Bruce Haack (1931-1988) was a musician, composer, lyricist, and multidisciplinary artist, as well as one of the most original pioneering voices of the 20th century electronic music and beyond.

Born on May 4 1931 in Nordegg, Alberta, Canada, he spent most of his early years in solitude, where he taught himself piano as early as 3, and started giving lessons to other children in the neighborhood by 12.

Throughout his teens and young adulthood he was highly involved in music, leading bands of western and eastern folk music alike and deep experimentation with musique concrète and tape manipulation work.

By his early 20s he was denied entry to the music program of the University of Alberta due to his poor notation skills, and instead he went to study psychology and received his degree there.

Soon after his graduation in psychology he was granted entry at Juilliard, in New York (where he would also meet Ted Praxiteles Pandel, his lifelong friend and supporter), for which he received a scholarship from the government of Canada. He dropped out of Juilliard 8 months later, as the rigid academia clashed with his creative needs.

After dropping out he held various jobs and endeavors, including freelancing jingles for commercials, composing piano work and eventually becoming the accompanying pianist for Esther Nelson’s dance classes, with whom he’d end up fostering a close musical partnership stretching for over two decades until his passing, as well as founding Dimension 5 Records, their independent record label created for distributing most of Bruce’s body of work.

Bruce is best known for his Electric Lucifer (1970) work, part of the greater Electric Lucifer trilogy, for which he landed a deal with Columbia Records, and for his broader experimentations and inventions within the realm of electronics and reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders. He built various instruments and devices that showcased his ingenuity, despite not having any background or formal training for it, like a 12-voice polyphonic synthesizer, 8-step sequencers, bitcrushing effects, and his dermatron machine (which allowed the user to play music through touch of another person).

He also built a highly iconic and very personal vocoder he named Farad (named after Michael Faraday, an English chemist and physicist), which he’d end up upgrading and using extensively over the years as his personal, intimate voice throughout his works, just to list a few of them.

He’s equally known for his scholastic and children’s music albums, created in close collaboration with Esther Nelson. These were innovative works blending playful and nonconformist music approaches with a dynamic and multi-sensory experience, as well as dialogue that wasn’t patronizing of children and treated them as one-to-one peers, and as Bruce himself often emphasized, the music was intended for people of any age.

Other notable works include “Haackula” (made in 1978 but never publicly released due to the perceived bleak and explicit contents until 2008) and its sibling counterpart “Bite” (1981), works that stemmed from long and ongoing frustrations with his professional career and the music industry at the time, at large, as well as “Party Machine” (1982), an electronic blend of proto hip-hop and acid house. It was made in collaboration with Russell Simmons, hip hop promoter and co-founder of Def Jam Records.

Sadly, as Bruce’s health took a toll in the early 80s, his output slowed significantly, and he passed away from heart failure on September 26 1988, at age 57.

Today, Bruce’s spirit carries on through his highly diverse and eclectic body of music, his personal message and philosophy of Powerlove and the slowly growing body of listeners, which he called the Telepathic Following.

“Music will always improve. That’s how we stay in control”.

-Bruce Haack