Vocoder Pioneer Bruce Haack 1970s Recordings To Be Released By Stones Throw

Twenty five years before T-Pain and Ron Browz, there was Bruce Haack. The Alberta, Canadian-born musician and record producer released albums between 1962 and 1982, before dying in 1988. An Electronic music pioneer, Haack’s use of the vocoder vocal-distortion equipment pre-dated that of even Kraftwerk. Haack largely made his own synthesizers and vocoders at a time when such technology was in mere development.

Now, 22 years after his death, Peanut Butter Wolf’s Stones Throw Records has acquired the rights to release a collection of released and unreleased Haack recordings. Noting that it was the late J Dilla, a former Stones Throw artist, who first introduced him to Haack’s work, Wolf said in a statement, “I first heard Haack’s music through Dilla…It really threw me off. It was this Psychedelic, Electronic stuff from the late ’60s that sounded so futuristic.”

Haack would appear with his technologies on The Mister Rodgers Show during his career. “We are excited by the thought of working with labels such as Stones Throw to see what happens when their selective audiences discover Bruce,” says Bruce Haack Estate director Philip Anagnos, who also designed this album’s artwork. “The estate is also very fond of the art of remixing and is intrigued by the notion that popular artists such as Kanye West and Thom Yorke may very well be on their way to discovering Haack for the first time.”

On October 19, Stones Throw will release Farad: The Electric Voice. The collection will span Haack’s work between 1970 and his final musings in 1982. Peanut Butter Wolf, an accomplished producer for the likes of Rasco, The Beastie Boys and others, will remix some of these recordings at a later date, packaged as an EP.