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"This Is A Sound." So spoke musician/composer/inventor/reclusive wizard Raymond Scott in a snippet which opens this set that sprawls like the fresh suburbia in which it was recorded. From the always-cool Basta label in Holland, and the trusted & official keepers of the Scott legacy, Irwin Chusid, Gert-Jan Blom and Jeff Winner, this 2-CD or 3-LP set mines the Scott vaults for a further dive into the legendary, and I mean legendary, Electronium. The Electronium was Raymond Scott's multi-decade project which was never fully realized, partially a synthesizer, partially a sequencer, partially an artificially-intelligent autonomic self-composing/performing machine.
Unlike the previous collection of Scott's electronic music, Manhattan Research, Inc. (VERY highly recommended), this set commands more than casual listening. There are no TV commercial voiceovers (save for 2 provided by Scott himself, probably as placeholders for ad execs), much of the content is decidedly more "bleepity/bloopity" than on MRI, HOWEVER we get to hear a lot more of Scott actually at work, creating and innovating in real time, keeping a microphone open and narrating as he introduces each new flip of the switch and each new sound it introduces to his electronic pattern. Those familiar with his other electronic pieces will hear small snatches from those works reprised in these tracks, not to mention a couple of pieces recorded around the same time as his ambient Soothing Sounds for Baby project that could have fit well on that series.
A few pieces are returned to in a sort-of "remix" fashion, notably the piece referred to earlier as "Cindy Electronium", which appears here in 2 different renderings with varying amounts of reverb. Very nearly prehistoric funk. And speaking of funk, perhaps the crown jewel of this collection and the one most worth the price of admission by itself, is strangely the one and only track (and perhaps the one and only Electronium recording) that has no involvement from Raymond Scott whatsoever.: Motown engineer Hoby Cook, assigned to work with the Electronium and Motown session musicians once Scott and Berry Gordy got the machine to a certain working state, was unable to get the session pros to play to an existing click track from a machine, thus a finished track was never achieved; Cook himself programmed a few grooves on the Electronium and overdubbed a few keyboard lines - it is these snippets that may well have pointed the way to the future had things fallen into place. After hearing this track, my mind raced with thoughts of Bernie Worrell and George Clinton programming some hellatious P-Funk on an Electronium...it is this track which closes Three Willow Park and leaves us hanging.
As to the title, Willow Park Center was a suburban industrial park in Farmingdale, Long Island, to where Scott and his third wife Mitzi moved around 1965, until 1971 when he was hired by Motown to develop the Electronium. While not exactly legal to be living in such a location, they did so, having all living, office, studio, and factory/machine facilities in one huge warehouse-type location.
The producers went through hundreds of hours of recordings to cull the most accessible of Scott's experiments, thankfully Scott was a rabid recordist who recorded everything - rehearsals, sessions, etc., from the 1930s and for decades thereon, so the sheer amount of physical media they had to sift through was huge. Then the listening to huge amounts of audio to discern identities of recordings, how they fit into the chronology & projects Scott was working on etc...
The packaging is top notch, the CDs come in a fold-out envelope book, type is a bit small but this can hardly be helped in this day & age. Which is another reason I like vinyl! The 3 LPs come in separate jackets, plus a full-size 12" book, much easier to read, AND it comes with a download code. Inner sleeves for the LPs are soft plastic lined, very nice packaging.
While this era of Scott's electronic music may not be as accessible to many, it is still crucial in the overall development of electronic music and is essential to understand the extent of analog innovation. Scott took it about as far as anyone could have, and even the seemingly random bleeps & bloops are quite musical in their own way. Anyone into electronica, EDM, anything deriving from music made with electricity should be picking up this and any Raymond Scott music. The Scott family and the producers have done a fantastic job on this and You Need It. Scott is only just now getting his due as a Great American Composer and Innovator.
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Mr E T Chivers
If you loved 'Manhattan Research Inc' then this is more of the ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2018
