Animation

Extremely impressive and hypnotic animation done in 1952 by Norman McLaren.

Cool music too.

The whole thing really reminds me of videogames, which is especially odd considering when it was made.

More Van Dyke Parks

This one's cheesier and harder to find!

"Come Along" is a good breakthrough track to get into the album.

Carl Stalling

This post is kind of an extension of the last one about John Zorn, but also connects quite well to the first post I ever wrote featuring Van Dyke Parks.

To paraphrase wikipedia, Carl Stalling was an American composer who wrote most of the music for the Looney Toons cartoons. He worked at Warner Bros. for 22 years, writing on average one complete score every week.

It's funny how the opening of "The Good Egg" is so familiar, yet listening to it just as music makes you realise how good it is and actually how well it fits the wacky animations.

Here is the first compilation of Stalling's music released by Warner Bros:

"The Carl Stalling Project" by the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra

Naked City

This is a band led by avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn who's done lots of interesting work mixing composition with improvisation in a way that works surprisingly well.

This particular project's debut album (released in 1989) is testing the limits of the traditional "rock band". 

Zorn's ridiculously tight band make many sudden turns, showing a childlike interest in almost all genres and inspired by the way music for cartoons have a structure that is not defined in the same way as most music, but still makes sense.

Ben Butler & Mousepad

Here's some slightly silly and very playful electronic music from a guy called Ben Butler. Oh yes, and his Mousepad. 

Obvious influences include "the 80s" and according to his Myspace "computing science prog-funk jams". I'd also add to that list Max Tundra, who he's gigging with soon.

There are some cool tracks on the Myspace player but I prefer a track I got from 20jazzfunkgreats called "Electric Bamber-boo" which is better produced and therefore probably newer material.

I really like how the track's chord progression keeps shifting back and the whole thing ends in a way tracks like that ought to. Here it is anyway.

"Electric Bamber-boo" by Ben Butler & Mousepad

The Lamb

Really like this "song". It's pretty famous by choral music standards and I had to study it for ages so I could give you tons of analytical information but instead I'll tell you that it was written in 1982 by John Tavener (not to be confused with 16th century fellow choral enthusiast John Taverner) for his nephew's third birthday. The words are taken from Blake's poem of the same name.

Oh, and the opening is bitonal with the original G major melody sung against its mirror inversion in E flat major. 

Just wait for the drop though.

"The Lamb" by John Tavener

Groovy

The rhythm section of Talking Heads released an album in 1981, of course it's going to be groovy.

"Tom Tom Club" by Tom Tom Club

This african pop record (released in 2003) takes the same approach towards MIDI instruments as it does towards cover art, yet it's surprisingly groovy.

"Bi Magni" by Souley Kanté

Knotty Pine

Been pretty obsessed with this song since "Titus Petronius" brought it to my attention. It's a collaboration between Dirty Projectors and David Byrne for an AIDS awareness compilation put together by Red Hot. It's mainly a Dirty Projectors song with Byrne singing a bit, providing the lyrics and writing an interesting post about the whole thing on his blog.

Anyway, here is "Knotty Pine" by Dirty Projectors and David Byrne.

Apparently Dirty Projectors are going to release two albums this year, so should be good.

Looms of Fate

Here are two records of original electronic music. Both of them make great use of tampered sounds repeating unpredictably as they kind of grow into compositions.

The first is by Kim Hiorthøy who is also an acclaimed graphic designer and artist (great stuff by him can be seen here). "Melke" was Kim's second album, released in 2001 and known to be compiled of various tracks that were either from already singles and remixes as well as some originals and alternate versions. This makes it less of a "thought out" album but I think the variety shows how much range his core style has.

While you could argue that Kim Hiorthøy's sound is based in hip-hop and other sample based music, the Lucky Dragons album "Widows" released in 2006 is a bit more out there. Saying that, it can be a surprisingly relaxing (but still engaging) listen.

"Melke" by Kim Hiorthøy

"Widows" by Lucky Dragons

Top 5 R Kelly Moments

5

4

3

2

1

Special Rock

Here are two albums made last year, the first one by two Americans under the name "Panther" the second one by a group of Canadian guys who call themselves "Women". To over-generalise Panther are more funky and Women are more mellow, but both have an experimental take on rock which I quite like.

Happy Music

Passion Pit are being heavily hyped for 2009. It started off as a one man project, with a guy called Michael making an EP to give to his girlfriend for Valentine's Day. Now it's a full band and they're currently recording their debut album. Here are my two favourite tracks from the EP.

A few tracks by Passion Pit

Here's an "Italo Disco" track released by Cyber People in 1984 called "Void Vision". You can probably imagine what it sounds like from the information I have already given you. Have fun!

"Void Vision" by Cyber People

Avey Tare and Panda Bear

Animal Collective's latest (and ninth) album "Merriweather Post Pavillion" is out today in the UK. As you might have gathered from reviews pretty much everywhere, its very good.

Animal Collective's first album "Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished" was released in 2000, originally under the name "Avey Tare and Panda Bear", who are still the two main members of the group. It started off as a solo album by Avey Tare, but he was impressed by Panda Bear's drumming so decided to put his name on the release as well, and since then the band has been more collaborative in nature.

Their debut is also arguably more accessible than albums 2-5, although a few tracks feature hardcore amounts of high-pitched feedback loops.

"Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished" by Animal Collective

Standards

Disjointed

A few years after making the following "mystery tape" in 1980 John Oswald would justify it under the name "Plunderphonics", an early intellectualisation of sampling. I downloaded the songs one by one from an article about him on UBU after he was name dropped in an interview by the extremely inferior mash-up snoozefest Girl Talk and I was amazed at how ahead of their time they were as well as how much I actually enjoyed them as quasi-songs. The analogue techniques make the sampling enjoyably unpredictable and the 80s source material makes the tape more to my taste than most of John Oswald's recent stuff.

Not easy listening at all but very good if you're in the right mood, and its more of a laugh than the Kaiser Chiefs. High praise indeed.

"Kissing Jesus in the Dark" by John Oswald

This great album released in 2002 by Max Tundra also mixes mindfuckery with a real pop sensibility, and in a particularly successful and original way. A hell of a lot more actual songwriting has gone into this than Oswald's tape and that definitely helps it in terms of accessibility, even if it's still threatening or downright spastic from some angles.

Max Tundra has also just released his third album "Parallax Error Beheads You" on Domino Records, which is slightly more polished but still very good.

"Mastered by Guy at the Exchange" by Max Tundra

This new signing to Warp Records has been around for at least two years now but hasn't got any full releases out that I'm aware of, only a few mixtapes and live radio sessions floating around in internet buzz. A 6-track EP is due to be released by Warp on the 19th of this month, but they've already released two of those on Bleep because they're so excited. I haven't even told you who it is yet! Hudson Mohawke. He follows on a bit from the last two records in this post but is also very influenced by hip-hop in the same way that people like Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73 are. I like his style a lot and here are some of my favourite tracks of his which I have found so far.

A few tracks by Hudson Mohawke

Classics

To start off with here are some very ambitious records and compositions.

"Song Cycle" was Van Dyke Parks' debut and was an unbelievably expensive release for the late 60s due to its OTT orchestration and extensive multi-tracking. It flopped at the time, getting great reviews but very few sales.

As its title suggests the album works extremely well as a whole. On top of that, Parks manages to obsessively reference Americana while still having a strong signature style.

The guy's still going too, recently doing massive arrangements for people like Joanna Newsom and errrrr, The Thrills! 

"Song Cycle" by Van Dyke Parks

Okay, everyone knows West Side Story. Even if you don't, you do. Seriously, some of the songs are so part of our "cultural fabric" it's like they're embedded into us from birth. "Dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah-dah dah dah dah dah MAMBO!", "I like to be in A-MEH-RIH-KA!", "I feel pretty, oh so pretty" etc... 

I actually got into the whole thing on CD before seeing the film version, let alone a stage version and that made it seem like some sort of concept album.

Just like Parks, Leonard Bernstein is great at using an orchestra to play around with traditional music, and Sondheim's lyrics are pretty cool too; very good at conveying the characters. There are lots of good phrases too and I think I'm starting to annoy my friends by using terms such as "turn off the juice, boy!" in the middle of arguments.

Anyway this is the 1957 Original Broadway Cast Recording, so it's one of the best versions.

"West Side Story (1957 Original Broadway Cast Recording)" music by Leonard Bernstein

Usually the production side of classical records consists of simply making everything sound as pristine and balanced as possible to keep the clarity of the original composition. However, this recently released compilation of compositions by Villa-Lobos uses recordings from the 40s and 50s, and while I'm sure they were trying to capture everything as well as possible, the technology deficiency actually gives the tracks a particular sound that feels "produced", maybe because of all the lo-fi production and sampled records that have flourished in the last few years.

While the CD is called "Nonetto" and does indeed feature two written by Villa-Lobos in 1924, I prefer the two "Quators" for flute, harp, celesta, alto saxophone and women's voices, (written in 1921) which surprised me by having similar moments to the next record I'm going to show and share.

"Nonetto (Impressão Rapidá de todo o Brasil)" by Villa-Lobos

Here's an EP released by Dirty Projectors in 2004 called "Slaves' Graves". Every Dirty Projectors release seems to be a different affair, and for this one Dave Longstreth got together a small chamber orchestra called "The Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra".

While tracks 4-6 are one continuous "suite" of songs, the whole EP does a good job of sounding connected, with lots of recurring themes and a sustained atmosphere. Actually, in my opinion the first track ruins it a bit. It's alright but doesn't  fit in as well as all the other tracks do and I tend to skip it. Maybe he wanted a first track that wasn't immediately identifiable as the orchestral romp which inevitably follows, and the surprises and anomalies that pop up throughout the EP are actually quite refreshing.

"Slaves' Graves" by Dirty Projectors