The Free Design - Heaven/Earth (1969) Original Project 3 White Label Promo Vinyl Transfer

They were dream pop and twee 20 years before the terms even existed. The masters of soft-pop, this East Coast family foursome, made up of siblings Chris, Bruce, Ellen and Sandy Dedrick, has gained a well deserved cult following 40 years after their brief lifetime. Their light-as-air vocal harmonies and jazz-pop arrangements were too complex for teens, but too sugary and innocent for adults, and thus, the Free Design never found the success they deserved. Other reasons also were a factor, namely their producer Enoch Light and his Project 3 label's confusion on how to promote a young, self-contained vocal group, as opposed to the label's usual output of instrumental and easy listening records which were aimed squarely at adults and audiophiles. It's unclear to me whether this record was recorded on the 35mm film that Enoch had started to use some years prior to the recording of this album. I know that the first two Free Design LPs, Kites Are Fun (1967), and You Could Be Born Again (1968), were indeed recorded on 35mm film as indicated on the album cover, like all Project 3 LPs were back then. But on this record, their third for Project 3, 1969's Heaven/Earth, there is no mention of the recording process or what kind of tape or film was used for the master recording and I know that he eventually did stop using 35mm film because of it's high price tag.

Regardless, this is their best album by a long shot. This record found the group easing away from the child-like themes of the earlier albums (kites, umbrellas, little brothers...), and on to more adult themes like the music business, romance and self-discovery. The haunting arrangements by principle songwriter Chris Dedrick are the best he would ever conceive and the male-female vocal interplay among the group is as sharp as ever. The covers here are the most mature the group would attempt, covering standards like Gershwin's "Summertime", as opposed to their earlier records where they covered contemporary pop acts like Simon & Garfunkel, and the Turtles. Dedrick's originals steal the show though, with masterpieces of jazzy sunshine-pop like "My Very Own Angel", the bitingly cynical "2002 - A Hit Song", and the absolutely beautiful and haunting choral piece "Dorian Benediction" on which Enoch Light's session musicians lay down some of their best jazzy touches over the group's, reverb drenched, cathedral-like vocal parts. Enoch Light's production is absolutely wonderful and spacious, and he gets great help from Command/Project 3 staple Tony Mottola and awesome engineering from the brilliant Phil Ramone. Fantastic record.

This album is only available for a very limited time on this blog because this record is currently in print. Light In the Attic, a Seattle-based re-issue label has released all the Free Design's albums on nice sounding CDs. Use this rip as a preview and buy the reissue for yourself on Amazon, or go the extra mile like I did and find an old, vintage used copy of an original LP, which this rip is sourced from. Flat transferred from an original promotional vinyl copy using EAC's .WAV editor and compressed to 320vbr .mp3 using dbpoweramp and LAME 3.97. Enjoy and grab it while you can, cause it'll be gone soon:

EDIT 5/30/2012: As of May 30th, this LP rip is no longer available to download because it is still in print in CD format, issued by Light In The Attic records. See the amazon.com link above to order a copy!

-Casey