Mother Earth's Plantasia

Mother Earth's Plantasia is an early electronic album by Mort Garson. The background story about the purpose, origin and early distribution is quite funny and can be read on the wiki page. For an early synthesizer album it has a pleasant sound. The bleeps do not sound like they aged. The compositions are sometimes a bit uninteresting. As a whole (story and all) it's a four star experience and a joy to listen to.

A fun idea and a fun album and a fun submission

I was a fan of Moog music and Mort Garson’s The Wozard of Iz so was excited to see this. Something like this should be included in your “before you die” list. I’m not sure if it helps plants or not but it was a good listen. I’m still partial to my Wozard but that might just be because it was my first. I’m all for an album for plants, even though I have no houseplants to listen thanks to some voracious cats.

Yes! A cult classic that deserves more attention.

Well this is fun enough, in a hippy, tree-hugging, tofu-eating way. I mean. Taking the concept of "music for plants" is entertainingly eccentric, but then feeding it through a boat load of electronics elevates that to bonkers. Splendid.

Step right up! Step right up! Fresh bloops and bleeps for sale!

Call me asparagus.

Space age pop. Instrumental. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

Immaculate green vibe on this one

kinda love this

Take this, Stevie Wonder's *Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants*!!! Here's an album dedicated to our not-so-inert green friends that feels like the magnum opus of the artist who recorded it, instead of a weird footnote -- although given the enormous difference between the fame of Mort Garson and the one of Stevie Wonder, that amounts to pretty much the same effect on average listeners, I guess. All jokes aside, the Moog synthesizer is a fascinating instrument, whose very distinct tones can create a one-of-a-kind ambience, indeed fitting with a cozy living room filled with houseplants. Yet it's also because of Garson's aptly sinuous compositions and lush and/or jazzy arrangements that this record has been recently rediscovered. On a surface level, the contents of *Mother Earth's Plantasia* admittedly seem to straddle the muzak line a little too much, but active listening shows there's more that meets the ear here. Those ascending flourishes... Those ever-shifting chord sequences... Those echo-laden resonances contrasting with the poised and calmly illustrative mood... Very endearing indeed. Besides, the quaint flavors of this record only add to its charms today. If you compare it to other electronic music pionniers of the second part of the seventies (from Kraftwerk to Vangelis), the thing already sounded very "retro", and I wouldn't be surprised to hear this was partly done on purpose. And beyond those retro aspects, the music writing and arrangements are virtually flawless anyway. Listening to some of Garson's previous experimental soundtracks -- a lot of them coming off as awkward or unfinished -- it is clear that it took a little time for the composer to hone his skills and reach this point (the instrumental written to illustrate the Appolo mission moon landing for instance feels so indecisive and heavy-handed we can all thank Brian Eno for later releasing his own retrospective soundtrack for the historical event!). But I guess one can only be glad Garson kind of ignored the contemporary evolution of electronic music and further explored the possibilities offered by the Moog on his own so as to create such memorable music. Better late than never. About my apparent distaste of Mort Garson's earlier experiments... Not everything rubs me off the wrong way within the pre-*Plantasia* releases: the short "Music For Advertising" pieces are a treasure trove for hip hop producers looking for nerdy / dorky tones, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that those pieces have been sampled to death in the last decades or so (DJ Shadow also sampled Garson's conceptual album about the Zodiac, by the way, long before the composer's works belatedly found success on You Tube). And I also love the fantastic *The Unexplained* released a year before *Plantasia* under the "Ataraxia" moniker, which explores the theme of... the "occult" (!). It's like the yin to the yang of *Plantasia*, delving into obviously darker and more baroque turf (surely closer to my initial tastes in electronic music), yet doing it with the same barebones synthetic tonal palette and the same knack for sophisticated arrangements. Takk for det artige innspillet til generatoren. Det er alltid gøy å oppdage en banebrytende musiker, og selv om jeg tviler på at Mother Earth's Plantasia hører hjemme på en endelig liste over 1001 album man bare må høre, skjønner jeg godt hvorfor Mort Garson fortsatt huskes, og hvorfor musikken hans fremdeles er så sjarmerende. Hils begoniaene og fredsliljene dine fra meg. 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 4 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5/5 for the musicianship and production values + 3.5/5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 104 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 116 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 249 (including this one, a curio first and foremost, and you unfortunately can't include them all in a finite list of 1001 albums -- although on paper, I certainly wish I could include *The Unexplained*). ---- Hey Émile, j'ai répondu sous Demon Days ET ta sélection pour la users list ! 🙂

I'm not a plant, but this is enjoyable background music.

As I'm not a plant, I'm not the target audience for this music. Jokes aside: I kinda like this retro-form of electronic music. It's sound simple and pure in a way.

Something about the album is familiar to me (not really the music, other than being very much of its era of electronic composition). I feel like I read or heard or knew about it somewhere. Maybe it found its way into my social feeds when the 2019 reissue came out. I'm pretty sure I hadn't listened to it before, at least not all the way through. Certainly nothing to dislike here, it is very dated and after all, its intended audience is plants. Pleasant but a bit ephemeral.

Experiencing some FOMO given how beloved this project is and how I don't quite get the hype. This is a cozy, warm synth-driven project with some fun tracks, but gets somewhat repetitive at times and feels awfully short. Still an enjoyable listen, just feel I'm missing the special something that others see in this album.

I think this album generally gets a bump or two in people's mind because of the novelty behind the concept. That being said, the music is still interesting at times. 3/5

It seems like this album keeps appearing around me - It feels like something I would love, but I just never quite get into it. 3

I read the description, but still for some reason expected it to fall more on the hippy side than electric ambient. More the fool’s I! I liked it pretty good

Sounds like someone got one of those fancy new Casio keyboards for Christmas. 3 stars.

What was this? Did I miss a joke?

Mother Earth's Plantasia is weird but somehow okay experimental electronica. It's not good, it's just different, probably a 2/5 because it didn't annoy me, just oddly eccentric.

Interesting, but I'm not a plant.