The man, the myth, the Haack. If you’re like me, and you more than likely are, you’re wondering who the hell Bruce Haack is. I certainly didn’t know, but the subtitle “King of Techno” and a picture of Bruce with Fred Rogers in the Slamdance program sold me on the screening. And now that I’ve seen the documentary and realize Bruce Haack as a major talent and definitely a pioneer in electronic music, but it’s a shame that a film about a man creating such bizarre tunes had to be so goddamn boring.
In the 60s and 70s, Bruce Haack created bizarre children’s music that was more frightening than soothing. His music became more dark and adult oriented as he kept churning it out until his death in the late 80s. It’s the kind of stuff that I imagine that was featured in ReSearch’s “Incredibly Strange Music.” If it wasn’t, then those people weren’t doing their job.
So, other than the guy creating some pretty tripped out tracks, I really can’t tell you much more about Bruce as the film lulled me into boredom. Sure it looked great with a bunch of crazy animation and video manipulations complimenting the music perfectly, but this is mainly a talking head documentary and most of the talking heads really didn’t have anything to say other than that they look at Haack as a major inspiration. So I really didn’t learn too much about the man other than that a lot of musicians, Money Mark included, love him. There’s only so much of this you can handle before Old Father Coma starts tapping you on the shoulder. Good thing this doc is only 69 minutes, but it could have been a lot shorter.
