Coming across a 100% album isn’t very easy to do. On first listen of Song Cycle, it’s pure perfection blinded me. There’s not a single note I would change or a track I’d skip. Solid gold.
Parks was only 23 when he was asked by Brian Wilson to work on the famed Smile album with him. He pumped out “Heroes and Villains”, “Surf’s Up” (one of the best songs ever written), and many others with Wilson. After leaving the project, he went to write his first solo project Song Cycle at age 25; one of the most expensive albums ever recorded.
Give it a listen, and go buy it. You can get some great 180g analog master pressings on eBay.
Van Dyke Parks – Palm Desert
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Van Dyke Parks – All Golden
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Van Dyke Parks – Public Domain
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“I should think he’d fade away; the way that bohemians often bare the frigid air.”
As far as Italian prog goes, PFM are the poster children. I’ve yet to find another group in the genre that makes it so smooth and buttery. The segways between movements (or lack there of, generally) is to die for. This album fails to leave my rotation.
There’s not much to say. The music speaks for itself. There’s quite a few movements, so give it a full listen.
If you’re looking for similar stuff, be sure to check out:
Locanda Delle Fate’s “Forse le Lucciole Non Si Amano Più”
Fantastic album from Italian-based Baffo Banfi. Seems to be a mix of his previous albums “Ma, Dolce Vita” (1979) and “Hearth” (1981) mashed together for CD; but if anybody has better info than that, please comment!
Right at the time where Krautrock was morphing into the New Age sound, these albums straddle the fence very nicely. Very reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching at the time.
Released under Klaus Schulz’s new label at the time (Innovative Communication) – you can definitely hear his hand in it.
So, I’m sure most of you have heard of Delicious Library already, but the mastermind Wil Shipley released the iPhone companion this morning (iTunes link), along with v2.1.
Delicious Library has a lot of neat features that I simply don’t use, but the best use I’ve found for it so far is cataloging your vinyl collection. Unfortunately you have to manually enter everything, as well as find the album art yourself… but it’s really handy to have your collection in a lusciously designed searchable beast in your pocket.
It’s $40, but the demo let’s you add 25 items so you can play. The iPhone app is free.
In 1956, György Ligeti composed an amazing electronic piece called “Artikulation”.
In 1970’s, Rainer Wehinger created a visual map to the recordings. Some awesome guy out there scanned the images and synced them with the audio. Thanks, guy!
This thing’s gonna change everything. The new Operator 1 (OP-1) from Teenage Engineering truly shows how beautiful synthesis can be (though the Buchla 200e definitely has some chips in the pile).
A hybrid digital synthesizer and MIDI controller with enough features to question if this thing is even real.
8 synthesizer models (FM, Virtual Analog, String, +), 8 samplers, on board effects, OLED display, battery powered, built in microphone, FM radio, built in speaker, mp3 export, and a sequencer so cool – it’s still “secret”.
