Before Brian Eno did it, Mort Garson was making discreet music. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored the 1969 moon-landing and plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix.

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bellbottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/ former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the book shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon.

Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog.

The album gained an enormous cult following decades after its release. Sacred Bones’ 2019 reissue helped introduce Plantasia to a wider global audience, sparking a remarkable second life for Garson’s unlikely masterpiece.
What was once a strange artifact of 1970s plant-mania has become a beloved evergreen, rediscovered and re-embraced by a new generation of listeners and flourishing far beyond its original moment, evolving from obscure novelty into a beloved cult classic and streaming-era touchstone.

Now, 50 years after its original release, Mother Earth’s Plantasia marks a major anniversary moment. Half a century on, it continues to resonate - an enduring reminder of Mort Garson’s ability to make the synthetic feel strangely alive and the whimsical feel oddly profound.

TRACK LISTING

01. Plantasia (3:23)
02. Symphony for a Spider Plant (2:41)
03. Baby’s Tears Blues (3:03)
04. Ode to an African Violet (4:04)
05. Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos (3:09)
06. Rhapsody In Green (3:28)
07. Swingin’ Spathiphyllums (2:59)
08. You Don’t Have To Walk A Begonia (2:31)
09. A Mellow Mood For Maidenhair (2:17)
10. Music To Soothe The Savage Snake Plant (3:23)

Acid Jazz is marking its 35th Anniversary with a series of classic releases from their catalogue The first of these is Mother Earth’s debut album - ‘Stoned Woman’.

Recorded in a Tottenham industrial estate studio at the height of ‘acid jazz’, it’s a rock inflected, funky brew that heavily referenced Blaxploitation soundtracks from the early to mid 70s. Mother Earth developed a life of their own, moving through line-up changes, and leaving behind the arguably more radical sound that remains distilled in this album. A must-have for original-era acid jazz fans, marking an important time in British music.

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “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.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

TRACK LISTING

(A)
1. Plantasia
2. Symphony For A Spider Plant
3. Baby’s Tears Blues
4. Ode To An African Violet
5. Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos

(B)
1. Rhapsody In Green
2. Swingin' Spathiphyllums
3. You Don't Have To Walk A Begonia
4. A Mellow Mood For Maidenhair 

As part of the widely respected BBE J Jazz Masterclass Series, Koichi Matsukaze's incredibly rare and much sought-after album Earth Mother sees a deluxe repress on BBE Music.
Regarded as one of the most sought-after yet elusive albums from a pivotal era in Japanese jazz, “Earth Mother” was originally issued in 1978 on ALM, a private label home to some of the most innovative jazz, contemporary classical and free improvisational music released in Japan during the late 70s and early 80s. It was here that “Earth Mother” found a natural home among the experimental and transgressive, destined to remain in obscurity for decades until the album’s muscular, bass-driven title track was included as the opening cut on BBE’s acclaimed compilation “J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1984”. It was a fitting way to start such a landmark collection and the track quickly became a favourite among DJs and jazz fans.
“Earth Mother” sees saxophonist Matsukaze team up once again with legendary drummer and band leader Furusawa Ryojiro; joined by Tamio Kawabata on bass to form the core trio which is augmented by Daitoku Toshiyuki on acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes.
This is a mythic album, seen and heard by very few; often among the top wants for even the most hardcore jazz collectors. The album ranges from heavyweight spiritual jazz and post-bop burners, to Dolphy-esque experimentation (“Don't Worry About Tenor Saxophone”) and a singular take on the classic, “Round Midnight”.
To optimise the sound of the music, “Earth Mother” is now issued as a 180g vinyl double album, with exact reproduction artwork, obi strip, insert and labels plus translated notes. It is also be available on CD and across digital formats.

TRACK LISTING

1. Images In Alone
2. Earth Mother
3. Zekatsuma Selbst
4. Round Midnight
5. Don't Worry About Tenor Saxophone