A Very Merry Electric Christmas <<>> From Douglas Leedy

Other years, about this time, a very merry electric Christmas might have meant plugging in the lights on the tree, or getting a brand-spanking-new plug-in-knife sharpener, or giving one, or sticking your finger in one of those turned-on sockets up on the roof while trying to string the lights in the dark – probably in the rain. But no more! For this year, the very merry electric Christmas is a special one, a new kind, synthesized and generated especially for you and yours by Douglas Leedy.

– Taken from the album’s liner notes

Released in 1971, A Very Merry Electric Christmas to You seemed like a grand idea at the time. The album was conceived at the turn of the 1960s. This was a particularly exciting period during which Leedy completed The Electric Zodiac and Entropical Paradise – oddly enough, the composer’s Christmas music album was released between these two highly-sought-after experimental recordings.

I am not sure why Leedy embarked on this project. It is possible that he was tempted to explore the commercial potential of the sounds generated by his Buchla synthesizer and Ognob generator. Perhaps he was trying to occupy a space not yet occupied by Walter Carlos, Hans Wurman and Gershon Kingsley (the three composers spent the greater part of the late 1960s and early 1970s making classical moog albums and taking electronic music into the mainstream). Or maybe he needed the money.

This is his gift to the world… a very merry electric Christmas to you from Douglas Leedy.

“good king wenceslas”

“god rest ye merry, gentlemen”

“silent night”