Record producer, film composer, musician, arranger and engineer David Baron has amassed a large collection of vintage synthesizers housed in his Sun Mountain studio on top of a mountain overlooking Ashokan Reservoir just south of Woodstock, New York. One of his prized synths is the ARP 2500 used by the likes of Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Bowie, Faust and Vangelis and perhaps most dramatically utilized in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the device with which scientists communicated with the aliens. On November 17, 2023 Baron released his album The ARP 2500 via Here & Now Recordings and a perhaps beautifully subtle and evocative employment of the synth is on the track “City of Nerves.” Perhaps echoing the sentiments of Ray Kurzweil, Baron says the song is a product of his thinking about how AI will impact the future and that someday he believes “a city will exist using the best of technology and biology to make for a better life for all.” The song begins with some burbling electronic tone and then a smoothly unfolding melody as layers of rhythmic and finely textured sound converge to establish a mood that is progressive with gentle forward momentum and soothing at once as a reflection of an electro-neural infrastructure that might unobtrusively provide the network of services that benefit all without the harsh demands and consequences of the economic arrangements and environment ravaging energy technologies of today. One can hope. But Baron’s song is a welcome alternative to the dark and bleak vision of the future of a lot of art which, to be fair, is extrapolating on current trend. Baron’s piece is more of the hopeful, Utopian ilk and if one can imagine it, it may even be possible. Listen to “City of Nerves” on YouTube and follow David Baron at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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