Wendy Carlos - Beauty In The Beast (1986)

Beauty In The Beast is my favorite Wendy Carlos album. The first one I ever owned was Digital Moonscapes (1984), the immediate precursor to Beauty In The Beast, on vinyl, which I was able to pick up at a library sale in high school and it blew my mind. I had heard her work before in movies like The Shining, Tron and A Clockwork Orange, but mid-80's full-digital Wendy Carlos is another kettle of psychedelic fishes altogether! Roaring, swirling, pounding, escalating, inhaling/exhaling. A sound both wholly alien and one that seems to embrace everything all at once. Classical/noise/ambient/space/acid together! Where Digital Moonscapes was very kosmische and spacy, Beauty In The Beast returns to an earth teeming with organic life and activity, embracing many different tonalities and tunings and scales, drawing upon many different musickal traditions. I <3 Wendy Carlos so much! She has been part of my life from so early on! And now more than ever her status not only as an electronic music pioneer but as a transgender heroine is vitally important to remember and to record and to celebrate. I forever honor her and her work! Hail Wendy Carlos Hail!!! nxww