Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Raymond Scott - Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights



What to say about the great Raymond Scott? While his name doesn't immediately ring bells in the average listener's head, his compositions likely will, as they have been heard in countless cartoons: Looney Tunes, The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy and so on. While the music wasn't made for cartoons (but for the casual 1930s radio listener), just listening to the manic energy of the compositions (performed by what had to be an exhausted ensemble of musicians) can lead one to understand why early Warner Bros. cartoon composer Carl Stalling saw them fitting to sample. Aside from his work here, Scott was an early pioneer of electronic music, putting out several (admittedly difficult) records of electronic music for babies, and inventing several early forms of synthesizers, including The Claviox, the Electronium, an "instantaneous self composing machine" (pictured at the top (sub parenthesis: and is owned by Devo leader Mark Mothersbaugh)), and the totally awesome Videola, a sort of ultra primitive version of the video mixer on Virtual DJ. I hope that you love this as much as I love this.

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