Discovering Raymond Scott
When you live with a person, you also live with their music. My life has wound from my mother doing the ironing to the Beach Boys to my boyfriend’s obsessions with noise and psychedelia, via several other people’s sounds; Scottish Kate who cared about her huge collection of vinyl the way ants care about their eggs; Paul who would play Gang of Four’s ‘Entertainment’ loud and early on Saturday mornings to get the rest of us out of bed to help with housework. And Tom, who I lived with for four years. Tom goes through intense and specific musical phases; Mozart, kooky pop, French torch songs and, currently, early electronica. Last night, visiting Tom, he played me Raymond Scott. And Raymond Scott is fantastic.
Scott was a synthesizer pioneer, a soundtrack composer and a writer of jingles. He worked as a composer and musician from 1934 until a series of strokes forced him into complete retirement in 1988. The electronic tracks of Scott’s on eMusic are mainly from the 50s and 60s, although they could easily be released now, despite having the BBC Radiophonics sound of many early synths. Last night Tom tried to make me guess the year, saying that most people chose this decade. I can see why, no one would blink if IBM Probe came out tomorrow on Border Community or Kompact. But by that time I was bobbing around the room joining in with the spoof adverts on Manhattan Research Inc: “Here at IBM we’re trying to deal with the paperwork explosion…” “Make your melon balls bounce with Sprite!”
So, having been introduced to Scott myself, I feel it’s only right to share the joy, so you too can make your melon balls bounce.
I love emusic, and I love Manhattan Research, BUT… it’s a good idea to buy the actual CD, if it’s still in print, for the small hardcover book the two CDs come in. There’s a lot of great information on Scott and the tracks on the album in the book. The whole package is a must-have for electronic music fans.
That said, I hadn’t noticed The Unexpected on emusic before, so I’ll have to check out the samples shortly…
The track with Jim Henson on MRI is my favorite, out of many.
I’ve had Manhattan Research, Inc. on my “save for later” list for about 2 years now. great album. very ahead of its time. and for some reason, and maybe i’m alone here, but “Cindy Electronium” (disc 2, track 12) eerily reminds me of Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates.” Or maybe Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates” reminds me of Scott’s “Cindy Electronium.”
Chances are you’d already been introduced to Scott before the encounter that spurred this blog post. His “Powerhouse” is a Looney Tunes staple, serving as the score to a number of mechanized/assembly-line sequences. It’s so pefectly suited for such a use, and being shown such an association at such a young age, it can be hard to separate the song from those scenarios.
The sample on eMusic only provides part of the song’s first section, the “Chase” sequence, and not the more familiar second section.
I fell in love with Raymond Scott through “Reckless Nights and Turkish Delights” and later picked up Manhattan Research and the Soothing Sounds for Baby compilation. Of course by the time I had a kid I sort of found the Soothing Sounds for baby thing a little too left of field for that particular cause
I always try to encourage people to check out Restless Nights though… it really opens the mind up to the innovation and imagination that Raymond Scott was able to portray in the 1930s. Hearing Scott help changed my entire frontier as a fan of music.