eMusic Review 0
It's possible that the first thing you'll ask yourself when hearing the opening track of Raymond Scott's Raymond Scott Conducts the Rock 'n Roll Symphony is, "What does an easy-listening album have to do with rock 'n' roll?" You'll skip to the next tune, hear the lushly orchestrated strings, the decidedly unfunky bass, and the vaguely Muzak-y melodic lines, and think, "Wait a minute — is someone trying to make a fool of me here?" Bear with me (and Mr. Scott) a bit longer. Raymond Scott — he of the cartoon all-time masterpiece "Powerhouse," the iconoclastic "Microphone Music" and the industrial brilliance of "Manhattan Research, Inc." (a clear-cut influence on Madlib's work) — wasn't shooting for an album that would make first-generation rockers' parents happy. He was working, as he often worked, subversively, putting himself in an idiomatic straightjacket in an attempt to find the occluded emotional center of the music. He's more Phil Spector than he is Henry Mancini. Or, he's like Nelson Riddle, who arranged the theme for Route 66 — someone who understands that our feelings about a piece of music are more important than whether the technical elements used to achieve those feelings are consistent with… read more »
