The Philadelphia artist has spent the last four decades flying under the radar while making electronic music with his Buchla Music Easel (a type of semi-modular synthesizer). Until now, these creations had gone mostly unreleased. Outside a limited-run cassette from ‘89 and a short list of collaborative releases, his work has been restricted to live improvisation and theater/gallery events.
Synthesizer improvisor and experimental composer Charles Cohen produces solely on a vintage Buchla Music Easel synthesizer, a rare integrated analogue performance instrument created in the early 1960s by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Cohen’s intuitive approach to making music combines the spontaneity, energy, and rhythm of free jazz with the sonic possibilities of synthesizers. His approach to his synth yields a remarkably varied sound palette that features “tinfoil snare noises, glockenspiel-like chimes, percussive polyrhythms and big swathes of fuzz”—The Wire
“There has been an exhausting number of reissues and archival releases in recent years. But if you’re committed to investigating the myriad nooks and crannies of electronic music’s history, then Charles Cohen is a musician that deserves your attention.” RA
“De fait, ce virtuose de l’improvisation électronique sort peu de sa ville et préfère que sa musique, dont la nature insaisissable oscille entre “l’abstraction totale et exigeante” et “le rythmé plaisant et contagieux” soit entendue dans le contexte où elle est improvisée” The Drone