zchivago said...

Yes LR...for old ones like this Google deems it necessary to ask you to ask me for permission due to a security upgrade...so somewhere will be a place to request access to the file blah blah blah