SPIN's 10 Best Reissues of 2012

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December 14 2012, 11:24 AM ET

#8

LAURIE SPIEGEL - THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE (UNSEEN WORLDS)

Back in the 1970s, when "personal computer" meant a machine the size of a $600,000 Williamsburg condo, composer Laurie Spiegel was enacting computer music that transcended the technological limits of her time. She even escaped the Earth's gravitational pull, as her musical realization of Johannes Kepler's "Harmony of the Spheres" was included on Voyager I & II's "golden record" and shot into space. But until this year, you had a better chance of hearing Spiegel's music outside of our solar system than within it. That changed when her synth noise scored a bloody battle sequence in The Hunger Games and this two-disc set compilation of her early work finally saw reissue. With Spiegel's ancient computing machines, she melded a love of Appalachian banjo ditties, African rhythms, astronomical wonders, and alien-baiting drones into something approaching cosmic bliss. ANDY BETA