Teddy Lasry - E=MC²

Teddy Lasry used to be reeds and flute player for early Magma lineups up to the classic Mekanik Destrüktiw Kommando album. He also wrote a few pieces for the first two Magma albums, his compositions being quite interesting jazz-rock affairs, even though quite different from the direction the band-leader Christian Vander was working on during those early years. So after he permanently left Magma in 1973, he begot a solo career. He concentrated on composing music for sound libraries. E=MC² is one of those library albums. Instead of jazz-rock or dominant woodwind arrangements or anything resembling his work with his former band we have a synthesizer based affair. Although Lasry throws in some woodwinds here and there, he concentrates on lush keyboard arrangements. The result is the kind of cerebral proto-ambient library music album which musically is quite close to some Kraut-rock like Ashra with its hypnotic keyboard ostinati and minimalist themes. There is also some affinity with some of the spacey ambient-like work from Soft Machine or Gong. Occasionally there is some full band instrumentation on some of the tracks too. "Quasar" builds up to a full band sound propelled by the rhythm section, resulting in what sounds like some of the spacier Gong jams from You era. While "Nonsense" is carried by ethnic/tribal drum work with a bit of clarinet thrown in and also layers of synthesizers and electric piano. This is probably the most jazz-fusion-ish track, without actually sounding too generic. Occasionally we're treated to some mallet percussion as well. From a few library albums I've heard, this is definitely one of the most interesting ones.