Holy crap, this long circulated bootleg, originally released in the early eighties as a crazy limited unofficial cassette, has now been remastered and reissued as a super deluxe double lp. Capturing a classic period in the early years of these Aussie post punks, four sides of swaggery, snarly, swampy garage punk action, the sound delivered in varying degrees of fidelity, it was bootleg after all, but all the tracks here rule, loose and ramshackle, sloppy and wild, unhinged and fuzzed out and catchy as hell, a bunch of cool covers too, Alex Chilton, Chuck Berry, the Troggs, some rarities but also some Scientists classics. All recorded between the late seventies and early eighties, and sounding way better than any of the versions you might have dug up on some blog.
Pressed on 150 gram vinyl, housed in a thick full color gatefold sleeve (with printed innersleeves), featuring lots of rare photos, and extensive liner notes from various Scientists, all telling wild tales of back in the day!
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Basic Channel -- the Berlin-based techno label run by Mortiz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus from 1993 - 1995 -- released only 9 singles and 1 retrospective cd; yet, the impact that Basic Channel had upon the global techno and electronica communities has been tremendous. It's probably safe to say that any self-respecting techno DJ has a couple of the Basic Channel 12"s thoroughly smeared with grimy fingerprints from years of use. Jerome Maunsell in describing Basic Channel for The Wire rightly qualified it as "the Holy Grail of Techno." The sound of Basic Channel ripples with precedents from Lee Perry's schizoid rewiring of tape through his delay pedals to the cocaine-induced mania / paranoia of late 80's Acid House to the skeletal vacancy of Detroit Techno; however, Basic Channel (like its contemporary descendent Chain Reaction) has an unmistakeable signature. Monochromatic, metallic synth stabs cascade through rhythmically precise delay patterns alongside the unrelenting force of a very simple 909 four on the floor techno stomp - often just a huge basskick and an off-beat ride cymbal or hi-hat.
For this album, Chain Reactionists Scion (Pete Kuschnereit aka Substance and Rene Loewe aka Vainqueur) were given free access to the Basic Channel back catalogue to create a continuous mixed cd with the help of Ableton's 'live' audio software. The results do not stray far from the original sound, even though multiple Basic Channel tracks have been woven into various sections of the album. And even almost a decade after their original inception, these cuts still sound amazing and fresh!
Last time, we reviewed The Omni Corporation's reissue of a wonderful rare "library music" album entitled Omega 2000 by German composer Peter Thomas and his "Orchestra". Those diligent diggers at Omni Corp. have another one along those lines for us this week, again a '70s library music collection, from the much less well known name of Patrice Sciortino. Can't believe this is the first we've heard of the man and his music, considering that this stuff sounds something like the more outre of Morricone efforts, pretty darn cool. And apparently, there's plenty more where this came from. Wow, thanks Omni!!
Sciortino is classically trained French musician, born in 1922, who eventually established a career in the '60s/'70s as a prolific and somewhat peculiar composer, with, eventually, many obscure recordings to his credit. He's also a poet and playwright. With an interest in both non-Western musics and the most avant-garde of electronics (he studied at GRM), his musical vision, as displayed here, is unusual and otherworldly.
Where that Orchestra Peter Thomas disc was groovy and funky, all about the big bombastic beats, this Sciortino stuff is much more atmospheric and academic sounding... it's like 20th century classical gone soundtrack wacky. Imagine Bernard Herrmann (of Psycho fame) meets Carl Stalling (of Warner Bros. cartoons fame). Or Luigi Nono writing music for TV shows. His music is sometimes ominous, sometimes uplifting, offering plenty of percussive exotica, chimings and tinklings, with shuddering, sawing cello and eerie wordless female vocals. And occasional echo effects intensifying the rhythms.
This disc comprises Sciortino's entire, intriguing 1970 album Chronoradial, plus extensive selections from three different 10" records of his belonging to a library music series out by the Musique Pour L'Image label circa 1967-1968. There's 36 tracks here in all, many of them jittery and unsettling, suspenseful and nervous - but others lively, joyous and beautiful.
Nicely done, in typical Omni fashion, the cd booklet full of informative liner notes, and awesome freaky black and white artwork from the original lps - love that raccoon-like creature with the clocks for eyes!! Quite recommended.
A while back, we highlighted an Omni label reissue of a pretty cool album called Chronoradial, some way-out library music from the late sixties/early seventies by avant-garde French composer Patrice Sciortino, which we likened to "20th century classical gone soundtrack wacky". Some months later, Omni released a follow-up second volume with more of Sciortino's works, which we're finally now listing as well. That's this disc, featuring two whole Sciortino albums: Percupulsions, from 1970, and 1975's Gymnorythmies/1, plus a few extra bonus cuts taken from a couple other Sciortino lps of the era - 43 tracks in all!
Percupulsions - what a great title, it sounds like a word we'd have coined to describe it - is of course very rhythmic, with classical percussionists gracefully navigating jazzy compositions that also incorporate harspsichord and tape manipulation, a soundscape that's melodic and playful - and rather strange and sinister too. Gymnorythmies/1 is likewise full of quirky movement and joy, being meant to accompany modern dance and gymnastics exercises (a instructional booklet with diagrams of dances was included with the original lp release!). Pretty neat, recommended to folks who liked Chronoradial or Omni's other arty European '70s library music reissues, such as those lps by Egisto Macchi.
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Snappy new ep from female Chicago no-wave band often described as the Raincoats meet Melt Banana.
The Robert Mapelthorp cover art is our favorite part.
The current flavor of the day in the music scenester hype parade seems to be the Scissor Sisters, and they're definitely receiving the love 'em / hate 'em reception around AQ (more so the latter actually). The lovers aren't going to give a poop what we say, and likewise, the haters. Nonetheless, here's our take on this album...
An ultra party affair, a mishmash of already mishmashy genres such as faux soul, glammy rock, disco drag, and poncy new romantic! The album as a whole sorta made Cup think it was a 2004 remake of the Flashdance soundtrack complete with a "Maniac"-style aerobics class-ready track (see "Music Is The Victim"). Think of Scissor Sisters as plugging into a similarly contrived, irony-heavy, nostalgic vein as the combined excessively stylized and slickly produced forces of The Darkness and Fischerspooner. Sound good to you? Will probably be filed in many record libraries under "guilty pleasure".
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Take a healthy dose of the Brit rock swagger of Pulp, some Canadian earnest buoyancy a la Hot Hot Heat and a bit of the New York rawk slouch of The Strokes, mix well. Then give'r all a blast of Bay Area sun-kissed breeziness and you might find yourself cuttin' a rug with Scissors For Lefty. Unlike many of their contemporaries whose dance rock tunes are simply one dimensional repetitions of a so-so melodic line that rely heavily on the button-pushing 4/4 thump to do all the work for 'em, Scissors For Lefty's equally dancefloor worthy tracks are full-fledged songs that actually go somewhere, following charmingly witty story arcs. If they ever remake the movie Valley Girl, the album's ninth song "Got Your Moments" should be first in line to appear on the soundtrack! Fun!
The aptly-named Scorch Trio is back with another blast of electric guitar fueled n' frenzied Nordic free improv on the Rune Grammofon label. If you liked their previous 3 or 4 discs on Rune G, or the recent Box album featuring Scorch Trio guitarist Raul Bjorkenheim, you're probably eager to grapple with Brolt! Likewise if you're into similar sorts of "dangerous jazz" from, say, Nels Cline's various bands. Yeah, it IS jazz, but with plenty of sharp electric edges and dense drum-battery. While jazz vet Bjorkenheim's six string scorchin' deserves top billing (and he also cranks the electric viola da gimbri), the other 2/3rds of this power trio make plenty of noise too: Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (electric bass, electronics) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums & percussion), both of whom also play in "garage-jazz" freakout combo The Thing with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson.
Track one gets into skonky-rhythmic territory that recalls the spazz-prog of Japan's Tatsuya Yoshida before it's over, while the next one delves into more atmospheric, textural zones a la Supersilent. And so it goes, the whole album chock full of skree-filled soundscapes veering from the moody to energetic.
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Such a good name for this band! At least right from the get-go with the slash and burn 12-minute opening track it sure seems appropriate. That's some searing and scorching electric guitar there! The album closes with another double-digit epic as well, and in between the trio of guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim, bassist Haker Flaten and percussionist Paal Nilsen-Love do let up and explore a variety of grooves and moods, from ominous textural soundscaping, to roiling slide workouts, to y'know, burbling sorta melodic stuff that might pass for 'jazz' of the highball-in-hand, nightclub variety. Although, the electric element of about-to-explode skronk always seems just under the surface. Fans of Nels Cline's various bands know the feeling, and ought to enjoy Bjorkenheim and co.'s own, similar brand of 'dangerous' electric jazz... Heck the type of AQ customer for whom names like Cline, Sharrock, Russell, McLaughlin, Takayanagi, and the like mean something (and occupy a portion of their record collection) stand a good chance of being quite happy if they give this a listen. All of those are all individually quite different of course but it's that rock-aware, energetic and amplified style of electric guitar improv (with dense guitar/bass/drums interplay) that this fits right in with, y'know.
Siltbreeze continues to reissue some of our favorite classic underground New Zealand rarities, a while back there was the amazing Pin Group reissue, and now we have this, the complete recorded works of Scorched Earth Policy, who existed for 2 or 3 years in the mid eighties, and only ever recorded two 12"s for the legendary Flying Nun label, both of which are collected here. And while you might not know Scorched Earth Policy, you no doubt know some of the bands the various members also did time in: Vacuum, Pin Group, Terminals, Max Block, Renderers and a bunch more. The sound of Scorched Earth Policy was a sort of post punk flecked psychedelic garage rock, lots of low slung basslines, simple stripped down drumming, whirring organs, jagged angular riffage and fuzzed out jangle, boy/girl vocals, even some violin. The core 'sound' of SEP will definitely be familiar to fans of Flying Nun and NZ rock of the time, and everybody who digs the Bats and the Chills and the 3D's, the Verlaines, Snapper, etc, will probably dig these guys too (if they don't already) but even within that recognizable sound, the band definitely did their own thing, whether it was wild, loose punky jangle, or woozy, creepy almost country (foreshadowing the Renderers for sure), fuzzy playful poppiness, or brooding post punk, haunting organ driven balladry (which reminds us of Peter Jefferies as well!), or swaggery noise rock crunch. So good!
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If Belle & Sebastian went bad, had a penchant for petty arson, fist fights, and heavy drinking, and wrote some downright mean pop songs, they would have been New Zealand's Scorched Earth Policy. "Keep Away From The Wires" collects the handful of the recordings made during the tumultous career of the band which only lasted from 1982 - 1986 after which the band dissolved to focus on other projects like The Terminals, The Pin Group, and The Renderers.
With so many Mick Harris projects out as Scorn, Lull, E.O.E., Painkiller, and all of the collaborations with Bill Laswell, it is hard to keep them straight and also to know which are the best to get. This collection of unreleased and hard-to-find material is one of those really great Scorn records... Heavy apocalyptic dub compounding the already dark hip-hop breaks that made Scorn's reputation on "Evanescence" and "Ellipsis".
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Scorn is Mick Harris of Painkiller and I don't know who else. Remixes by Bill Laswell, Autechre, Meat Beat Manifesto, Scanner, etc.
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Mick Harris has been operating his dub-electronica project Scorn for over 15 years now, with his first forays being released through Earache and later through the industrial minded Hymen Records. Throughout his career, his goal has been devastation through dub, taking plenty of cues from contemporary contexts, whether that be the Pathological label from the early '90s (e.g. Terminal Cheesecake, Ice, God, etc.) with their post-Public Image Limited heaviness, or from the Illbient dark-dark-dark hip-hop of Spectre and the Wordsound crew, or as is the case on this album, the dubstep of Kode 9 and Burial. A threatening, malcontent atmosphere has always been at the heart of Harris' work, even if you were to go back to his early days in Napalm Death; yeah, you'll find that here creeping around the modulated sub-bass riffs that wow & flutter in most every dubstep track. The tracks themselves are nowhere nearly as memorable as anything that the aforementioned Kode 9 or Burial have concocted; but Harris does have a knack for keeping things dark. And if the dark, the dubby, and the devastating is what you are after, look no further.
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Another Mick Harris scary dub-industrial disc, just in time for your next deep sleep nightmare.
Nuclear Blast, after wowing us with the latest from Kadavar and the debut from Free Fall, not to mention the as yet un-aQ-reviewed new album from unabashed Sabbath appropriators Orchid, have just come out with ANOTHER catchy, killer album in the '70s retro-rock style, the debut full-length by a bombastic band from Austin, Texas called Scorpion Child. These guys list proto-metal & heavy krautrock acts like Pentagram, Hairy Chapter and Lucifer's Friend as influences, and yeah, we hear those for sure, but it must be admitted that they also have a bit of Sunset Strip swagger to 'em, if they were from LA in the '80s they'd probably have made it onto MTV. That's in part 'cuz the lead singer's raucous wailing vox are very Robert Plant-ish, and a lot of the '80s hair bands were trying really hard to sound like Led Zeppelin after all - so Scorpion Child woulda fit right in with the likes of Badlands or Blue Murder, ferinstance. They even throw in some Zeppish power ballady acoustic stylings on the album closing epic "Red Blood (The River Flows)". The singer also reminds us a lot of Dave King from Fastway, which we consider a plus. But Scorpion Child definitely sport a grittier, more vintage sound that all you '70s proto-metal lovers out there will dig, rocking out like a more party-hardy Graveyard or something, with muscular grooves, sticky choruses, and that aforementioned sensual yowl leading the charge. Just listen to tracks like "Kings Highway" or "Polygon Of Eyes"... one word (or is it two?) will do: badass.
Domestic vinyl version soon forthcoming. The gatefold compact disc includes a bonus track, that may or may not also be on the vinyl, however.
Ok. Go to YouTube and watch this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8nTGTCSGj30&mode=related&search=
Now, buy this album.
What, you need more???
Ok, but don't think we won't try that ploy again.
So, if'n you don't know, 1972's Lonesome Crow was the first ever album from Germany's Scorpions, a band later to become worldwide heavy metal hitmakers. Here, though, their not-so-humble beginnings are in the realm of heavy, hippie, progressive KRAUTROCK. Of course. In fact, this Conny Plank produced debut was the first ever release in the legendary Brain label 1000-series, catalog number Brain 1001 (and thus it's now getting a nice digipack cd reissue via the Revisited label, along with classic krautrock albums by Klaus Schulze, Eroc, Novalis, and others). It's fully psychedelic heaviness, seriously Sabbathy in spots, featuring the glorious fly-you-to-the-rainbow vocal stylings of a then-bearded and not-yet-balding Klaus Meine and, on virtuoso lead guitar, Michael Schenker, the 16 year old brother of rhythm guitarist Rudy! Young Schenker would soon split the Scorps for what at the time were greener pastures in England's UFO, but since his replacement was the godly Uli Jon Roth, the Scorpions saw no slacking in the dep't. of axe mastery. Still, this first album is definitely sits on its own lonely throne amongst all the amazing early Scorpions records (up thru the last one with Uli, 1977's Taken By Force, you can't really go wrong!).
So fans of the psychedelic proto-metal and krautrock too should check this out...no, it's not like they sound like Can or Faust... but it's not too far off from some Amon Duul II, Lucifer's Friend, Nektar, or even Necronomicon. The title track clocks in at over 13 murky, majestic minutes (that's prog!). And the riffs, well the riffs definitely are Hendrix-Cream-Sabbath influenced, on the road to true metal, sorta an earlier parallel to the evolution of another great '70s metal act, Judas Priest, whose first album was also on the druggy, psychedelic side.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Just realized that this '70s metal essential was now available at a bargain price - we've got 'em for only five bucks, while they last! From 1978, long before their MTV fame in the '80s, this was the last studio album by the Scorps to feature the guitar playing of Hendrix-obsessed genius-in-his-own-right Uli Jon Roth, and it features one of Uli's most classic compositions: "The Sails Of Charon", a truly majestic metal milestone. The whole album is a metal milestone, really, 'cause it's one on which you can actually hear "proto-metal" giving way to pure metal metal, the kind that would give rise to the NWOBHM, Metallica, speed metal, thrash, etc., etc., via straight up galloping metal steeds, like "Steamrock Fever" and "He's A Woman - She's A Man". The Scorps, who got their start in the '60s, are still sorta psychedelic on Taken By Force, but so heavy and dark and speedy and gothic. Groovy hippie acoustic strum slams into utter heavy howling headbanging epic riff mania all over the place here. Uli, "The Sails Of Charon" aside, is responsible for most of the hippie stuff, of course, contributing "Foxy Lady" like rocker "I've Got To Be Free" and the beautiful (with bongos!) "Your Light", some majestic jangle there all right. And having mentioned Uli, we should also mention vocalist Klaus Meine, whose performance here also kills, whether screaming his head off, or singing a delicate, tearful ballad (with strings) like album-closer "Born To Touch Your Feelings".
For the longest time, this was a difficult Scorpions disc to come by, we remember searching out expensive import copies, so if you're just picking it up now you're lucky to get it so cheap! And it'd be well worth it at thrice the price, or more, anyway. We can't really do it justice in this brief review. '70s Scorps rules!
Remastered, this edition including two bonus tracks, the cowbell-heavy "Suspender Love" and a live version of "Polar Nights" (but the latter's from Tokyo Tapes, so not such a bonus if you already have that).
NOW ON VINYL!
Another manic blast of freaked out 8-bit jams from this curiously monickered purveyor of blown out video game gabber. The sound of Scotch Egg is a bit hard to describe, the closest we can get is, maybe imagine being in an arcade, playing your favorite eighties video game, when inexplicably, lightning strikes the arcade, and the electricity surges through the wiring and right into the video game you're playing, suddenly, the machine freaks out, shooting sparks, the characters on the screen transform into weird shapes and start doing unspeakable things, and the sounds, oh the sounds, that music you grew up with, the soothing lullaby of primitive computer melodies, gone totally haywire, exploding into squalls of utter 8-bit chaos, the rhythms fast and furious tangled and chaotic, flurries of tones, melodies become gnarled and dizzying.
You know that part in Galaga where the mother ship comes down and captures one of your men so you can shoot id down later and have a dual shooter? The sound it makes when it sends out its green and blue tractor beam? Now imagine that sound stretched into a whole song, with the dude from Hella going apeshit on the drums in the background. That perfectly describes one of the songs here. Some of the other tracks sound like the Boredoms if they were transported back to the eighties and tapped to do music for Dig Dug and Mr. Do. Or maybe imagine Venetian Snares, zapped Tron style and beamed into a video game, and these are his desperate musical cries for help. Sound wacked? Well, it is, WAY wacked.
The sounds are all over the map, many you'll recognize as being purloined from some of your favorite video games, but here, they're just tiny parts of a ear pummeling barrage of sound, from Melt Banana style video game grind, to weirdly intense 8-bit drones, all the 'death' music from video games stretched out into actual songs, There are some real drums here and there, some guitar, some fucked up vocals, some tracks even sound like damaged video game free jazz, while others sound like creepy computer math rock, but for the most part it's just frenzied electronic gabber video game lo-fi 8-bit freak out dancefloor destroying mayhem and we LOVE it. Be sure and stick around for the final track, a weird looped groove assembled from what sounds like a tape recorded video game, all lo fi and muddy, but here looped and assembled into some druggy repetitive almost krautrocky drone jam.
Like a modern Switched On Bach, DJ Scotch Egg, armed with modified game boys, and a serious arsenal of 8 bit noisemakers, takes all your favorite Bach tunes and turns them inside out, tangles them all up, slathers them in overloaded electronic buzz and glitch and all sorts of squiggly video game music, and creates some glorious bastard classical gabber electronic classical knee-to-the-nuts techno. And it's a blast. Wild and goofy, funny and sort of funky, but completely brilliantly baffling.
Lots of the pieces are ones you'd recognize, but they are quickly transformed into blown out lo-fi blasts of damaged dance music. Some tracks feature garbled super distorted vocals, and end up sounding like some toy version of Atari Teenage Riot. Allan thinks a lot of this sounds like the video game version of the theme from Bad News Bears or maybe an 8-bit Virgil Fox trapped in a haunted video arcade. However it strikes you, odds are you won't hear a record this weird and this much fun anytime soon. Imagine playing some insane futuristic version of Dance Dance Revolution on a crappy old Atari 2600, but with the sound patched through 1,000 Marshall stacks. Fucking awesome!
If you're anything like us (at least two of us have the sounds of Rastan on our iPods and we have a full size Tron machine in the back room of AQ!) this is so deliriously damaged and absolutely essential!!
We can't remember a movie we've wanted to see this bad in ages. Sure we're a little sick of Michael Cera, and his one dimensional / one character bag of tricks, but somehow he seemed MADE to be in this movie. More importantly, it's directed by Edgar Wright, the man responsible for not only the amazing RomZomCom Shaun Of The Dead, but the equally awesome buddy cop parody Hot Fuzz, not to mention the fake grind house trailer for Don't (and hey, if they can make a real movie out of one of the OTHER fake Grindhouse trailers, Machete, then come on, why not an actual movie of Don't?). Plus if you've seen the trailer, it's total eye candy, like a tween rock band version of Fight Club, with all sorts of random CGI filligree, not to mention some awesome over the top battles, and the whole concept of this indie rock nebbish having to battle a league of super evil exboyfriends (AND girlfriends) to win the punk rock love of his life, c'mon! We haven't seen it, but we KNOW it's gonna rule. And the soundtrack is pretty bad ass too. People are psyched about it for new music from Beck, but what some might not realize is that while he wrote the music for the 'fake' band in the movie Sex Bob-Omb, he doesn't actually perform those tracks, instead, the band, including Cera, actually tackle Beck's songs, which are fuzzy and garage-y and snotty and GREAT. Broken Social Scene show up too, as the fictional band Crash And The Boys, whose sound is fast and furious and hardcore, one of the tracks, "I'm So Sad, So Very Very Sad" clocking in at about all of 5 seconds! But fear not, there's a new Beck song proper, a new Broken Social Scene song, new music from Metric, as well as some classic jams from Frank Black, T-Rex, The Rolling Stones, and some others. The soundtrack finishes off with a rad 8-bit jam, that's all Nintendo-y and groovy and pretty much sounds like it should be the theme for the movie. Killer soundtrack, and we're betting killer movie too (we'll know for sure this weekend!!!)...
Produced by Berry White, this is some heart aching sweet soft soul from 1975. Gloria Scott never got the recognition she deserved, such an amazing voice!
We rarely carry toys, not cuz we don't all love toys, but we already have our hands full with just music. But every once in a while, a toy comes along that speaks directly to music nerds like us. And you presumably. And the folks at PressPop in Japan definitely seem to have our number!
Way back in 2005, they released a Bob Moog action figure, wearing a sportcoat, red bowtie and glasses, finger extended to depress a key on his trusty analog Mini-Moog synthesizer. As we proclaimed back then, the perfect gift for "AQ vintage-synthesizer-lovin', action-figure-collectin' shoppers", and we were right, those Moog dolls flew out of here like you wouldn't believe. So here we are 3 years later, and just in time for Christmas, it's time for the second in PressPop's series of electronic music innovators, this time none other than Raymond Scott!
By now, Raymond Scott should need no introduction, if you need to know more, do a search on the aQ site and read all about this electronic music pioneer,, his life, his music, and his legacy. Needless to say, like Moog, with out Scott, a whole lot of your favorite bands would sound a whole lot different. Not to mention the fact that he's responsible for some of our favorite cartoon music ever.
Anyway, if you're like us, your music room or computer or wherever it is that you spend all your music listening time, deserves to be blessed by Saint Scott, his visage overlooking you sanctuary, as he reaches out to add his own synthesizer buzz to whatever it is you're listening to. The body is the same as Mr. Moog's, so he's got the same magic finger outstretched, but Mr. Scott is dressed in a natty grey suit (with a Raymond Scott 100 year anniversary silkscreened on the back) with a black tie, accompanied by his keyboard of choice, the Clavivox, which he invented and patented in 1956 (and which featured a sub assembly constructed by a young Bob Moog who would design the first Moog synthesizer a decade later!). The doll and the keyboard are housed in an eye popping full color box designed by Mr. Archer Prewitt (of the Sea & Cake), and the back of the box features a killer illustration of another Scott invention, the Electronium, a keyboardless automatic composition and performance machine!
And as if that weren't enough, also included is a cd, with more killer Archer Prewitt artwork, which includes: "Powerhouse", probably Scott's most famous bit of cartoon music, a track from Scott's Soothing Sounds For Baby, his collection of electronic music for infants, really beautiful and strange, alien and hypnotic, and coolest of all, three archival tracks of Scott talking about and then demonstrating his various inventions, the Clavivox, the Electronium and the Rhythm Modulator. Holy Cow!!!
As with the Moog doll (now long gone), these are indeed super limited, and a little pricey with overseas shipping, but have a read, a look, a listen, so worth it, the perfect gift for the synthesizer nerd or music obsessive in your life, or heck, buy it for your own geek self, we did!
(Counts as 3 items for shipping purposes, not one or two, as per our usual 'box set rule'.)
Like the "Pushbutton Parfait" album that was released last year "Kodachrome" is a collection of contemporary recordings of the music of Raymond Scott. But unlike the former, "Kodachrome" contains material written by Scott which has never been released before (with the exception of one track, "Naked City", which was also recorded for "Pushbutton Parfait"). The tracks on this collection were penned between 1935 and 1953 (with the bulk coming from the mid-forties) for a much larger band than those late thirties cuts he recorded with his quintette. The Metropole Orchestra, a twenty-something-odd piece orchestra, has faithfully transcribed 17 of Scott's big band works and recorded them here, revealing yet another musical facet of the ever fascinating Raymond Scott. As much informed by a vigorous passion for jazz as by a talent for classical counterpoint, the tracks on Kodachrome are rife with arrangements that are at once immensely complex as they are irresistibly catchy.
MPEG Download: "Egyptian Summer" [/audio/rscottegyptian.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Egyptian Summer" [/audio/rscottegyptian.m3u]
The academic eggheads that congregate around the musical institutions of the globe have from time to time tried to bring elements of whimsical pop to the sonic weirdness of musique concrete and the electronic oscillators that have continued to gyrate since the 60s. For the most part, the experiments meshing pop & academic New Music have been pretty lame, but not those of Raymond Scott. "The Manhattan Research Inc" is a double cd which collects the "new plastic sounds and electronic abstractions" from Scott's idiosyncratic work from the 50's & 60's, which included space-age ditties for commercials and oddball electronic noodling. As weird as the 60's space electronics from Dick Hyman / Command Records, yet just as complex as Tod Dockstader or Vladimir Ussachevsky, but with Scott's previous work with Carl Stalling scoring cartoons, these recordings retain a solid grasp on the intrinsically catchy pop jingle. Top it all off with commercial voice-overs for detergent and chewing gum for a wonderful collection of electronic esoterica. It should also be noted that, if you didn't know any better, on first listen, there's a good chance you would mistake this for a Tape Beatles or Negativland record!
"Arguably the first ambient techno records, 1963's Soothing Sounds For Baby LPs were the culmination of Raymond Scott's decade and a half as an electronic music pioneer. Scott is better known for his circular, giddy jazz compositions from the '30s and '40s, many of which endeared themselves to youngsters through their eventual use in Warner Bros. cartoons. Soothing Sounds, though, is _meant_ for young children--he called it an "audio toy"--and, reissued on three short CDs, it can have the same stimulating, pacifying or hypnotic effects on adults (we don't recommend driving to "Sleepy Time," for instance). These gracefully layered loops of early electronics have the unmistakable stamp of their era -- Scott most likely used existing instruments of the time, like the Ondioline and possibly a derivative of the theremin -- probably combined with sequencers and modifications of his own design, the details of which are now lost. Still, his endlessly pinwheeling, trance-inducing grooves were far ahead of their time: we suspect that more than a few techno artists heard these records in their cradles, and though they're playful, pretty and simple, they have a depth and peculiarity that prefigures minimalism as well." [--Robin Edgerton & Douglas Wolk in CMJ New Music report, 6-29-97]
Wow. Available at a very reasonable price, these sought-after recordings have been packaged with very extensive liner notes and photos. If you're only wanting one volume, we recommend #2 or #3. They're all equally good (honestly) and Volume 2 features "The Toy Typewriter" which Irwin Chusid has likened to Metal Machine Music For Babies. We think a young Tom Jenkinson heard these in the cradle and thus preordaining that he grow up to become the Squarepusher.
"Arguably the first ambient techno records, 1963's Soothing Sounds For Baby LPs were the culmination of Raymond Scott's decade and a half as an electronic music pioneer. Scott is better known for his circular, giddy jazz compositions from the '30s and '40s, many of which endeared themselves to youngsters through their eventual use in Warner Bros. cartoons. Soothing Sounds, though, is _meant_ for young children--he called it an "audio toy"--and, reissued on three short CDs, it can have the same stimulating, pacifying or hypnotic effects on adults (we don't recommend driving to "Sleepy Time," for instance). These gracefully layered loops of early electronics have the unmistakable stamp of their era -- Scott most likely used existing instruments of the time, like the Ondioline and possibly a derivative of the theremin -- probably combined with sequencers and modifications of his own design, the details of which are now lost. Still, his endlessly pinwheeling, trance-inducing grooves were far ahead of their time: we suspect that more than a few techno artists heard these records in their cradles, and though they're playful, pretty and simple, they have a depth and peculiarity that prefigures minimalism as well." [--Robin Edgerton & Douglas Wolk in CMJ New Music report, 6-29-97]
Wow. Available at a very reasonable price, these sought-after recordings have been packaged with very extensive liner notes and photos. If you're only wanting one volume, we recommend #2 or #3. They're all equally good (honestly) and Volume 2 features "The Toy Typewriter" which Irwin Chusid has likened to Metal Machine Music For Babies. We think a young Tom Jenkinson heard these in the cradle and thus preordaining that he grow up to become the Squarepusher.
"Arguably the first ambient techno records, 1963's Soothing Sounds For Baby LPs were the culmination of Raymond Scott's decade and a half as an electronic music pioneer. Scott is better known for his circular, giddy jazz compositions from the '30s and '40s, many of which endeared themselves to youngsters through their eventual use in Warner Bros. cartoons. Soothing Sounds, though, is _meant_ for young children--he called it an "audio toy"--and, reissued on three short CDs, it can have the same stimulating, pacifying or hypnotic effects on adults (we don't recommend driving to "Sleepy Time," for instance). These gracefully layered loops of early electronics have the unmistakable stamp of their era -- Scott most likely used existing instruments of the time, like the Ondioline and possibly a derivative of the theremin -- probably combined with sequencers and modifications of his own design, the details of which are now lost. Still, his endlessly pinwheeling, trance-inducing grooves were far ahead of their time: we suspect that more than a few techno artists heard these records in their cradles, and though they're playful, pretty and simple, they have a depth and peculiarity that prefigures minimalism as well." [--Robin Edgerton & Douglas Wolk in CMJ New Music report, 6-29-97]
Wow. Available at a very reasonable price, these sought-after recordings have been packaged with very extensive liner notes and photos. If you're only wanting one volume, we recommend #2 or #3. They're all equally good (honestly) and Volume 2 features "The Toy Typewriter" which Irwin Chusid has likened to Metal Machine Music For Babies. We think a young Tom Jenkinson heard these in the cradle and thus preordaining that he grow up to become the Squarepusher.
Oooh...The Secret 7. I already like the sound of this. And it was Raymond Scott's band, so it's got to be good. Scott, for those who don't know, was a quirky composer -- a bonafide genius of very strange music -- who experimented with 'electronica' decades before it became fashionable, and whose big-band jazz was used to score Warner Bros. cartoons and must have inspired John Zorn as a young 'un. Anyhoo, back in 1960 Raymond Scott put together this seven-piece ensemble of anonymous yet all-star jazzers and cut The Unexpected. With this reissue the mystery of their identities is solved (we're warned on the back cover "This package contains new information about the SECRET lineup"). Turns out the Secret 7 included harmonica player Jean "Toots" Thielmans, sax player Sam "The Man" Taylor, and drummer Elvin Jones, among others! So the secret's now blown, but this LP is still alluring, featuring as it does these cats playin' some cool, swinging jazz tuneage by Mr. Scott as well as standards...Cole Porter, Gershwin, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"...but is it weird or wacky? Well, check out the demented chipmunk vocals (yes!), nursery rhyme lyrics and hyperactive arrangements. Yep it's a fine Raymond Scott fix indeed. So pour a cocktail and get to snappin' yr fingers!
"Good evening dancing America, and lovers of exciting dance music. We present Raymond Scott, extraordinary composer of modern music, and his Orchestra, featuring Nan Wynn. All this exciting music comes to you from the equally exciting Panther Room of the hotel Sherman's College Inn in downtown Chicago." So says the announcer on track one of this cd, introducing pianist/arranger/composer and nowadays cult figure (best known for the use of his music in Carl Stalling's classic Warner Brothers cartoon scores, and also for his later electronic experiments) Raymond Scott and his band in what was originally an exciting 1940 live radio broadcast. This disc sees Scott updating many of his classic, quirky Quintette compositions to the swingin' big band format of the forties. Female vocalists Nan Wynn and Dorothy Collins (later Scott's wife) sing on a couple of numbers, but mostly this is instrumental dance fare. The 24 cuts here are culled from studio and live radio performances circa 1940-1944, and are mostly jaunty and playful Scott-penned tunes, like "At An Arabian House Party", "Caterpiller Creep", "Eagle Beak", "An American In Russia", "The Lark Leaped In", and "Toonerville Trolley". Some of the non-Scott material includes a song by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Scott's jazzed-up take on the traditional "Pop Goes The Weasel"! One for fans of Raymond Scott and/or oldsters among you... seriously, lots of nostalgic, energetic fun!
The Raymond Scott Orchestrette were so named in homage, obviously, to the Raymond Scott Quintette, who originally performed many of the pioneering composer / inventor's musical works. Most well known for his work with Carl Stalling scoring cartoons (listen to "Powerhouse" -- you'll recognize it instantly), Scott also invented various music making machines and early synthesizers, and even released three albums of music made especially to soothe babies! Now, with the help of Irwin Chusid, AQ friend, customer, and manager of the Scott musical estate, a band has been assembled. The Orchestrette are comprised of piano, violin, bass, accordion, drums, and Brian Dewan on zither / koto / etc. and not only offer choice versions of many of Scott's best loved pieces, they also do pieces Scott never took out of the studio. The version of the all-electronic "Little Miss Echo" as rendered by the all-acoustic Orchestrette is so lovely! I could listen to a whole album of these playful, serene acoustic versions of previously-electronic works.
Double disc set of 41 Raymond Scott Quintette tracks -- and while many of them are alternate takes of pieces you may already own, over a dozen of the tunes were never recorded by the Quintette and are only available to us now because they were captured as live radio rehearsals and broadcasts. Includes the only known recording of Raymond Scott singing! Liner notes include an old Time magazine article about Scott, plus an interview with his first wife. Possibly for Scott completists only.
MPEG Download: "Square Dance with Eight Egyptian Mummies" [/audio/scottmummies.mp3]
Simon Scott produced one of the best records of 2009 with Navigare, an album whose shoegaze dronemusic was dotted with radioluminescent dream-pop numbers. It was hardly a surprise to us when we learned that he was the drummer of Slowdive way back when. Since then, Scott has produced a single for Immune and a collaboration with Jasper TX, both equally fantastic. For his second proper record, Scott makes a slight detour; but one that is well suited to everything else that's been released by the hauntologically leaning Miasmah records. The album opens with a languid series of smoke and mirror abstractions flickering above a nocturnal jazz rhythm that gives way to a Caretaker-esque melody of disembodied historicism amidst subterranean clatter and eerie scrapings. A walking bassline follows this as the only constant to the next track "Betty" whose distant cacophonous guitars slide into audibility through a dense fog of reverb, with a trip along the drumkit taking one tempestuous fill before succumbing to Scott's omnivorous reverb, sounding not all that far from Supersilent at their grooviest and some of those bleached Crescent instrumentals, if anybody remembers that Bristol outfit. With the breathtaking "Radiances," Scott relives his shoegaze past with a song directly out of the Slowdive playbook: a halo of guitar ambience brightens a classic Brit-pop maudlin rhythm section, where the droning slipperiness of the guitar is perfectly countered by the easy pace of the bassline. It really does sound like "Albatross" off of the Blue Day album by Slowdive, and we mean that as quite a high complement. Scott reprises this dream-pop sensibility on the equally deft "Drilla," with electro-static crackling and plenty of ephemeral drone-guitar work to fill in the blanks.
With his first release under the auspices of the Touch label (via their Ash International subsidiary), after others on Miasmah and Immune, Simon Scott offers up yet another exquisite album, once again treading far beyond the shadow of Slowdive. Yes, Scott is the drummer from that beloved shoegazing / noise-pop ensemble; but there's nary a rhythm to be found on Insomni, which graces us with radioluminscent guitar drones, data-crunched sheets of noise, abstracted field recordings, and a number of languid ellipsis on the acoustic guitar. All of this comes together for a damn near perfect album that is right at home alongside so many of the other greats on Touch and Ash International (like Fennesz, BJ Nilsen, Lawrence English, Phill Niblock, Oren Ambarchi, Chris Watson, etc.). The album operates somewhat like a diptych with the first half of the album re-coding dilated shoegazing drones into effervescent explosions of digitalia girded with sublimely somber harmonics and loping melodies. Many of the environmental sounds address the album's title of insomnia, with Scott capturing those household drones and electrical hums that can dig into the brain as an unwelcome sonic earworm, late at night when one is trying to sleep but cannot. Scott amplifies and expands these sounds and coaxes something transcendent out of them amidst his soft-focused explosions of guitars and whatnot. The second half of the album is dominated by his beautiful acoustic guitar explorations that certainly pay homage to someone like Robbie Basho or Peter Walker, with these crystalline figures chiming into elegant fugues and languid passages equally melodic as they are hypnotic. Undoubtedly, Insomni is the best solo recording we've heard from Simon Scott yet!
Ah, Miasmah! After the likes of Elegi, Jacazek, and Kreng, we're pretty much automatically interested in any new release on Norway's Miasmah label. Like this one. Add in some bits of trivia, like that Scott was once the drummer for shoegazers Slowdive, and that this disc features a guest cameo from another Miasmah artist we love, Jasper TX, and we're already pretty intrigued. We also weren't at all surprised, but certainly pleased, by the gentle swells of ambient sonics that seep sleepily from the speakers when one hits play. The first two tracks, "Introduction Of Cambridge" and "Under Crumbling Skies", are blissfully replete with quiet hum and shimmering textures, forming into and out of drifting diaphanous melodies, blurry and melancholic. Some sparse, slowed down drum skitter adds a touch of Bohren to the proceedings in the first track, while the second employs a glorious chorus of angelic drones, that graces one's ears again and again throughout the disc.
Then, suddenly upping the volume, the third track "Flood Inn" seemingly enters into a subterranean realm full of soft fuzzy distortion. Quasi-industrially rhythmic, with a distant tolling bell heard amidst the crackle, this is ambience of the heavier (but not harsh) variety, almost like something from a Nadja or Jesu album.
Having given warning of a more sinister side, the disc continues on, with seven tracks more, being a beautiful blend of dreaminess, drone and distortion. There are almost pop songs hidden here, with buried rhythms and barely-there vocals (in one instance contributed by 12K's Sanae Yamasaki, aka Moskitoo), electronic treatments rendering the sound sources (guitar, sitar, violin, cello, flute, field recordings, voice, ???) all one lush, hushed, beautifully bleary, gorgeous warm bath of song-like drone...
It's a moodier, shoegazier take on Pop Ambient perhaps, certainly something that fans of Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Final, Jasper TX, and of course those other Miasmah wonders should check out!
Yay! More from the UK dronester with two first names, who was once upon a time the drummer for shoegazers Slowdive, but only really recently came to our attention via his full-length for the Miasmah label last year, entitled Navigare. We loved, loved, loved that record, as we do most things Miasmah, and compared it to everything from Nadja to Jesu to Jasper TX to Tim Hecker... Now Scott is back with a four-song mini-lp follow-up for the Immune imprint, a vinyl-only 12" that comes with an mp3 download coupon. It's 24 minutes or so of of shimmering, shifting, sometimes sombre, dense drone bliss. Consisting of calm crackle, haunting hum, and buried melody, these abstract soundscapes are immersive, Pop Ambient drift that's physical, yet soothing. Originally begun during the Navigare sessions, but completed later, we're told, these tracks certainly share much in common with Navigare in terms of mood and method (they're apparently, though not that obviously, constructed from digitally processed acoustic instruments, and field recordings, among other sound sources). Mysterious though they may be, we're somehow not surprised when we're further told that certain of Scott's inspirations for these songs include a bout of tinnitus he once suffered, and the sad fate of an alcoholic submariner relative of his.
We wish we had the language - the poetry - to say more about this, to really put into words what this sounds like, but maybe that's not necessary anyway. Those of you appreciative of music like this, addicted to music like this, hopefully already have an inkling that this is for you from what we've already said (or what you've already heard), to which we'll only add our typical, but meaningful, "Nice".
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