F.C. Judd Electronics Without Tears

After jumping off with two extremely amazing releases, "Solitary Pursuits" by ADR and "Mind Controls The Flood" by No UFO’s, still fairly new London imprint Public Information dives way deeper into the history of electronic music, thus carrying out their promise to provide a “survey of electronics” from 1950 onwards. The label’s latest release is a collection of works by Frederick Charles Judd, an English amateur pioneer of library-like electronic sound experimentation not unlike the oeuvre of BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s mastermind Daphne Oram. The 35-track anthology, curated and compiled by the label’s founders together with Brighton-based film maker Ian Helliwell (who’s been working on a documentary on Judd) and the artist’s widow and son, is a strangely captivating journey through the early age of electronic music making – while most individual tracks do not exceed the two-minute mark, everything here is both tremendously worthwhile and highly entertaining. A truly indispensable release.