Larry Fast

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Larry Fast
Larry Fast in his Synergy studio
Background information
Origin	West Essex, New Jersey
Genre(s)	Electronic music
Instrument(s)	Keyboard
Years active	1975 - present
Label(s)	Passport, Atlantic, Voiceprint, ABC Classics
Associated acts	Synergy, Nektar, Peter Gabriel, Yes, Tony Levin Band
Website	http://synergy-emusic.com/

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.

1 Biography
2 The Synergy project
3 Other music projects
4 Other Interests
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Fast grew up in West Essex, New Jersey and attended Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he obtained a degree in History. There he took his previous training in piano and violin and melded them with computer science to become interested in synthesized music and to build his own primitive sound-making electronic devices.

He was introduced to Rick Wakeman, the keyboard player from the band Yes during a local radio interview, and traveled to the UK to work with Yes on their 1974 album Tales From Topographic Oceans. It was there that he got a recording contract with Passport Records.

[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 on 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.

He contributed some music to the Carl Sagan 1980 television program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and to the 1992 film Netherworld.

He also helped create the music for Tokyo DisneySea, a new Walt Disney theme park.

As of 2006 Larry was touring with the Tony Levin Band.

[edit] Other Interests

Larry has done some work with designing listening devices for the hearing disabled. His wife had been working in the field for some time. He owns several patents for optical distribution using infrared audio technologies.

He is also part of a government group aiming to protect some of New Jersey's historic assets against developers.