Larrison - Connecters Vol. 1: Original Recordings, 1992-1999 [LP]

Connecters Vol. 1: Original Recordings, 1992-1999 marks the first public release by Larrison, the recording alias of Midwestern visual artist and musician Larrison Seidle. Composing, programming, and recording entirely on a Casio CZ-5000 during the halcyon days of early 90s homespun exploration and experimentation, Larrison inhabited a dreamworld of his invention, soundtracked by space age pop vignettes speckling with hypnotic, ebullient layered synthesizer melodies. Unfolding across 26 tracks, all newly restored and mastered from the original sources, Connecters Vol. 1 reinvents itself, song by song, transcending time and defying the fated obscurity of this brilliant, discreet music made three decades ago. Larrison Seidle grew up in Greenwood, Indiana, a working-class suburb of Indianapolis, in the 70s and 80s. He did not come from a family of musicians, however a household that encouraged musicality. His father bought an electric organ, envisioning Larrision and his older brother learning the instrument. "It ended up with my father sitting at the organ some nights, making up, and playing over and over, this one song that I can still remember the first few bars of," recalls Larrison. It was possibly in this moment absent of formal training but full of encouragement and exploration, the artist's forays into musical experimentation took root. A permission to dabble that would distinctly color his creative output in the years to follow. While classic rock records were readily available in Larrison's childhood home, his father borrowed 35mm educational documentaries from the library to screen in the living room, each scored with whimsical instrumentals. As a teenager he recorded John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's end theme from Escape from New York using a small tape recorder placed next to the television speaker, and he loved Tangerine Dream's contributions to Ridley Scott's dark fantasy Legend. His obsession with these largely lyricless, synthesizer based compositions produced an idiosyncratic understanding of how music serves to complement not only what we can see in front of us but what we undergo in the recesses of consciousness. In 1985, when he was thirteen, Larrison convinced his father to buy him a Casio CZ-5000 keyboard. A novelty in the Seidle household like the organ before, it wasn't until after graduating high school in 1991, and starting college at Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, that he discovered the sequencer built into the Casio and began recording his compositions to tape. "The CZ-5000 and it's 8 track sequencer is the only musical instrument I used. It has a nearly unlimited new sound creation feature," explained Seidle.