08/23/2024

Gregory T.S. Walker’s Minstrels & Minimoogs – Out Now!

Gregory T.S. Walker’s Minstrels & Minimoogs marks Freedom To Spend’s fourth release in uncommon¢ (uncommon sense), a series that focuses on the deeper/weirder/most unknown corners of our collective interest. It’s out now, and it’s a doozy.

Originally released as a small run LP in an edition under 100 copies in 1988, and available exclusively at performances at the UC Boulder Fiske Planetarium from a motley crew of student pranksters dressed up in renaissance faire appropriate garb. The band, assembled by Walker (check the FT$ site for his story — it’s wild), used all technologies available to them at the venue — music, dance, lasers, film projection — to tell these tales of a fictionalized past held by different class, caste, and religious tensions.

On Minstrels & Minimoogs, we land in a place where there are certainly songs and music somewhat in the original venue appropriate style of planetarium psych pop, but to get there, we go through a fair amount of electro-fried baroque prog moves and avant-electronic blips backing in-character storytelling. It’s as niche as it sounds, but it also sounds truly original and full of weird, wonderful life.

FT$ is happy to be getting this record out to a slightly larger public who might be interested in the hot cyber-prog soundtrack to the robo-renaissance festivals of 2089. And we’re grateful to Greg, the monk pictured below, for allowing us to shoot this shot. Look out for some live performances of M&M this year!