George Harrison is as foundational to electronic music as Black Sabbath is to metal. Welcome to No Skips, the weekly column where we take an album track by track to see if any tracks are skippable or not! The verdict is pretty simple this week, given the Beatles member released his 1969 album “Electronic Sound” as a two-track composition.
I admire Harrison’s confidence to drop this dookie of an album in this era of the Beatles’ commercial height, as “Abbey Road” would use the Moog synthesizer that defines “Electronic Sound” in clever and less annoying ways. However, having listened to abrasive noise music acts in the past, part of me enjoys “Electronic Sound,” a sentiment that most listeners from the 1960s and today couldn’t fathom to share.
Album covers got riskier in the ‘60s, but Harrison’s may take the cake. The only comparisons I can make are to the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and drawings that kids in therapy are forced to create to portray problems happening in the home. The atmosphere in the Beatles’ recording studios during this time was tumultuous and this may have been Harrison’s way of showing that all was not well behind the scenes for what was considered the peak of the Beatles.
“Under the Mersey Wall” throws us right into Moog madness. While Harrison eventually layers the individual sounds, there is something sinister in the background for the first minute. Then, pauses elapse before each screech graces the ears incessantly. The recording quality becomes more muffled at the three-minute mark, as if Harrison migrated to a cave for this section only.
There are some moments of proper vision, like the melody — if you can call it that — at 6:45, along with a decent ambient section before a higher pitch pervades the ears 10 minutes in. I wish there was a level of progression with the 18-minute cut, but it ends essentially how it starts.
“No Time and Space” begins with synth sounds akin to fragmented television static. The noises somehow become more aquatic yet aggressive a few minutes in. Shitty snare drums and a rip-off version of the “Goat Simulator” soundtrack are what the track reminds me of. That’s a compliment or diss depending on if you’re a glass half-full or glass half-empty person.
The rest is unspeakable horror when you’re on the last leg of a road trip, driving through Pennsylvania at night surrounded by flashing red lights with no purpose.
A feat of the times, “Electronic Sound” is an interesting foray into a developing genre by the talented Harrison, though groups like White Noise were producing better albums in this style. It’s unclear if the piece is improvised or meticulously crafted like the equally dissonant “Trout Mask Replica” by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, also from 1969, but it’s impossible to wrap one’s mind around the mad energy in Harrison’s head at the time.
Either way, it’s a relief that the astronauts of Apollo 11 flew to the moon soundtracked by John Stewart and Frank Sinatra instead of this. If it was “Electronic Sound,” they may have crashed out and lost the Space Race.