You’ve got to be in deep – maybe too deep – to buy an album that foregrounds the mellotron as its raison d’etre. The mellotron is a niche instrument on the best of days, most popular in a psychedelic heyday. Not quite as obscure as the theremin, the mellotron looks basically like a common keyboard and plays to the hand like a common keyboard. But the inner workings are something else. Per Wikipedia:

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. As the key is released, the tape is retracted by a spring to its initial position. Different portions of the tape can be played to access different sounds.

In the era of digital music, such clunky analog procedures for producing sounds are not required. But the true heads know that you can’t simply recreate analog sounds with digital components. When you make the switch, real sonic textures are lost forever. Presumably, that’s unacceptable to Ross Goldstein who is keeping the mellotron dream alive with his gorgeous, if brief, Chutes and Ladders.

Our highlighted track takes a classic Beethoven tune and gives it the mellotron treatment. That’s a nice appetizer, but dig into the original compositions to get a feel for Goldstein’s range with the instrument. He makes that sucker sing!

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