Customer Reviews

Manhattan Research, Inc.

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From listening to his massive output, Raymond Scott possessed a closetful of musical split personalities. This collection lovingly (not strong enough a word, but anyway...) compiles countless examples of Scott's electronic, experimental compositions and advertising pieces, all of which I can objectively say is mind-blowing. There's not a flabby moment on the set's two-plus hour's-worth of the man's (an infamously reclusive mad scientist of the modern age) largely unreleased work. The packaging alone is worth the already too-reasonable price. The only previous comparable release is the PET SOUNDS SESSIONS box set of a couple years back. Scott singlehandedly managed to make electronic avant garde experimentalism both joyously entertaining and psychologically penetrating. It's listenability is endless. God bless Basta Audi-Visuals for their devotion to an almost-forgotten genius!

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"The pieces of music on Raymond Scott's MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC., recorded in the 1950s and 60s, sound like nothing so much as the future."

-Peter Buck, R.E.M.

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"MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is a brilliant collection of Raymond Scott's difficult to find electronic work. I love the packaging, and the interviews are incredibly interesting and informative."

-Adrian Utley, PORTISHEAD

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''Listening to MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. brought childhood flashbacks. As much as the Beatles, Brubeck, or Hendrix, TV and radio formed my musical mind. Raymond Scott wows me!''

-Pat Mastelotto, KING CRIMSON

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''I think MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is one of my favorite releases ever! And that's saying something, as I'm a complete music junkie.''

-Richard D. James, aka APHEX TWIN

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"Whaaaaat?? This is from the fifties and sixties? I'm trying to achieve something like this now! Raymond Scott belongs to the phalanx of unique people like Les Paul, Oscar Sala, and Leon Theremin, to whom we owe so much in developing our own musical identity today. MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is one of the best CD presentations I have ever had my hands on."

-Holger Czukay, CAN

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"MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is truly an inspiring album. Very well compiled and presented, it gives you a good look at Raymond Scott's great work which has left many repercussions in various fields relating to sound. Scientific, futuristic, novel, as well as humorous and dreamlike. Mad, but the kind of mad I aspire to be. Raymond Scott truly was ahead of his time."

-CORNELIUS

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"The MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. package is perfect, and the music is too perfect!"

-Konishi, PIZZICATO FIVE

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"Tireless dedication and uncompromising perfectionism of producers Gert-Jan Blom and Jeff Winner is evident in every detail of this wonderful collection. From the astonishing sounds to the beautiful packaging, MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is an essential release of pioneer electronica, adding yet another page to the ever-growing legacy of American maverick Raymond Scott."

-JOHN ZORN

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"I rate Raymond Scott as one of the greatest music technology innovators the 20th century. Many musicians on the charts today are using his ideas fairly directly. His vision was so wide, that today it is impossible to turn on a piece of equipment in your studio without automatically issuing a benediction to the spirit of Raymond Scott."

-Matt Black, COLDCUT & DJfood

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"The phenomenon of Raymond Scott is one of those freaky cosmic concurrences of impossibilities that result in true originality. Combine the musical stewpot of his disdain for fellow musicians, a type-A ego, and financial recklessness, and the world received electronic musical expressions that broke all the rules."

-Simeon, SILVER APPLES

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"Fabulous! MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is one of the most amazing CD packages I've ever seen. I've been listening constantly, and I've read the whole book several times. It's SO inspiring. Scott's electronic instruments have an incredibly organic sound to them."

-Eric Harris, OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL

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"Raymond Scott was a true genius, deserving to be classified among the great pioneers of electronic music. He recorded with his own instruments, and did his own composing. I am amazed by the versatility of his talent, creativity, originality, and imagination. MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is a work of art. BRAVO!"

-JEAN JACQUES PERREY

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"MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is a monsterpiece. Wow wow WOW. It is certainly stunning. I'm still trying to digest it!"

-Jim Thirlwell, aka FOETUS

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"Raymond Scott was the first! He foresaw the use of sequencers, and the use of electronic oscillators, to make sounds. These were the watershed uses of electronic circuitry. The recordings on MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. don't sound as weird anymore -- they sound similar to what artists are doing today."

-BOB MOOG

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Too widely known for his contributions to cartoons, this disc set lovingly adds the missing dimension of Scott as inventor, engineer and musical visionary. We find a great archive of early experiments and jingles, some composed and generated from self-created instruments, predating midi capabilities by at least 2 decades. An additional star should also be tacked on for Basta's extensive packaging! The liner-notes are presented in a very neat, 50's-text book form - complete with synopsis, interviews, memo's and photo's of Scott in his lab. If you are a music geek or just fan of predated electronica, you will not be disappointed.

If the listener doesn't like electronics and machinery, he or she will be knocked over by the sheer volume of information and fotos in this package, and be able to come to rest listening to the contents of the CD's. If he or she DOES like this part of it, sitting down BEFORE starting to read the "booklet" is recommandable too. One would say that, probably due to the "paranoia" of Scott, being afraid of having his ideas and inventions stolen and therefore never having published anything, he has always been out of sight when the history of elctronic music was discussed: now we'll all be glad to give him his place amongst Moog, Buchla and others. Oh, and the sheer sound quality of those tapes, some of which are over 40 years old... Yeehaaaaaaa!

During the 1950's and early 1960's, the electric guitar was about the only piece of electronic hardware that most folks of the day were aware of.
Meanwhile, a man named Raymond Scott was working in an other world. A world of sounds that had rarely ever been heard of before, mostly eletronic.
This is a compilation of Scott's work that in more than just one instance, dumbfounds the listener with the fact that these sounds were indeed created in the 50's and 60's. You get zapping spark plugs, ear shattering reverb effects, electric water splashes, and some amazing early uses of electronic music sequencing, to name a few of the many examples of sonic craftsmanship. Most of the tracks were used for commercials, which adds greatly to the enjoyment of the listener, especially if they are fans of vintage television. The compilation producers went to the nice trouble of including some commercial tracks in both isolated form and with the original voice work (not sure if that was intentional, but it is a nice feature). Jim Henson fans as well need to pay an ear or two to this, as Henson was a friend of Raymond Scott's and collaborated on several projects with Scott, most of which are in the compilation. There is also a jewelcase/book that is packed with scads of pictures and commentary. I'm trying not to sound like a commercial, but it's kind of hard, as this is a very nice collection. Heck, you even get a track where an announcer fumbles a line and claims he had a 'swamp in his throat'. It should be noted though that this collection would probably be of interest mainly to fans of pop culture, electronic music, and the like. Not exactly something one would play at a party, and definently not something one should play on a date... Unless you are like me, which means you are weird and therefore probably wont get a date anyway. It should also be noted that the audio quality is only as good as the date the recording was made. The tracks were comprised from original magnetic tapes so audio quirks should be expected (as a matter of fact, some tracks can make a person dizzy just because of the lack of engineering, but thats part of the fun). Great Stuff.

Not exactly a household name, Raymond Scott is known in the deep recesses of our collective psyche as the composer of many background scores used in the Looney Tunes cartoons by Carl Stalling. Beyond this, he is lesser known as a reclusive, driven genius who ranks as high in his influence on the electronic music medium as Les Paul does in multi-track recording and rock guitar! Listening to these pieces (sketches for later works, ideas in progress, or finished commercial jingles and arte concrete) it's hard to imagine some 2 generations later that one man spent countless hours (and who knows how much money) cobbling together these pioneering devices. The enclosed pictures of Scott in his studio look more like stills from a sci-fi film than a man in his own home, even if it was a converted warehouse!!

While the vintage space-age commercials are a nostalgic delight, the high points have to be his collaborations with a young, pre-Muppet Jim Henson on independent film projects that I never knew existed (actually, all this material is new to most of us). A narrative tour through Henson's brain from 1966 ("Limbo: The Organized Mind") captures the post-modern charm of Ken Nordine's works coupled with Scott's innovative sound effects that must have raised some eyebrows back then. His ad for the revolutionary IBM selectric typewriter (1967) predates the 'futuristic' cutup/electronica dabblings of Bill Nelson by some 20 years.

Not necessarily for casual listening, these pre-digital electronic sketches (accompanied by the intensely thorough hard-cover color book) offer a peek into what had to be the golden era of kitchy commercialism. The atomic age meets Ward-and-June-Cleaver America in delightful bite-sized bytes.

Exquisite.

This is more than 2 cds worth of the most charming, fun, electronically generated music you are ever likely to hear and a lot more. It is also a lavish 142 page history of Scott and his amazing adventures in music and sound, illustrated with beautiful, sometimes unbelievable photos. It is a historical document of Scott's part in the evolution in electronic music and it is a beautiful object.
The music is playful, inventive and often beautiful, as is Portifino or Scott's short take on Cole Porter's Night and Day. Scott's ad jingles for Sprite, Baltimore Gas & Electric Company and Bufferin (with a young pre-Muppets Jim Henson) are both inspired and crazy.
There is the makings of a great film here but now be satisfied with and wonder at the amazing sounds contained within.

Could this man be from the future? He certainly pushed the envelope with ALL his music. From the musical madness generated by his small groups to the unusual music to sooth babies in the 1950s to this illimitable collection of futuristic music/advertisements, Raymond continues to prove that he was a sheer genius with a vision singularly lacking from 99% of the other composers of his day. Personally I cannot tell if this package is a history book with an accopmanying CD or the other way around. In either case it is a release worth owning simply for the fact that it is a precurser for what was to come musically in our society. I was stunned when I first listened to it...the recordings simply could not have been from the era that they were. Raymond Scott owned the musical crystal ball hands down.

Rarely, and never in my case, does one come upon a definitive historical artifact that is so entertaining. I am ashamed never to have even heard of Scott; anyone genuinely interested in the history of electronic music MUST own this entire package. The information in the booklet is interesting and often astonishing. Anyone who has read Aphex Twin's entry in the Trance Europe Express booklet will be re-enlightened. Fans of Mu-ziq will be delighted to find their roots similarly engaging. I'm partial to the amusing "Portofino" ditties as well as "The Toy Trumpet". It's mildly disappointing that the glut of minute-snippits were not extended to be full-length IDM/ambient tracks to which we are accustomed. He certainly seemed capable. Classic brainwashing-era advertisements will induce even heartier laughter than classroom filmstrips on The Simpsons (we oughtta be living on the moon any day now...). It's a shame this is available only now and (still) so little known. To think that these were unreleased outtakes simply boggles the mind.

Loads of info in the booklet (with photos and ads,etc),and more importantly....LOADS OF FUN LISTENING!
This is furturistic music that influenced people from Moog ,to Henson,to Stevie Wonder(and Mowtown)!
A treat to hear,read ,and see! Just GREAT!