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Mother Earth's Plantasia
Studio album by Mort Garson
Released	1976
Studio	Patchcord Productions, Hollywood, California
Genre	Space age pop
Length	30:55
Label	Homewood Records, Sacred Bones

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	78/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Pitchfork	7.2/10
The Quietus

Mother Earth's Plantasia is an electronic album by Mort Garson released in 1976.

Background

The music on this album was composed specifically for plants to listen to. Garson was inspired by his wife, who grew many plants in their home. Garson used a Moog synthesizer to compose the album, the first album on the West Coast composed entirely on the Moog synthesizer.

The album had a very limited distribution upon release, only being available to people who bought a houseplant from a store called Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles or those who purchased a Simmons mattress from a Sears outlet, both of which came with the record. As a result, the album failed to attain widespread popularity around the time of its release. However, it has since gained a cult following as an early work of electronic music.

Legacy

The album also gained popularity on YouTube, with the full album (uploaded without permission) gaining millions of views and thousands of comments spread over multiple different bootleg uploads.

A cover of "Plantasia" was produced by Griffin McElroy for use in a 2017 episode of The Adventure Zone.

In March 2019, Sacred Bones Records announced that they were officially reissuing Mother Earth's Plantasia. The reissue is available on music streaming services and was released on vinyl, CD and cassette on June 21, 2019. Angie Martoccio, writing for Rolling Stone in 2019, described Mother Earth's Plantasia as Garson's magnum opus. Stephen M. Deusner, writing for Pitchfork, described it as perhaps Garson's "most beloved album, at least among crate-diggers and record collectors."

For the 2023 tax season, Intuit used the opening track "Plantasia" on a TurboTax advertisement.

Track listing

Personnel

• Mort Garson – score, electronics
• Eugene L. Hamblin III – electronic engineering
• Sam Nicholson – art direction
• Marvin Rubin – illustrations

Charts

See also

• Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants", 1979 album by Stevie Wonder
• Plant perception (physiology)

References

1. Mother Earth's Plantasia (back cover of LP), Hollywood, CA: Homewood Records, 1976
2. "Metacritic Review". Metacritic. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
3. Phares, Heather. "AllMusic Review". AllMusic. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
4. ^ Deusner, Stephen (July 6, 2019). "Pitchfork Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
5. Coney, Brian (June 26, 2019). "The Quietus Review". The Quietus. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
6. ^ "Mort Garson: Mother Earth's Plantasia". Sacred Bones Records. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
7. ^ "Celebrating Plantasia". Moog Music. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
8. ^ "Mother Earth's Plantasia Gets First Official Vinyl Reissue". Pitchfork. Condé Nast. 22 March 2019. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
9. Petridis, Alexis (2019-07-09). "Mother Earth's Plantasia: the cult album you should play to your plants". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
10. "Journey's End: Music from The Adventure Zone, by Griffin McElroy". Griffin McElroy.
11. Martoccio, Angie (2019-12-12). "Revisiting the Weird World of Seventies Plant Music". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2021-05-18. Retrieved 2021-05-18.
12. "TurboTax Not Taxes 2023 Commercial Song". Commercial Song. January 2023. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
13. "Independent Albums". Billboard. July 6, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
14. "EDM Music & Dance Albums Chart". Billboard. July 6, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2019.

• Mort Garson albums
• 1976 albums
• Plants in culture
• Albums with cover art by Robert Beatty (artist)