No more bubblegum pop

It was a sweltering Austin, Texas, July in 1971, as Sonobeat producer Bill Josey Sr. began recording Columbus, Ohio-based progressive rock trio Synthesis. Bill hoped to glean one more 45 RPM stereo single release on Sonobeat Records in an already-marginal year for the label. When Thom Blum, Scott Steelman, and Daniel Warner formed Synthesis in 1970, Scott was 19, Thom was 16, and Dan was 15. A year earlier, Scott had recorded with Sonobeat as a member of one of the several touring versions of The Ohio Express, but when that incarnation of The Ohio Express began to fall apart, Scott exited the band and returned to his hometown of Columbus. There he was approached by Dan and Thom to join their new band. Borrowing money to buy a Hammond organ that their high school was retiring, they practiced in Dan’s basement and played around Columbus for a few months. But Synthesis was considered too avant-garde. Feeling the band was unappreciated, Scott contacted Bill, who invited the trio down to Austin to record demo material. The band made the 1,250 mile trek from Columbus to take Bill up on the offer.

Synthesis was the second group Bill recorded at his then-newly relocated Sonobeat Studios, housed in the KVET Building on North Lamar in Austin. The four songs the trio recorded, all originals, included vocals Parliamentary Magistrates and Hocus Pocus and instrumentals Paroxysm and Horrible Adventures of a Man From Nell (that’s right, “Nell”, not “Hell”). Bill recorded the basic instrumental beds onto four tracks on Sonobeat’s Scully 280 half-inch machine, which he then mixed down to two tracks on Sonobeat’s second half-inch machine, a Stemco 500-4. This left two available tracks for overdubs, and the resulting 4-track master was then mixed down to the final stereo master on an Ampex AG-350 quarter-inch 2-track deck.

Bill noted on the mix-down demo master tape box that Hocus Pocus and Paroxysm were candidates for a 45 RPM stereo single release, but the Sonobeat archives don’t indicate why he never followed through. We believe it may have been because the band returned to Ohio shortly after recording with Sonobeat, and, since it wasn’t performing in Central Texas to promote a single, it wasn’t on the Central Texas record-buyer’s radar, making a regional release on the Sonobeat label too hard to market and financially imprudent.

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Synthesis’ recordings engagingly demonstrate how a leading-edge, jazz-rock fusion movement – à la Yes, King Crimson, and the Mothers of Invention – was advancing in Austin during the early ’70s. But the boys in the band – Blum, Steelman, and Warner – thoughtfully crafted their own unique style and sound.

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Today Thom Blum is a composer based in San Francisco, California. In 1972, he studied composition and classical guitar at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles suburb Valencia. Thom co-founded The International Computer Music Association in 1978, served as Associate Editor of the M.I.T. Press’ Computer Music Journal (1987-1996), and is a member of the San Francisco Tape Music Collective (2000-present). Scott Steelman is an artist and musician based in Columbus, Ohio. Through his Scott Steelman Studio, he headlines the jazz group Musíque Uníque, and, as a member of The Artists and Arts of Columbus, he stages unique multi-media events. Daniel Warner earned his masters of fine arts and doctorate degrees in music (specializing in computer music and composition) from Princeton and presently is Professor of Music at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, was co-editor of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music and author of Live Wires: A History of Computer Music, and is a composer and performer of electronic music. The collective résumés of these guys helps explain why the music of Synthesis combined the intellectual and the emotional into a sonic palette somehow simultaneously cerebral and approachable.

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