the one in my journal :(

Manhattan Research Incorporated - The Magic of Raymond Scott
 

Tonight's magical listening comes following a heartwarming post by The Bob Moog Foundation and The Raymond Scott Archives. The Archives had recently published a recording of Bob Moog talking about his time with Raymond Scott in the 1950's when Bob was barely 20 years old. Scott was one of the first musician clients that Bob had direct exposure to, and the experiences with Scott marked Bob's early thinking about the expansiveness of the musical universe.

Tune into the 4-minute clip here!

It inspired me to pull my copy of the Manhattan Research Inc 3LP set issued by Basta Records in The Netherlands to revisit the wonders of Raymond Scott's work.

For those unfamiliar, you may know Scott from the recording, "Powerhouse" famously used in several classic Rube Goldberg machine sequences in Merrie Melodies cartoons. The track was also sampled in the intro of Soul Coughing's "Bus to Beelzebub."

Here is the original recording:


And here is an official "machine montage" cut by Warner Bros and hosted by The Ramond Scott Archives:


And Soul Coughing's classic track:


Here's my copy of the 3-volume set.
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Fortunately, the entire set is archived on YouTube - check it out!



It is also worth mentioning that the set features a collaboration with a young Jim Henson from around the time of Henson's existential college film, The Cube. You can watch the full film here -


The short was titled, LIMBO: The Organized Mind and an animation sequence was produced for it in the early 60s.



Enjoy!

Salvador Dali RETURNS to Innerspace!
 

I've wonderful news, dear friends! Back in August of 2012, due to financial struggles I had to part with a magnificent piece of music history - a rare copy of Salvador Dalí's opéra-poème, Être Dieu. After discussing the piece with a fellow music lover, I revisited the market and as luck would have it, found what is likely the very copy I sold in 2012 available for purchase and at a very reasonable price. I wasted not a moment and placed my order, and today it arrived home safely!

For those not familiar with this ill-fated opera, the title translates to “Being God.” The six-part work features Dalí as God, Brigitte Bardot as an artichoke and Catherine the Great and Marilyn Monroe doing a striptease. (Because dadaism.)

Être Dieu suffered an astonishingly tragic history. It was originally published in an extremely rare 3LP box set by DCD, a small Spanish label with only 28 other releases to its name. It was re-released in a 3CD box published by German label Eurostar who subsequently went out of business, and there are few-to-no known performances of the work. Worse still, Dalí painted "Self-Portrait" (1972) to mark the composition of the opera, but the painting was auctioned by the United States Customs Service after being seized after Colombian drug lords tried to use the painting to launder money. (Salvador seriously couldn’t get a break!)

But a few copies of Eurostar’s deluxe edition survived. This edition is packaged in a blue velvet box set with a metallic gold engraving of Dalí's signature, as well as a 326-page book containing scans of the original handwritten script, notes, and libretto in English, French, German & Spanish.

While Dalí, himself experienced great misfortune with this work, I am happy to report that good luck has come at last with its return to the Innerspace library.

Special thanks to the fellow listener out there who planted the seed of desire for me to reclaim this lost objet d'art!

(Note - at present Imgur is experiencing difficulties, so if the images do not display below please visit again later - this is really a beautiful piece! Or you can view the original Wordpress feature with the images intact here.)

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Modern Classical Highlights of 2016

OccultHawk mentioned last night that 2016 was a fantastic year for modern classical and its related subgenres. As a tremendous fan of the genre who has sadly neglected its exploration for the last several years, I instantly set myself to the task of righting this wrong.

A quick RYM custom chart instantly revealed new titles from modern classical mainstays which I know I'll have to pick up - Iceland's Jóhann Jóhannsson's nineteen album discography, (most recently the Orphée album and the film scores to Arrival and Sicario), Ólafur Arnalds' Island Songs, Max Richter's Sleep Remixes, and Nils Frahm / Ólafur Arnalds' Trance Frendz. Library Tapes' Escapism also sounded good from a brief sampling, as well as the 2015 album Yume by an old favorite, Helios (and his latest work titled Sometimes performing under his Goldmund moniker). Both projects are long-standing favorites of mine.

In about 4 minutes, OccultHawk's comment inspired an entire weekend of exploratory listening. And this will be much-needed medicine for melancholy working through all that I have going on at present. Tune in with me if you'd like. It's wonderful stuff. I'll embed a few highlights below. Many of these are complete album playlists.

Thanks for the props, bro.

Lisa Suckdog- Drugs are Nice

2015 release, but Field Recordings by Bang on a Can All-Stars is wonderful. Actually, just check out their whole discog.

Thanks! I first stumbled upon Bang on a Can in 1999 when I discovered their cover of Music for Airports in a used CD shop in Rochester. But the Field Recordings project is new to me - I'll enjoy exploring it!

The night before you posted this, I was at a performance of his Drone Mass.

Nice

Dear god... that's outstanding! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the performance or on his work in general.