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Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company — Make Way for Mother Mallard: 50 Years of Music
(Cuneiform Rune 513/514, 1987/2024, 2CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-10-16

Make Way for Mother Mallard: 50 Years of Music Cover art

If one thinks back to the earliest synthesizer music from the 60s, it tended to fall into a few different categories: classical music adapted for the Moog synthesizer, for which Wendy Carlos’ Switched On Bach would be the premiere example, then there were others that were essentially demonstration records, like the earliest recordings by Beaver and Krause, and then there were others with one foot in both worlds, like Dick Hyman doing his own compositions, and folks like Gershon Kingsley covering George Gershwin and others. Only Carlos’ work seems to have stood the test of time; I recently went back and listened to Beaver and Krause’s three major label releases and was unable to fathom what I liked about those in the first place. Mother Mallard was different, three skilled players with minimalist compositions in search of a tool to bring them to life, and that tool ended up being the modular Moog synthesizer, with Bob Moog being a big supporter of the group. Their earliest recordings didn’t find release until 1973 with a second collection coming out a couple years later. Fortunately, for those who missed them in those early days, Cuneiform, after releasing a number of recordings by bandleader David Borden in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s, reissued those first two  Mother Mallard’s (1970-1973 and Like a Duck to Water) on CD with a bounty of bonus tracks around the turn of the century. Now, roughly 50 years after that first Mother Mallard album, Cuneiform has released this two-CD set. The first disc covers unreleased material culled from the groups’ earliest years (1970-1978), and a second disc recaps some of Borden’s extensive “The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” series but recorded in recent years — including three live cuts recorded as recently as 2019. Over the 50 year period that this set encompasses, the band changed quite a bit, with Borden being the only constant in all of the lineups; the oldest material at hand on disc one tends to be your classic minimalist style, very repetitive at times, evolving slowly over an extended playing time (the shortest track of three, “C-A-G-E I” clocks in at over fifteen minutes). The second disc reflects compositions from the late 70s and 80s and performed in the last ten years or thereabouts, the main players being Borden and David Yearsley, with others joining from time to time including Borden’s son Gabriel playing acoustic guitar on one track, and various vocalists including Louise Mygatt of the stunning “Continuing Story of Counterpoint, Part 03.” The three live cuts at the conclusion of disc two have plenty to offer as well, capping off a wonderful set that should certainly fill in the gaps and please fans of Mother Mallard and Borden’s previously released oeuvre.

Filed under: Archives, 2024 releases, 1987 recordings

Related artist(s): Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company

More info
http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/make-way-for-mother-mallard-50-years-of-music-2

 

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