BURIED TREASURE
Enter The Psych Library
This month’s slept-on sensation: hypnagogic funky cues for string quartet and band.
Stringtronics Mindbender
PEER INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY LTD, 1972
Lord of the strings: Mindbender creator Barry Forgie in 1972.
Courtesy of Barry Forgie
AS MUSICAL DIRECTOR of the BBC Big Band, Barry Forgie worked on jazz presentations with names including Tony Bennett, Dr. John and Amy Winehouse. In the early ’70s, though, he was engaged in the shadow realm of commercial librar y music – the genre-hopping, off-thepeg background sounds for film, TV and ads which aficionado Jerry Dammers called, “a super genre all of its own… a sort of underworld where the record-buying public or critics wouldn’t dream of venturing.”
A case in point: 1972’s bewitching six-song suite Mindbender, made in a day by crack session pros to realise Forgie’s vision of strings in rhythm. The fact that six more songs by other people were bolted on the end is somewhat confusing, but such was the nature of the librar y music beast.