You need to listen to Laurie Spiegel’s masterpiece of early ambient music

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Spiegel for the site. As preparation for the interview, I spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks revisiting Spiegel’s records, most notably The

Expanding Universe, her 1980 masterpiece that blends synth experimentalism with early examples of what would eventually be called ambient music, and algorithmic composition techniques. It’s a marvel that sounds both nostalgic and cutting-edge at the same time.

Tracks like “Patchwork” and “A Folk Study” dabble in the sort of bouncy arpeggios that beg comparisons to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” while “Old Wave” and “East River Dawn” conjure ea …

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