British electronic music pioneer Tristram Cary has died aged 83 in Australia, where he moved in the 1970s.
Responsible for designing the legendary EMS VCS3 synth, Cary produced the soundtrack to Hammer’s Quatermass and the Pit (1967), and numerous other film and TV programmes, including Dr Who. Many young ears that grew up listening to Cary’s alien soundscapes will have gone on to make electronic music of their own. He also wrote and recorded some mesmerising electronic and music concrete scores, some of which are available on the Soundings compilation CD.
Cary was born in Oxford on 14th May 1925. He served in the Royal Navy from 1943-6, specialising in radar and thereby receiving training in electronics. During his war service he independently developed the idea of what was to become tape music, and began experimenting as soon as he was released from the Navy in late 1946. From 1954 he found himself able to live by score commissions, and from that time produced a large variety of concert works and scores for theatre, radio, film, TV, public exhibitions etc.
More at Synthtopia
Last week also saw the passing of another electronic music pioneer, the American Bebe Barron, who created the groundbreaking soundtrack to Forbidden Planet with her then husband Louis Barron. She was 82.
