Visual Audio Sensory Theater by VAST

Visual Audio Sensory Theater, the debut album from VAST, came out on Elektra on April 28, 1998, and it's the work of Jon Crosby, the Petaluma singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who had signed to the label at just 17. It sounds like nothing else on alternative radio that year: sampled Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Saint-Maur and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares collide with an 18-piece orchestra, grinding guitars and electronics, and Crosby travelled the world taping choirs to weave into the songs, which gives the whole thing its world-music shimmer.

Some of the material had first surfaced, unfinished, on his demo EP VAST Is... "Pretty When You Cry" went out first and did modestly, but the second single, "Touched", which borrows from "Pilentze Pee" by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, broke the band after it landed on a film soundtrack and MTV picked up the video. Music for People came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.