Washing Machine

We are now deep into the lull period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, where it could be any day of the week and it doesn't really matter much which day it is. Apologies to those who are back at work- I appreciate it matters to you. For clarification's sake it is apparently Thursday. This is the best bit of Christmas for me, the day itself done with but the holiday very much in full effect. To celebrate, here's the distinctly unseasonal sounds of Mr. Fingers aka Larry Heard in 1986 with a record that brought forth a genuinely new sound into the world...

Washing Machine

Washing Machine came out as a 12", a double A-side paired with the legendary Can You Feel It? Early house music, a sound that changed the world and the way (many) people heard music. Using a drum machine and a keyboard, FX and delays, Heard creates a record that has depth, real emotional pull and the sensation of one's head being inside the titular white good appliance, a giddy, spinning sensation. Off kilter, acid squelch. Electronic psychedelia from Chicago thirty eight years ago. 

It's difficult for artists who create a technical and artistic revolution. What do you do next? Larry Heard has kept his fingers in the acid house pie, and added in new age, hip hop, four- four house, techno, cosmic house, jazz and r 'n' b to his music over the ensuing decades. 

In 2016 he went full melodic trippy, acid techno with Inner/ Outer Acid and on 2018's Cerebral Hemispheres an album that showed contained everything Larry Heard could do. On Electron he transplanted mid- 1970s Tangerine Dream to 21st century Chicago and found the motherlode, again. 

Electron