Jeremiah Chiu
In Electric Time
On June 29, 2023, Jeremiah Chiu walked into the Vintage Synthesizer Museum (VSM) in Highland Park, Los Angeles, with no more concrete plan than "let's fire this stuff up and see what happens." He explored the VSM's vast collection of classic and rare synthesizers and sequenced, triggered and layered the devices together with the help of VSM founder and curator Lance Hill.
The resulting album - In Electric Time - was recorded in just two days and completed in the following two days. It was recorded entirely in analog by engineer Ben Lumsdaine, who contributed to some of the tracks himself. Cooper Crain (of Bitchin Bajas) also makes an appearance, but ultimately the collection is an intuitive expression of organic electronics conceived and created in context by Chiu alone, as he draws on a lifetime of work in sound synthesis to create a rich, refreshingly subliminal sequence of cinematic sketches and procedural themes.
In some ways, In Electric Time mirrors the immediacy of Raymond Scott's electronic studio recordings - with sharp cuts and whispers of space - and in other ways it evokes the magic of Harmonia's moment.