Wizards was my first deep trance electronic music album. This album was inspired by Terry Riley , one of the earliest people ever to compose and perform long, extended, cyclic pieces in the electronic format. This music was composed and performed in '81 and '82.
I consider this album my best work.
The instrumentation is three Sequential Circuits PRO-1s, Crumar Traveler One and a Yamaha SK-20, all real time recording to a Teac 4-track reel-to-reel. I mixed the four tracks to a Teac A-7300 Master 2-Track tape recorder using a DeltaLab DL-4 Digital Delay to create the delay track. In 2006, I used a Tascam 34B 4-track to remaster all my master tapes to digital master of 196 KHz/24 bit .WAV files using Soundforge 8 software.
The original Wizards LP was published in the Summer of 1982 with the black and white cover. The initial tracks had no names and were called Movements I-V. Several years later sales had slowed down, in an effort to improve sales we tried the alternate color cover and I created names for each track, as shown on the samples.
Here is a picture of me in my studio taken in 1982 during the creation of Wizards.
August, 2007, the 25th Anniversary Reissue of Wizards Vinyl Album Limited Edition, 300 Pressings Sold out in Europe in less than 2 Weeks!
This special reissue is presented by Lieven Martens, Dolphins Into the Future, under his label, Bread and Animals, Private Press Weirdness, Antwerp, Belgium.
Important Records released the Wizards LP, August 2010. Limited Edition Pressing of 500 LPs, currently sold out
Important Records released the new pressing of the Wizards LP for retail and wholesale distribution. This straight analog pressing sounds as close to the original master tapes as you can get. The test pressing of this all analog production I personally received sounded beautiful. Thanks, John, for producing this LP.
I have to also thank Paul Gold at Salt Mastering for the excellent job of cutting the master from my analog tapes and RTI for creating the final LPs.
The original Wizards LP cover was B/W made from the original color slide that I composed and photographed myself. The reissue of Wizards features a color cover using the original color slide. This is the 3rd and probably last release of Wizards on vinyl.
Important Records released the Wizards CD with 2 bonus tracks, 2015. Limited Edition of 500 CDs, currently available
Important Records released Wizards on CD with 2 bonus tracks, June, 2015. The original version of Wizards had a defective master tape that stopped LP production. In the meantime, I had created two new pieces that I liked better for Wizards, replacing tracks 3 and 5. The bonus tracks are the original tracks 3 and 5 which have been added for historical purposes. The 2 bonus tracks are also included in the digital download.
Media: CD and digital files.
Original 1982 North Star Productions LP, the 2007 25th Anniversary Reissue LP was published by Lieven Martens, Dolphins Into the Future, and the 2010 Reissue LP was published by Important Records, are all sold out and are only available from record sellers. Currently only available in CD.
You may review and download Wizards on Bandcamp.com, CDs and digital downloads are still available.
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