In the headlong rush into the future, it's sometimes useful to stop and look to the past. Where the promise of the former meets the time-tested and proven of the latter, a door for innovation opens. This is precisely where Industrial Monk finds itself with its debut CD, Magnificat.

The key to Industrial Monk and Magnificat is juxtaposition. Over the course of seven tracks, Industrial Monk melds music of the past with music of the present, blending acoustic (real) voices with a wide variety of digital instrumentation, sampling, and state-of-the-art studio technology. Monk also combines classical musical forms with the popular, and takes ancient music that was written for religious purposes and brings it into the 1990s for an experience that can be both spiritual and purely pleasurable. Producer Fred Vogler says, "We mix harmonies and musical ideas of the 16th century with sounds that we generate electronically by pushing all of the buttons and turning all of the knobs at our disposal to derive an integral sense of past and present."

Industrial Monk is Fred Vogler and Takashi Kawai, a pair of musician/producer/engineers with a passion for modern sound technology. They first met on the set of a feature film, where Fred was a sound engineer and Takashi was a synthesist. Fred has a wide and extensive background as a producer/engineer. He has worked on feature films (Leap Of Faith, The Preacher's Wife and Sister Act I & II, to name a few) and provided sound reinforcement for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the J. Paul Getty Museum concert series, Barbra Streisand and many others. He has also contributed his musical skills to radio, video laserdiscs, television, archival recordings and commercially released recordings from more than a dozen labels. In addition, he also runs his own independent record label, RCM Records.

Takashi, originally from Japan, is a composer, drummer, synthesist and arranger. He has worked on features, independent films, television (including "Dead Man's Walk") and on several stage productions in Los Angeles. Together, Takashi and Fred form a collaboration that is equally professional and adventurous.

Each track on Magnificat is built around a piece of ancient European vocal music from the 15th or 16th centuries. Five tracks use liturgical, or religious music, while two use secular folk songs. Although ancient vocal music has seen a rise in popularity in the past decade, blending it with contemporary music and technology, while not wholly unheard of, is a relatively new idea. (This is a generally untapped repertoire.) Using the available technology, Fred and Takashi mix modern vocal renditions of older texts with complex, beat and groove-oriented electronic and dance music. The vocals are provided by Elin Carlson, Brad McMurray and the Los Angeles Chamber Singers; additional bass is by Reggie Hamilton. All other music is produced, reduced and sampled by Industrial Monk