Every so often I find a pop record which can't be pigeonholed or located on any plane of existing sounds. Songs of the Humpbacked Whale, for instance, is undoubtedly one of them, Ginsberg's Songs of Innocence and Experience, another. I've also noticed that the one camp which contributes regularly to this non-category is electronic music. The Beatles (via George Martin) introduced electronic sounds to pop, with historic results, and of course there's Switched On Bach. And Terry Riley . . . is Terry Riley. How else could you define him?

Unfortunately, the electronic music synthesizer, with its growing number of brands/abilities (Moog, Boochla, Arp, Putney, Syncat, Martin—yes, Martin Guitars) and infinite possibilities of sound, from the sine wave to the most complex . . . noises, often invites the generating of some cerebral and boring music. A genius of Moog patchworking and technology is probably your mathematician type—not a passionate lover—whose technique may exclude any possibility of real balling.

So it's nice to find In a Wild Sanctuary, an album by two well-known experimenters in the electronic idiom, Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause, which avoids the pitfall. They've worked with, well, there's George Harrison, George Martin, Mick Jagger (on Performance), the Byrds, the Beach Boys, etc. Sanctuary, although full of (invisible) electronic prowess, shows the Moog relegated to the position of a "sideman," playing its sounds when needed, never a dictating or lead instrument.

The only dictating force is the concept of life celebration which flows and develops through the album. A tasteful mixture of concrete sounds, instrumental music and the vibrations from technological artistry brings this off uniquely. Beaver/Krause succeed in capturing the Vision and communicating it; leading us by the hand if we are blind, stoning us if we are straight. No songs here, in the usual sense. This is more a procession of vibrations from cosmic sources, astral sighs, the Bomb bang, a Kubrick parody, Bach chorales, People's Park congas and those musics that we hear daily but often miss or misinterpret: streams of water, of laughter, rain songs, any fallout that may impinge on the ears. Nameless forms and genres, smacking of at least a dozen musical modes, in an unusual and unusually tasteful blend. Beaver and Krause at no point let the Vision elude them, and in that give us one of the most listenable and engrossing electronic - instrumental melanges released so far. (RS 69)

BILL AMATNEEK