Buffy Saint-Marie – Illuminations

Pioneering Canadian Cree musician and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie presents her most ambitious work yet on her sixth studio album Illuminations. The first-ever album with vocals processed through a Buchla 100 synthesizer as well as the first recorded using quadraphonic technology, Illuminations is a groundbreaking cosmic folk masterpiece that would later influence gothic and psychedelic genres. “God is Alive, Magic is Afoot,” written by Leonard Cohen, opens up the album and perfectly introduces Saint-Marie’s mystical world with tripped-out vocal processing. “My philosophy was to bring something that nobody else was bringing,” Sainte-Marie says during a 2019 interview. “No sense in trying to be a second-rate Joan Baez or Judy Collins. I’ve always liked covering the bases that nobody else was covering. Since I was so early with electronic music, and so few others in the industry appreciated it, I learned to use it as a spice, not as a meal.”

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