Released in May 1975, Initiation is Todd Rundgren’s boldest, strangest, most overloaded vision—a dense, metaphysical double-LP squeezed onto a single slab of vinyl, running just under 70 minutes (which pushed the physical limits of what vinyl could even contain). It came with a warning to play it loud to overcome the unavoidable surface noise. Because Initiation is noise. Not chaos—but cosmic density.
This is Todd the seeker. Todd the magician. Todd the channeler of esoteric knowledge. He wasn't just writing songs—he was studying the occult, Theosophy, Aleister Crowley, the Seven Rays of spiritual energy. And it shows. The title track opens the album with a synth-laced, funk-leaning art-pop blowout, but soon enough we’re in the deep waters: “Eastern Intrigue,” “Fair Warning,” “Born to Synthesize”—songs that sound like Parliament dropped acid with John Coltrane in an astral projection class.
And then there’s Side B. Or what’s left of it: “A Treatise on Cosmic Fire”. Thirty-five minutes of synthesizer voyage based on Alice Bailey’s theosophical text of the same name. It’s a spiritual drone symphony, a precursor to ambient music, new age, even techno in its machine-driven mysticism. It’s also Rundgren’s version of Metal Machine Music, in that it’s completely uncompromising. But where Lou Reed was about negation and obliteration, Rundgren was about ascension.
In the 1975 Series, Initiation plays the role of the vision quest. It’s the otherworldly complement to Young Americans’ soul-searching, the metaphysical counterweight to Physical Graffiti’s earthly grandeur. While most artists were trying to “get real” or “get raw,” Rundgren was trying to leave the body entirely. He was mapping a different kind of terrain: the mind, the soul, the collective unconscious.
It’s also, weirdly, a techno-hippie manifesto. Todd was already experimenting with early digital tech, building Utopia as a multimedia art collective, designing his own software. Initiation is caught between analog mysticism and digital prophecy. It’s chakra charts in a Moog control room. It’s tarot cards read through a vocoder. It’s music for the Aquarian cyborg.
If Bowie was chasing soul and Lou was chasing static, Todd was chasing spirit—and Initiation is what it sounds like when a pop genius goes full alchemical. It didn’t sell big, and it never could. It wasn’t meant to.
Because Initiation is an invitation:
To transcend.
To dissolve ego.
To synthesize the sacred and the synthetic.
To listen beyond hearing.
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