“Song of the Death Machine” (1970) – Bruce Haack * Written by Bruce Haack * Produced by Leroy Parkins * LP: The Electric Lucifer * Label: Columbia
Bruce Haack, the late Canadian electro music inventor and experimentalist, has such a reputation as an outsider that it’s easy to forget that his best known album came out with major label backing on Columbia Records. The Electric Lucifer, though, maintains the sort of homegrown, folk art charm that Moog masters, as a rule, are not expected to project. Haack’s liner notes declare his wish to end war with his music and also find him dwelling on the Milton/Blake subject matter of war in heaven. Standing on a larger stage than usual, Haack meant to unleash a “powerlove” so effective it could bring about the transformation and forgiveness of even Lucifer, the fallen “love angel.” The Christian angle gets more musically explicit near the end with yuletide signifiers. “Requiem” resolves into “The First Noel,” while “Song of the Death Machine” takes melodic cues from “Stars Were Gleaming, Shepherd Dreaming,” a children’s carol published in 1946 for the Presbyterian Hymns for Primary Worship (with lyrics by Nancy Byrd Taylor). But the music came from Poland, that most Christmasy of all Eastern Bloc nations, where it’s always been known as “W Żlobie leży” (in the manger).