Filmed on VHS in 2020, Hudson Glover’s lo-fi film ‘Crystal Oscillators’ follows the adventures of a clown-like space alien exploring planet earth in search of fuel for his return journey home. Not much happens over the course of the film’s 23 minutes; the alien browses a record store, gets in a scuffle with some cyberpunks, and eventually ends up headlining a house show. What’s most remarkable about ‘Crystal Oscillators’ is its music; an intoxicating blend of instrumental synth pop, ambient, krautrock, and french romanticism, all written and performed by the filmmaker himself.

A resident of Eureka, CA, Glover began writing songs in high school, producing hundreds of pop tunes in Garageband before gravitating to piano in college, where he studied classical harmony and fell in love with the work of Debussey, Satie and Harry Partch. A self-confessed obsessive, Glover dove into the scoring of his short film with immense enthusiasm, eventually emerging from the process with a staggering 5 hours of original music – only a fraction of which would find its way onto the screen. Joyous, melancholic, wistful, and sometimes just downright goofy, Glover’s music is refreshingly alive sounding; a welcome antidote to the po-faced academicism of much contemporary electronic music.

At 84 minutes, this is one of the longest single tapes we’ve released, and still only covers a fraction of the music that Glover wrote and recorded for the film between 2017 and 2020. For those looking for more, the Pennsylvania based label Orb tapes has a completely different collection of ‘Crystal Oscillators’ tracks available on cassette.