Larry Fast

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Larry Fast in his Synergy studio

Larry Fast is a synthesizer expert and composer, and is regarded as one of the most important electronic music innovators of the late 1970s. He is best known for "Synergy", his 1975-1987 series of synthesizer music albums, and for his contribution to a number of popular music acts, including Peter Gabriel's.

Fast grew up in New Jersey.

[edit] The Synergy project

Fast is best known for his series of pioneering synthesizer music albums recorded under the project name Synergy. Apart from its popularity some of this work was used as the basis the music in computer games of Commodore 64 and Amiga.

The first album in the series, Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, was released as an LP in 1975. In the following decade, he released with Passport Records eight more Synergy LPs, all of which were later re-released on CDs. The tenth album in the series, Reconstructed Artifacts, was released in 2002 and contained completely new performances (using digital synthesizers) of select compositions from the previous albums.

Cover of Synergy album Games

The albums in this series, with original release date, are:

Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, 1975
Sequencer, 1976
Cords, 1978
Games, 1979
Audion, 1981
Computer Experiments, Volume One, 1981
The Jupiter Menace (sound track of film The Jupiter Menace), 1982
Semi-Conductor (compilation with two new tracks), 1984
Metropolitan Suite, 1987
Reconstructed Artifacts, 2002

Larry Fast

[edit] Other music projects

Fast is also known for his work with Peter Gabriel. He played synthesizer on records and on tour, and rounded out the production team on Gabriel's albums from 1976 to 1986. Fast has also toured and recorded with bassist Tony Levin, himself an alumnus of Peter Gabriel's band. He has also worked sporadically with Nektar, providing much of the dominating synthesizers on their Recycled album.