The Larry Fast <> Synergy Info Page

The Synthesist of the 1970s

Larry Fast, the pioneering synthesizer composer and experimenter, was Peter Gabriel's keyboardist during Gabriel's solo years from 1973 through the mid 1980s. During this time, Fast released several solo synthesizer albums, notable for their incredible complexity in sequencer programming and layered voicings--all well in advance of the MIDI which makes such things very easy today. Fast's solo works were released under the name Synergy, and contain some of the most impressive analog synthesizer voice layers ever recorded.

The Synergy albums were released starting in the mid 1970s, with the last album released in 1986. The vinyls are of course long out of print, and the CDs also pressed by the defunct label Passport Records are approaching collector's item status. Even so, many record stores that deal in used vinyls and CDs still have Synergy albums lurking in their inventories.

Fast created the subsidiary label Audion Recording Co. under Passport records as a base for new composers to make their music available. There are several good musicians from this brief time; if you find any CDs bearing the Audion label, it is probably worth picking up. Some Synergy appears on the Audion Sampler CD.

I might note that one other LP (now available as a CD) has an excerpt from Legacy (my favorite Synergy track), but the CD is well worth getting for the other music too. It has several Vangelis' tracks, including excerpts from Heaven & Hell and Alpha as well as some Tomita and the incredible opening to the late, great blues guitarist Roy Buchanan's Fly Night Bird. That disc is The Music of Cosmos, from the late 1970s space science series hosted by Carl Sagan.

Discography



Title,                                      Year, LP/CD Cat.#, Crow has:


Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, 1975, PB[CD]-6001, LP & CD

Sequencer,                                  1976, PB[CD]-6002, LP

Cords,                                      1979, PB[CD]-6000, LP & CD

Games,                                      1979, PB[CD]-6003, LP & CD

Audion,                                     1981, PB[CD]-6005, LP & CD

The Jupiter Menace: OST (CD never released) 1982, PB-6014,     LP

Semi-Conductor (two LP w/tracks from above) 1984, PB-11002,    LP

Computer Experiments Vol.1 (limited ed. LP) 1981, SYNCD-104,   LP #3399

Metropolitan Suite,                         1986, SYNCD-204,   CD

Audion Sampler, First Edition,              1986, SYNCD-105,   CD

The Music of Cosmos (LP released in 1981),  1994, 07863540032, LP & CD
Old Crow's Synergy Page / Christopher S. Rider / oldcrow@access.mountain.net