ghosts of a dead future

I remember when the future was orange, set to the tune of blip tones and the whirring of tape reels in sterile, climate-controlled rooms.

It was a time when utopian fantasies took a back seat to dystopian nightmares engendered by the collective anxieties of a society trying to find its footing after a period of immense political and cultural upheaval. The only way to escape, if escape was even a possibility, was to return to the green world's ecological alternative to dehumanizing technological processes.

Yet, for all the lip service paid toward a life lived in harmony with nature and the rejection of the synthetic, it was an era marked by contoured plastic, earth-toned polyester, and Brutalist architecture.

It was an interesting time in which to be a kid, that's for sure...



See what I mean?

Raymond Scott - Baltimore Gas & Electric (from Manhattan Research, Inc. 2000) - From the dawn of ambient electronic music.

Gerhard Trede - Technischer Bewegungsablauf (from Electronic Toys: A Retrospective of 70's Easy Listening, 1996) - That's "technical course of motion," for those of you not fluent in deutsch.

Electric Moog Orchestra - Space Symphony (from Music From Close Encounters, 1977) - Ever summer, Maura makes a point of watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd rather watch paint dry.