Bleep, Blorp, Wing-Wam

Going to a Go-Go #2: "Cosmic Ballad" (1966)

“Cosmic Ballad” 
Perrey and Kingsley
From The In Sound from Way Out!, Vanguard VSD-79222, 1966

It’s easy to be eccentric, especially in music. Haul out your favorite weird instrument of choice and start plucking or poking or stabbing away. Or even better, find the nearest household object and use that instead. 

To be eccentric and listenable is a much taller order. Gershon Kingsley and Jean-Jacques Perrey were two early pioneers of electronic music whose 1966 album The In Sound From Way Out! is widely regarded as a landmark recording for its use of synthesizers, tape loops, and found audio to construct melodies and soundscapes. 

It’s weird as hell. For the most part, it’s not very listenable. The novelty has dulled with time, absolutely; there’s nothing on this album that couldn’t be recreated in Garageband within 45 minutes. (For comparison, the pair spent 275 hours and several miles of tape to create this thirty-minute album.) This type of early synthetic music is especially obnoxious for uptempo numbers, which seem designed to just scratch away at your one remaining nerve. 

“Cosmic Ballad” is the track that hits the most careful balance between eerie and weird, between haunting and scary. The rhythmic squeals that plunk away throughout start to fade into grey after a few listens, and your ear is drawn to the thin gossamer thread of the melody, slithering between the blips and bloops and suggesting something otherworldly, ethereal. 

Music is music is music, whether you bleat it on a digiredoo or program it into an elaborate tape loop apparatus. The melody carries the day. 

Next time: Simians in the car park