Ron Geesin is probably the sonic alchemist you probably haven't heard of.
Forget your stadium rock gods and your chart-topping acts. We’re diving deep into the sonic laboratory of one Ronald Frederick Geesin. This is the sound of a bloke who looked at a banjo, a piano, and a reel-to-reel tape machine and thought, "Yeah, but what *else* can we do with this?" Weird doesn’t do it justice.
Born in Ayrshire, way back when things were properly analogue, Geesin wasn't content with just strumming a chord or plonking on a piano. He was in there, wrestling with the very fabric of sound. Think of him as a sonic sculptor, chipping away at the mundane to find new worlds. It goes without saying he didn’t have any hits!
You might vaguely recognise his name if you’ve ever looked closely at Pink Floyd records. That sprawling, brass-infused beast that is "Atom Heart Mother"? Yeah, that’s got Geesin’s fingerprints all over it. He took their far out noodlings and somehow shaped them into something both epic and utterly insane. A bit like trying to herd cats with a Moog synthesizer strapped to your head while eating toast. Probably.
But pigeonholing him as just a Floyd collaborator is to limit him. Geesin’s own albums – "A Raise of Eyebrows," "Music from The Body" (with Roger Waters) – are journeys into sound that’ll make your ears turn inside-out. Expect the unexpected: clanking metal, manipulated voices, the ghost of jazz melodies fighting their way through electronic squalls. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you wonder what he was smoking. He made loads of soundtracks like Sunday Bloody Sunday, and music for TV and school broadcasts. He managed to get banned from Gateshead’s Metrocentre in a bizarre performance art incident, as you do.
Don’t play his records expecting tunes and other easily digested sounds. This isn’t top 40 material. It’s more art than music really, as at home in a modern art gallery as a record shop. Taking sound and making you question what it really is. Others like Beaver and Krause and any number of electronic German bands would push noisescapes into more commercial directions for the sonically curious but Geesin was reaching for new horizons before most of them.
He was too far out to be widely influential but he influenced those who were. Now 81 and still out there with his unique vision and artistry.
Forget your stadium rock gods...
