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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Battlestar Galactica - The Electric Moog Orchestra

Destruction Of Peace
Battlestar Galactica
The Electric Moog Orchestra
Spring Board SPB-4112
1978

Good God... I'm at a loss for words...  No wait... there is also a disco track on this album. That's all I've got...

Main Title Theme From Battlestar Galactica
The Cylon Trap
The Casino On Carillon "It's Love, Love, Love"
The Red Nova
Exploration
Destruction Of Peace
Fighter Launch
Adama's Theme
Let's Go Home-End Title

Percussion Italiano Starring Charles Magnante

Just Say I Love Her
Percussion Italiano
Starring Charles Magnante
Originated and Produced by Enoch Light
Grand Award Records
GA 33 - 426
1961

Personnel: 

Charles Magnante - Accordion
Bob Haggart - Bass
Dominic Maffei - Mandolin
Artie Marotti - Percussion
Moe Wechsler - Piano
Percussion, Bob Rosengarden, Don Lamond & Willie Rodriguez
Al Casamenti - Guitar
Leonid Bolotine - Mandolin
Dick Dia - Mandolin
Tony Mottola - Guitar

Arrivederci, Roma
Ciao, Ciao, Bambina
Ti-Pi-Tin
Mamma
Serenade In The Night
Sicilian Tarantella
Domani
Marina
Come Prima
Speranze Perdute (Lost Hopes)
Legend Of Lovers
Just Say I Love Her

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Electronomusic 9 Images - John Pfeiffer

Forests
Electronomusic
9 Images
Composition and Instrumentation by John Pfeiffer
Victrola VICS-1371
1968

As a kid I was very much impressed by the movie Forbidden Planet. If fact, the movie is still one of my favorite films for art direction, effects and soundtrack. I hear aspects of that soundtrack in this work.

Pfeiffer apparently invented the processes and or instruments used on this album. Read his wiki profile for more information.

I will say that a number of tracks feature a unique "tempo" or "structure" that seems to set those tracks apart from the more moody 60s electronic sound I enjoy so.

However, by way of sample, I have to go with the track titled Forests rather than one of the debatably more uniquely structured pieces I just mentioned.

Side one

Warm-up Canon and Peace
For Inhamonic Side-Band

Reflection of a String
For Contraformer

Drops
For Programmer and Sines

Moments
Events for Parametric Blocks

Side two

Forests
Modes for Alphormer and Set

Pavone
A Doutonic Transform

Orders
For Sequentail Sines

After Hours
For Ordered Simpliformer

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Hollywoodwind Jazztet - Jerry Fieldling

Good-Bye
Hollywoodwind Jazzet
Jerry Fielding
Decca Records DL 8669
1958

From March 24, 1958 Billboard: Interesting jazz sound makes use of several instruments seldom heard on jazz combos – (bassons, bass clarinet) in addition to alto sax, clarinet, flute and tenor sax. Fielding's orchestrations manage a fluid sound on several styles, Dixie, modern and mainstream. Those who go for interesting new sounds should find this to their liking.

Jerry Fielding's wiki page.

Hooray For Love
Skylark
New Orleans Post Parade
Good-Bye
A Fine Romance
Romance
Sweet Peter
Memphis In June
The Point In Question
I Was There When The Spirit Came
Essence Of Calculated Calm
Paris In The Spring

The Dazzling Sound - Keith Williams

Wiki Wiki (Russ Garcia)
Solo (Bob Russell)
The Dazzling Sound
The Exciting Big Band Of Keith Williams
Producer: Russell Keith
Cover Art: Alex de Paolo
Engineers: Ted Keep, John Kraus, Val Valentin
Recorded in Hollywood during the fall of 1956
Liberty Records LRP 3040
1957

From the back cover: Sometimes, with some people, long exchanges of ideas and principles are unnecessary, for rapport. An occasional sentence, an unusual reference, a book – and you touch a well-spring; you strike a lode stone, and you know similar excursions have been undertaken. Here is a kinsman, and you acknowledge the discovery with a quiet respect and a patience the permits each encounter to build to a firm relationship.

I met Keith Williams while he was shuttling between "Limelight" (where he was musical director and conductor for Charles Chaplin), and "Range Rider" – a Gene Autry television series for which he was a staff composer and orchestrator. As a study in contrasts I doubt if any curriculum could have selected two more diverse instructors that Chaplin and Autry. Such courses can produce exceptional men of wide ability. Should the men be observant and flexible they grow and their horizons expand. I met Keith Williams at such a time.

An artist is a restless man – a kinetic force – and periodically as he grows, always trying to attain some impossible goal he sets for himself, he breaks out of his current confines into a new stage; a new development and there is no going back... only more quantitative changes to the next creative explosion.

I wasn't an observer to the evolution the led through interrupted college in September, 1942 to October, 1945, during which time Keith served as an USAAF pilot flying single engine fighter planes. I don't know what musical thought synchronized with the whirr of the propeller or the drone of the airplane engine. Nor am I the chronicler of the days of his return to Occidental College for his degree in music which he obtained in 1948. In the development of a talent one must also report the two and a half years employed as an orchestrator at Walter Lantz Cartoons and the subsequent arranging and orchestrating of twenty-eight full length motion pictures. 

I don't know which f the many paths is the road to achievement; which of the many test tubes the catalyst. I only know that one afternoon out of the clear blue Keith honored me with a phone call asking me if I would like to hear some audition records of a big jazz band. I said, "Whose?" He said his. I said, "Whose arrangement?" He said his. I said, "Who picked up the tab?" He said he had. I was impressed. A man has to believe in himself even if it requires pawning the family pawn shop. I said, "Come on over." And in blew one of the freshest breezes in the way of a band sound I had heard.

That a man has something to say or offer doesn't necessarily make him a town-crier. This role is reserved for other men who have the ability to recognize talent and the knowledge to showcase it. I took the audition tapes to Liberty Records who took them – tab and all – and took Keith to the nearest recording studios to complete the album.

Usually, at this point one is introduced to the compositions and acquitted with the instrumentation and the characteristics of each arrangement. I won and listen to many albums and have read many album notes. When I am told that a lazy, relaxed guitar solo leads me into the exotic "Toscana," or that a brass section in full swing over sparkling rhythm undertakes an all-out rendition of the fine standard "I Remember You," I am not impressed.

To me music is an experience – an adventure and I don't wish to be led by the hand to the next chapter or to have signposts to my next thrill. I want to find out for myself "who's doing what and to whom"... meaning me. After all, I did pay for this right by buying the particular album. I suspect that many people feel the same way.

With musicians of Keith's perspective, they view music as constantly unfolding horizons. Having attained the sound heard in this album a plateau has been reached. There is the hill beyond the hill beyond the hill. Don't expect the same sound, of shall I say the sameness of sound, in every subsequent album. Expect rather always a new experience in each new composition and each new album; an adventure in scope, depth and even texture of sound. That is music... at least to my ears.

Our horizons are limitless because our resources are boundless. Yours as well as Keith's – he's tune it on something. Listen...

– Bob Russell (Russell wrote the notes as well as "Solo", one of the featured songs on this album)

From Billboard - May 13, 1957: Liberty has captured a good "big band" sound on this disk. Hi-fi-wise it also rates a hearing. The program is nicely balanced between standards and original material and it could do will if pushed. "Wiki-Wiki" is a good bet for hi-fi demo with its emphasis on percussion and bass. Full-color cover will attract.

I Remember You
Carioca
Toscana
Winter Interlude
Easy To Love
Wiki Wiki
Bernie's Tone
Sleeping Princess
When Your Lover Has Gone
Caleta
Solo
Why Not?