Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder (b. 1950) needs no introduction, but Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (1979) earns its place on this particular shelf: the first album to use a digital sampling synthesizer — the Computer Music Melodian — and among the first digitally recorded, via Sony PCM to U-matic tape. Wonder scored the film from verbal scene descriptions with passage timings fed to four-track. Early pressings were perfumed, which damaged the vinyl; it reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 anyway.

1 physical work