Found sounds

The Donner Party, Raymond Scott, and more

As the CD revolution heads into the problem years of its teens, virtually every important recording of the century has been made available again. Fortunately, so have a lot of unimportant but great recordings -- the ones that were trivial or just ignored when they first appeared but have aged well.

Take the Donner Party. In the late '80s, they seemed nice but nothing special: a solid, slightly frantic guitar-pop trio from San Francisco with a dark but dry sense of humor. Then they broke up and moved on: singer/guitarist Sam Coomes to Heatmiser (a band that also featured Elliott Smith) and, later, Quasi; drummer Melanie Clarin to the San Francisco Seals (Barbara Manning's band); bassist Reinhold Johnson to parts unknown. Their two releases have finally reappeared on Complete Recordings 1987-1989 (Innerstate), along with a never-before-released third album and some live material, including an accordionless cover of the Who's "Squeeze Box." And, suddenly, they sound amazing. While most of the underground bands of that day were getting over on bluster and attitude, the Donner Party were being fueled by self-depreciation, bitterness, and craft -- they were the smart kids, not the cool kids.

In the '50s and the '60s, composer Raymond Scott recorded material that he conceived of as "function music" rather than the "listening music" he'd recorded with his Quintette in the '30s and '40s. Although those recordings were never intended to be available to the public, they've recently been compiled on the marvelous Manhattan Research Inc. (Basta), an immaculately researched and packaged two-CD-and-book set. A startling piece of retro-futurism, the set features recordings for which Scott invented instruments like the Electronium, the Clavivox, and the Karloff; some of these made space-age sounds, others composed chord progressions he could play along with. Scott's inventions were immediately attractive to advertisers, and Manhattan Research Inc. includes kitschy vintage spots for Bendix, Sprite, Twinkies, and the like. The compilation is rounded out by examples of straight-up experimentation -- musique concrète, backwards bleeps, demonstrations of new machines. It's the sound of a single inventor trying to discover the future.

A latecomer to the psychedelic party, Bill Holt recorded Dreamies Program 10 & Program 11 under the influence of hippie space-out music and the Beatles' "Revolution 9." But it was released in 1973, six years too late to be the bolt from the blue it might've been. Created in Holt's basement on a four-track recorder, Dreamies was also intensely uncommercial. Its two 25-minute suites included three gently acid-drenched songs featuring strummed acoustic guitar and vocals sung with a fake English accent; these were mixed and spliced together with freaky Moog synthesizer wobbles, sound effects lifted from TV shows, and bits of John F. Kennedy speeches. At the time of its release, it must have sounded like a '60s throwback and a mess, and it sank into psych-collector obscurity. Reissued this year by Gear Fab, it now seems a small revelation, spirited and inventive, a collision between mellow songwriting and over-the-top mix weirdness. And parts of it are indistinguishable from Olivia Tremor Control's trippier moments.

It doesn't take much imagination to assemble a great compilation of hip-hop hits. On the other hand, it's a real accomplishment to put together a comp of non-hits as great as The Big Playback (Rawkus), a smoking dozen '80s chart zeros collected by the editors of the excellent hip-hop 'zine Ego Trip. Some of these tracks are historically significant: MC EZ & Troup ("Get Retarded") was actually Craig Mack's first project; Rammelzee vs. K-Rob's "Beat Bop," featuring tangential involvement by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, influenced the Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill. Most of them, however, just have underground cachet that's kept them alive among serious heads. Latee's "This Cut's Got Flavor" is as sloppy and muddy as "Louie Louie," and it's got just as much strutting attitude. And Divine Force's "Holy War" is a superheated collision of barely-in-synch beats and Sir Ibu's proto-Brand Nubian sneer.

Reissues don't get any more obscure than the material singer/songwriter Damien Jurado has collected on Postcards and Audio Letters (Made in Mexico). A compilation of "found" cassette recordings that were never intended for public consumption, Postcards starts with a half-hour 1972 audio letter mailed by a German man to an American girlfriend who'd recently dumped him; that's followed by her evidently unsent response. The disc goes on to include the unsuccessful attempt of a paterfamilias to get his irritable family to participate in a Christmas tape message, a phone call between a couple of nervous long-distance sweethearts, and a scary, bitter telephone custody battle. Postcards invites you to become an audio voyeur, and as unnerving as it is to listen in on these private moments, it's also hard to stop.

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