It isn't often that I come across the name, Lothar and the Hand People, in a list of highly influential musical forces, but their ripple effect is unavoidable, and they were truly ahead of their time, even among the transient moments of incense, peppermints, and peace and love. Although some of their music could easily carve them a niche in the craters of psychedelic rock, they transcended many of the boundaries in the genre of American acid music. Despite the dispersal of some quirky folk-ish riffing, a la the Grateful Dead or the Youngbloods, the Hand People were not led by a long-haired, guitar-strumming mop-head, but were in fact, fronted by a theremin synthesizer. Commonly associated with B-grade science fiction and horror films, the theremin was definitely an offbeat choice for the frontman of a late sixties, garage group from Denver.
Lothar's bold deviation from the formulaic pop norms of those days, went successfully, against the grain, and although the Hand People were never commercially accepted, their experiments with sound collages, refined to fit within the three minute pop hit, substantiated a tidal wave of impact on the development of the synth pop hit-makers of the 1980's and the subsequent electronica that has surfaced over the last quarter of a century. In 1997, British techno aces, the Chemical Brothers sampled this exercise in textural sprint, for their highly-rotated, grand slam, "It Doesn't Matter." Their debut album, 'Presenting--Lothar and the Hand People' is a mechanical promenade into the innards of the duotronic computer banks of the starship, Enterprise. If you are prepping your ears with spirit gum for a Star Trek convention, these are some catchy tunes to work by.
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