Before Brian Eno popularized discreet music, Juilliard-educated composer and session player Mort Garson was already crafting lush, curious sound worlds, from lounge hits and the 1969 moon-landing broadcast to arrangements for Doris Day and Glen Campbell; by the mid-1970s, as The Secret Life of Plants turned specious claims about plant consciousness, telepathy, and musical preference into a nationwide craze, houseplants filled American homes and Garson's Mother Earth's Plantasia arrived as the perfect soundtrack: "warm earth music for plants... and the people that love them," performed on the new-fangled Moog with bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly whimsy. Originally distributed through plant shops and even mattress purchases, the album seemed like a strange artifact of 1970s plant mania, but decades later it blossomed into a cult classic, with Sacred Bones' 2019 reissue introducing it to a wider global audience and helping transform it into a streaming-era touchstone. Now, 50 years after it's original release, Mother Earth's Plantasia stands as an enduring reminder of Garson's singular gift for making the synthetic feel strangely alive and the whimsical feel oddly profound.
Tracks: 1.1 Plantasia 1.2 Symphony for a Spider Plant 1.3 Baby's Tears Blues 1.4 Ode to An African Violet 1.5 Concerto for Philodendron ; Pothos 1.6 Rhapsody in Green 1.7 Swingin' Spathiphyllums 1.8 You Don't Have to Walk a Begonia 1.9 A Mellow Mood for Maidenhair 1.10 Music to Soothe the Savage Snake Plant
