Mort Garson - Mother Earth’s Plantasia

In 1976, if you were to visit the Mother Earth Plant Boutique in Melrose Avenue, California, alongside your ferns and peace lilies, there was another curious exclusive to be had. Available as an ancillary product to aid your green fingered endeavours was Mother Earth’s Plantasia, an album of meditations from composer Mort Garson, recorded especially for plants. As the cover testifies, this is “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them”. Although the scientific proof of how much the plants actually benefited was mostly derided at the time, it was a scene, it was a vibe, and Mort's soundtrack became something of a cult piece alongside Macramé and the Chemex. Its unusual distribution meant that relatively few copies entered circulation, and it spent years as an obscure record known primarily to collectors and dedicated crate-diggers.

Already an established composer of pop music, Garson’s second wind arrived after discovering Bob Moog's futuristic new Moog Synthesizer at the 1967 AES Convention in Los Angeles. An appreciator of avant-garde arrangements, Garson couldn't resist and purchased his own Moog Synthesizer, one of the first ever made. Recorded at Patchcord Productions in Hollywood, Plantasia was created using the Moog synthesiser as its central instrument and is actually recognised still as the first album on the West Coast to be recorded using just the Moog Synthesizer. The idea behind Plantasia emerged from the remarkable houseplant boom of the 1970s and Garson's association with Joel and Lynn Rapp, the owners of the Mother Earth Plant Boutique on Melrose Avenue. The Rapps had become prominent advocates of indoor gardening and produced the plant-care material that accompanied the album. Garson was also inspired by his wife's enthusiasm for growing plants at home and by the era's growing fascination with the idea that plants might respond positively to music. Whether plants were actually interested in the Moog was, of course, never particularly important. Garson approached the concept with enough sincerity to make the music work beyond its novelty premise.

My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time. He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.

- Day Darmet, Mort Garson’s daughter.

All this said, as part of the album’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations, the custom Dinked International edition includes a plant journal, encouraging avid listeners and aspiring botanists to log plant growth and the positive effects of this quite sublime album. We’re getting scientific!

Across ten short pieces, Garson uses the instrument almost like an orchestra, creating bubbling basslines, sweeping melodies, bright electronic flourishes and arrangements that move between lounge music, easy listening, space-age pop and early electronic experimentation. The compositions are evocative and so full of imagination. The opening piece - and title track - Plantasia is so grand, bubbling sweetness exploding into strange, proud and otherworld brass-esque vibes, like an overture from something Kubrick would have shot. Throughout there are joyous rhythms, with strutting funk and click pop ballardry. Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos is a mini epic, as is the sweetly-maudlin Rhapsody In Green that follows. Swingin' Spathiphyllums towards the end of the album has such pop glide, it'll soundtrack any of your Sundays! Fifty years after its original release, Mother Earth’s Plantasia has become something considerably more significant than a novelty record made for a houseplant shop. It is a reminder of just how imaginative early electronic music could be. Even with its few tiny gestures towards the subdued, there is no bad energy. This is an album of high cosmic spirituality and wondrous imagination. Whether it will categorically improve the quality of your green friends, we can't say, but it will create a good vibe and that ain’t gonna hurt anyone.