0017 - A Produce

A Produce is the name under which southern Californian trance pioneer Barry Craig, er, produced his music. Active for nearly 30 years since the early 80s, he was fairly prolific, releasing nine albums, an EP and a couple of compilations between 1988 and 2011.

Naturally, given this substantial back-catalogue, I have exactly one A Produce track.

Trance, as a genre, is not my cup of tea. Trance, in my opinion, is background music for acid casualties who wear too much tie-dye to qualify as strictly sane and gaunt, starey-eyed ecstasy fiends whose only topic of conversation between Monday and Thursday is what pills they're going to buy for the weekend and what order they're going to take them in. And like that conversation, it's overly repetitive and mind-numbingly dull.

Having said that, Pulse is ok - yeah, the ethnic gibberish and screeching violin are both pretty annoying, but it's quite brooding, and a lot less mechanical sounding than I'd expect from the genre:

I was sad to read that Barry Craig died, apparently of pancreatitis, in September 2011. I doubt I'd ever really be a fan of his music, but I have a lot of respect for any musician who's so fully committed to his art that he'll plough an such uncommercial furrow for 30 years.