Mordy Laye and the Group Modular - Electric Paint

Mordy Laye and the Group Modular - Electric Paint from Markey Funk on Vimeo.
Written and arranged by Mordy Laye
Drums - Karl-Peter Saggz
Produced by Markey Funk for Agitacao Popular
Video by PlanktON

Taken off the V/A "No Coast Productions Collection #2" (2010)

The mystery of Mordy Laye.

One day in late May of 2009 I (Markey Funk) was waken up by a phone call from unindentified number. A man, who didn't introduce himself, said that he has some rare music material that may interest me. In an hour he picked me up from home and took me over to what seemed to be his house in Tzur Hadassah (a small town near Jerusalem).

On the way he told me a story about a band that used to rehearse in his neighbour's house back in the late 70's. They were rehearsing almost every day for nearly 2 years, but they never performed on the stage. A few years later, when the house was sold to someone else, before the reconstruction was made by the new owner, a box of magnetic tapes was found out in the basement. My mysterious stranger (who still refused to mention his name)
took these tapes to his place, where he found out that these were raw unfinished 8-track recordings of some extraordinary material.

When we arrived at his house, he took me to his cabinet and showed me the box with a name "Mordy Laye" written on it. I asked if he's going to give the tapes to me and he answered: "No, I'll give you these recordings in digital format. I've made a digital copy of each channel separately. And you will make an album out of all this material. I like your style and your dedication to the 60's and 70's sound and I think I'm giving this material to the right hands". When I asked him to tell me any more details on the band and the recordings, he only said: "Give me your disc-on-key, I'll make a copy for you". In 7 minutes we were already on the way back.

At home I realized that I forgot to take his phone number, I didn't know his name, I had no pictures of either him or the box of tapes. The only thing I knew was how his house looked like. But later, when I made an attempt to find him in Tzur Hadassah, me and my friend spent 3 hours searching across all the area, but didn't find any place that looked familliar.

What I found on my disc-on-key was well catalogued list of recording sessions with separate channels of drums, bass, guitar and various keyboards (mostly - synthesizers). In every folder there was a text file included mentioning the name of the sketch (if there was one) and partial list of involved musicians. The name that was mentioned in almost every session (besides Mordy himself, who was mostly playing keyboards and sometimes - guitar) was the drummer Karl-Peter Saggz.

"Electric Paint" sounded to me the closest to be complete, so this was the first tune that I produced, adding some sounds and a spoken word. In late 2010 I was joined by Mule Driver, whom I knew as a die-hard fan of early electronic music and all things related to it. One year later we've completed the album and it will see the light in the summer of 2012. After more than 30 years this musical journey will finally be completed...

I'm still looking for ANY information regarding Mordy Laye and his mysterious band.