Doug McKechnie - San Francisco Moog: 1968​-​72 Vol. 2 (2023)

The first volume of San Francisco Moog: 1968-72 introduced the world to a trove of recordings from a little-known hinge point in electronic-music history. Vol. 2 brings to light the rest of tapes—and the rest of the story.

In 1968, Bay Area native Doug McKechnie got hold of one the very first modular Moog synthesizers ever made and began finding his own way to play it. Soon, he was hauling the finicky instrument around to perform improvised concerts at colleges and psychedelic ballrooms, as well as an ill-fated appearance on the bill at the Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in 1969. Some of the performances were recorded, and the surviving tapes—never before released—capture a free-flowing, transportive sound that fills in the gap between the austere mid-century academic avant garde and the expansive cosmic suites of Tangerine Dream and the rest of the Berlin School in the ‘70s.

Vol. 2 captures a wider range of sounds and moods, encompassing austere sonic experiments (such as "Meditation Moog 2"), early sequenced pulses (including "Search for an Honest Man" and the aptly titled "Moving"), and melodic etudes ("Gyre and Gimble"). "Live at the Family Dog,"captures some of the ambiance of the legendary. ephemeral Denver concert hall on one of Doug and Moog's touring adventures. "Rumble Ramp Explosion" offers a suitably dramatic end for this chapter of documenting Doug's work.