Manhattan Research Inc: 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.

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.

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!

Just in From the Netherlands – An Awesome 1950’s Electronic Music Box Set!

I’ve been on a crazy musique concrete kick lately, buying up classics like Cage’s Cartridge Music and the Panorama of Musique Concrete from ’56.

And just arrived from the Netherlands – Popular Electronics: The Singles Collection

#664/1000, this velvet box set was issued in 2008 by Basta Records – the label which produced the magnificent three-volume Manhattan Research set. This compilation contains faithful reissues of 1950s musique concrete 7″ classics from Dutch electronic music composers Kid Baltan, Tom Dissevelt, and H Badings.

The set contains:

• Electronic Ballet Music: Cain and Abel (Philips 400 036 AE) (1956)
• Electronic Popular Music (Philips 315 538 NF) (1957)
• Electronic Movements (Philips430 736 PE) (1958)
• and Electronic Music (Philips 430 791 PE) (1961)

Each disc includes the original sleeve and liner notes.

I first got into Baltan/Dissevelt under their Electrosoniks moniker when I found the Philips “Electronic Music” LP from 1962 at my local antique mall. Wonderful stuff!