Electronic Holiday Music for your Aluminum Tree

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If you are looking for the cure for the common holiday selections, you’ve come to the right place. WCNI New London.

First of all check out the great compilations that have been offered by “The Old-Wave Show” and the “Punk Rock Jukebox”. A lot of great selections are in there to make sure you don’t play or hear the “same ‘ol”.

In addition to these offerings, I have put another compilation on the shelf that may be worthy of your attention. “Electronic Holiday Music for your Aluminum Tree and Color Wheel”! So, while your space-age tannenbaum revolves with its changing light show, put on these tunes to complete the effect. I have divided the CD into to parts: Moog-A-Delic and Messed Up Memories. Each of these two parts can be played in their entirity as a ‘set’ or can be broken up.

The first part, Moog-A-Delec, features tracks from the 60’s and ’70s performed (mostly) on the Moog Synthesizer. If you are un-familiar with this sound, think of the music from the movie “A Clockwork Orange” and you are pretty much there. As a matter of fact, Walter Carlos starts things off!

Tracks include: Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring (Walter Carlos); Joy To The World, O Come O Ye Faithful, Deck The Halls, O Holy Night,The First Noel (Moog Machine); Angels We Have Heard On High, When Christmas Comes, Jingle Bells, My Favorite Things,White Christmas,Santa Clause Is Coming To Town (Sy Mann); Swan’s Splashdown (Perrey-Kingsley).

This may seem like a lot, but, these tracks run under two minutes each! Liner notes on the original albums state that it takes an hour of production to create thirty seconds of music.

The second part of this collection, Messed-Up Memories features some ‘newer’ tracks. Most of which are based on tape manipulation and other re-workings of classic tracks.

This part starts of with the Beatles “Christmas Time is Here Again” edited from their 1966 and 1967 Christmas singles. Next is one of my favorites “Jingle Bells” by the Singing Dogs. Yes, the ‘dogs’ were cut and pasted. I know, it would have been great to have a live canine chorus with a conductor pointing to each one to bark their part – sort of like those bell choirs…
Now the fun begins! O Come O Ye SKATESful by SKATES is next. Its new, and I think is adorable. Two reasons to include it here. Corporal Blossom is next with “The Christmas Song (chestnuts roasting on an open fire)”. The corporal takes possibly every known version of this song and splices them together to create this meta version – sort of like an all star pass the mic karaoke dream jam (yeah, right). Next is Lucas with “Deck The Halls”. Lucas is Pea Hix, half of the duo Optigonally Yours. As Lucas, Pea uses cassette tapes found at thrift stores and puts the various elements together to create his magic. True to the spirit of the experimental nature of electronic music we have two tracks “Silent Night” and “Let It Snow” that were created on an NES and Game Boy respectively. I also added a track by Weird Al “Christmas At Ground Zero” and a really dark version of Silent Night.

There you have it. Another bone thrown into the pile. The holiday shows that I’ve heard on the station so far have been great. With the addition of these compilations, you know that the music will not be boring.

When we say “For The Love Of Music”. Its a real love…

Happy Holidays

DJ Steve – Controlled Voltage

p.s. if you want to find out more about some of these tracks, check out.

http://www.detritus.net/illegalart
http://www.optigan.com
http://www.8bitpeoples.com

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