Raymond Scott Three Willow Park, Thinking Plague Hoping Against Hope
Raymond Scott
Three Willow Park
(Basta)
If you’ve seen more than a couple Looney Tunes cartoons, then you’ve heard Raymond Scott—the bandleader/pianist whose compositions such as “Powerhouse” were adapted by Carl Stalling for numerous Warner Bros. cartoons.
His noteworthy Raymond Scott Quintette (sic) in the late ‘30s played playful, animated and technically challenging “descriptive jazz” with evocative song titles, like “New Years Eve in a Haunted House.” However, Scott had a separate, second legacy that was profoundly influential yet perhaps not as well-known: his legacy as an electronic music pioneer.
Scott had an early interest in both music and technology and intended to study engineering in college, but his older brother Mark steered him toward studying music at what is now Juilliard by bribing him with a Steinway grand piano and paying his tuition.
His fascination with technology never left him, and he went on to invent electronic instruments including early synthesizers such as the Clavivox and the Electronium, a “Bass-Line Generator” and a drum machine adorably named “Bandito the Bongo Artist.”
While the outstanding 2000 compilation Manhattan Research Inc. concentrated on Scott’s mid-century electronic music, including numerous commercial jingles, instrument demonstrations and electronic adaptations of his old compositions like “Twilight in Turkey,” the new 2-CD collection Three Willow Park focuses on the decade of 1961 to 1971, during which Scott spent much time in the factory-building lab/home that gives this collection its name.
There are bleeps and bloops galore, with demos of sound effects and interesting snippets along with longer pieces that explore the capabilities of the Electronium. A complex piece of equipment that only Scott—a secretive control freak—fully understood, the Electronium could compose musical sequences with artificial intelligence; as Scott explained, “The Electronium isn’t played. It’s guided.”
Scott was on Motown Records’ payroll to construct an Electronium for Berry Gordy, not to make sounds on Motown releases, but rather to be a source of ideas and inspiration. The examples of the Electronium on Three Willow Park are fascinating percolations—although rhythms are established, the patterns constantly vary and evolve in unpredictable ways.
The entrancing “Dorothea” and “Carribea” bring to mind Scott’s proto-ambient/minimalist 3-volume Soothing Sounds for Baby, and two versions of Scott’s heavenly “Portofino” (plus a fragment) are included, with its gently cascading melody, wordless vocals and a sax—a rare occurrence of non-electronic sounds on this collection.
The dedicated team handling the Scott archives has produced yet another winner, with meticulously researched liner notes and a carefully curated 61-track treasure trove pared down from 80 hours of raw material, shining a light on a brilliant inventor who rightfully deserves his spot in the electronic music pantheon.
Thinking Plague
Hoping Against Hope
(Cuneiform)
In the early ‘80s, guitarist Mike Johnson and multi-instrumentalist Bob Drake met in Colorado over a mutual appreciation for prog-rock and art-rock bands such as Yes and Henry Cow and formed the core of Thinking Plague, an invented name for an affliction marked by constant contemplation.
Today, Johnson is the only consistent member over the group’s 35-year existence, and the band has only released a handful of albums, with Hoping Against Hope being the latest excursion. As always, the band’s output is ambitious and complicated, driven by Johnson’s compositions that augment the standard rock combo instrumentation with reeds and even an occasional toy piano on the album.
Hoping Against Hope is a constantly stimulating album where so much is going on that the listener may be overwhelmed and perhaps exhausted to attempt to process everything. Like the aforementioned Yes and Henry Cow, Thinking Plague’s music is technically demanding, and some listeners might think that they’re showing off, being complicated for the sake of being complicated. However, it’s enlightening to examine Johnson’s musical background and intentions; Johnson, a self-taught guitarist, grew up listening to classical music as well as rock acts such as Jimi Hendrix and King Crimson.
His idea for Thinking Plague was to channel through a rock band what 20th century composers such as Shostakovich and William Schuman were doing, generating turbulence and sonic drama. Sometimes playing with atonality, Johnson would also frequently change time signatures as a tool in his compositional toolbox, to break out of rigid structures.
Vocalist and keyboardist Elaine di Falco often sings with clear tones with no vibrato, and on the title track, her vocal lines sync up with the dominant melody, in a way emphasizing the notion of the voice being an instrument rather than a character.
An unexpected moment on the album occurs near the end of “The Great Leap Backwards,” where the carefully structured music seems to fall into disarray on purpose, creating a glorious climax. Hoping Against Hope is an album that’s impossible to fully absorb or appreciate upon a single listening session; on one level, Thinking Plague can seem clinical, with the band playing from sheet music, but with cycles of heavy, furious playing balanced with more delicate moments, it also can have an undeniable emotional impact.