UPDATE (Feb 6): Raymond Scott Rewired now has a
website.
As a musician, composer, bandleader, and inventor,
Raymond Scott was a perfectionist, but not a stylistic purist. His late-1930s six-man "Quintette" crafted novelty jazz that layered ethnic contours and pan-global riffs over a propulsive beat. In the 1940s Scott's antic melodies were adapted in
Warner Bros. cartoons because WB music director
Carl Stalling found the compositions genetically animated. Scott's mid-century orchestral works were danceable, except when they veered into complex, cerebral concert-jazz. In the 1950s and '60s Scott invented and recorded with electronic instruments. He was a genre-hopper, reflecting a musical restlessness and adventurousness. Scott loved what he did, but craved what came next.
As archivist for the Scott musical estate, I commissioned three remix artists to take apart Scott's catalog and reshape it in a fresh way.
The Bran Flakes (Otis Fodder, Montreal),
The Evolution Control Committee (TradeMark Gunderson, U.S.), and
Go Home Productions (Mark Vidler, U.K.) were ftp'ed hundreds of Scott recordings in various genres, including unreleased material, spanning the 1930s to the 1980s. They were invited to have fun, but keep it rhythmic. Each contributed six audio montages with new titles, and they collaborated on Scott's signature tune, "
Powerhouse."
The result is
RAYMOND SCOTT REWIRED, produced for the Basta label. The album will be released in North America on February 18. Three tracks can be streamed on
Soundcloud.
Over 250 sample sources were used in the construction of these 19 tracks. Those samples were edited, looped, flipped, and stretched; they were tweaked with EQ, pitch-shifted, compressed, and transformed. Disassembling one man's sonic legacy and reassembling the pieces into something different, something worth hearing repeatedly, requires an intuitive gift that approaches songwriting. Scott fans will recognize some passages, but in countless cases, the source recordings have been altered beyond recognition. The composer himself would have difficulty identifying his own works. The reconfigurations were done playfully, but respectfully. Nothing was destroyed. The originals still exist.
The cover art was adapted from an unfinished, untitled, black & white
Jim Flora illustration from the 1950s.
Doughty has been busy — he also released an album of loop-based electronic music this month called DUBIOUS LUXURY. He explains, "I wasn’t noisy about it, at the time, but much of the sampled stuff in Soul Coughing was my work: the crazed Bugs Bunny sample on 'Bus to Beelzebub,' the peculiar Raymond Scott sample on 'Disseminated'." But don't expect more Raymond Scott samples. "After the first record, my bandmates were increasingly unreceptive to loops I brought in from other people's music. Maybe they were right, we woulda been poorer, giving our money away to other composers," he said at MikeDoughty.com. "I could only use the majority of the loops live — gone are the days when Warner Bros. would write a fat check to pay off the Raymond Scott estate and Toots Hibbert for their unsuspecting contributions! Even rappers are too smart to use samples these days."
The Bran Flakes are a couple of sample-happy plunderphonic pirates who throw forgotten '50s kiddie vinyl, Bachelor Pad bridges, mariachi LPs, and homemade electrobeats into the audio blender and hit "puree." Their slice'n'dice sonics come out sounding like a Saturday morning TV soundtrack for today's juvenile genius-nerds destined to shape the technology of 2029.
Stu Brown's Raymond Scott Project has launched a website. The group's mission is to introduce the original RSQ repertoire to a new generation of Euro audiences. Stu (at drumkit, left) recently began adding RS electronica into the mix, but his program largely offers an updating of early Scott Quintette tunes. He is also prospecting for an album deal.
