Beverly Glenn-Copeland - Transmissions: The Music Of Beverly Glenn-Copeland (2LP + 7")

Transmissions: The Music Of Beverly Glenn-Copeland is the kind of compilation that does more than tidy up a catalogue. It reintroduces a voice that feels both ancient and ahead of its time. Issued in 2020 by Transgressive, it pulls together songs from Glenn-Copeland’s early 70s folk-jazz period, the cult 1986 cassette Keyboard Fantasies, and the ecstatic, rhythmic work of 2004’s Primal Prayer, then adds a new piece, River Dreams, as a quiet manifesto for the next chapter. Plenty of compilations promise an entry point. This one actually delivers it.

What hits first is the range. Drop the needle on Ever New and you get the glowing, slow-build warmth that made Keyboard Fantasies a word-of-mouth classic. The story behind that record is part of why this compilation exists at all. Glenn-Copeland recorded those meditative synth hymns in Huntsville, Ontario in 1986 using a Yamaha DX7 and a Roland TR-707, self-releasing them on cassette. Decades later, the reissue circuit found it, fans swapped rips, and a new audience arrived, hearing a kind of spacious, generous electronic music that feels made for dawns and train stations and quiet kitchens. Transmissions honours that chapter, but it doesn’t let it define him.

La Vita, from Primal Prayer, brings in a very different energy. The vocals are operatic and earthy at once, riding drum machine patterns with a devotional intensity. It’s joyful, almost dance-floor adjacent, but still resolutely personal. If you’ve only heard the serene side of Glenn-Copeland, this will jolt you in the best way. The earlier material reaches back even further, to a time when he recorded under the name Beverly Copeland. A song like Colour of Anyhow shows his roots in jazz and folk, voice up front, lyrics searching. You can hear the training and the instinct in equal measure, as if Joni, McCoy Tyner and a gospel choir had all been in the room at some point in his life.

The new song, River Dreams, ties these strands together. It moves with the patience of the Keyboard Fantasies pieces but carries the lived-in gravitas of someone who has spent decades thinking about form and feeling. Critics picked it out quickly when the compilation landed, and with good reason. It sounds like a benediction.

One thing a career-spanning set can do is flatten context. This one avoids that. The sequencing makes musical sense, so you hear the arc of an artist rather than a grab-bag of styles. There’s room for favourites like Sunset Village, which still glows like a beacon, and there is space for pieces that showcase his choral writing and his long-standing love of spirituals. It’s also a reminder that Glenn-Copeland’s story has run through many corners of Canadian culture. He wrote and performed music for children’s television, worked steadily even when the industry didn’t know what to do with a Black, trans, classically trained singer making futuristic folk-synth psalms. The rediscovery never feels like a gimmick because the work is right there, solid as stone.

Transgressive handled the presentation with care. The audio is warm and dynamic, and the notes help newcomers make sense of what they’re hearing without over-explaining it. On vinyl, the flow between eras really breathes. If you’re the kind who flips through crates at a Melbourne record store and buys with your ears first, Transmissions is the kind of Beverly Glenn-Copeland vinyl that rewards a blind purchase. If you prefer to buy Beverly Glenn-Copeland records online, this is also one of the easiest starting points, and it sits neatly alongside other Beverly Glenn-Copeland albums on vinyl like Keyboard Fantasies and Primal Prayer. I’ve seen it tucked into staff-pick walls in shops around town, and it belongs there.

What elevates the compilation from good to essential is the way it reframes Glenn-Copeland not as a curiosity but as a composer with a distinct voice across decades. You can hear continuity in the chord choices, in the way he stacks harmonies, in the unhurried tempos that invite you to take a breath. You can also hear how he absorbs technology not as a gimmick but as a tool for intimacy. The DX7 pads, the 707 ticks, the roomy piano, the choral swells, they all point to the same compass.

If you’re crate-digging for something timeless, Transmissions: The Music Of Beverly Glenn-Copeland vinyl is a top pick. It reads like a love letter to past and future listeners, and it plays like a single, confident statement. In the growing aisles of vinyl records Australia is stocking these days, this one feels like a quiet staple. Put it on in the morning. Come back to it at night. It holds.