101 STRINGS BEYOND 2000/YMA SUMAC MIRACLES OUTSIDER CD

101 STRINGS – Astro-Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000 + YMA SUMAC – Miracles. Request Records RR 5119. NEW CD. Originally issued in 1969 and 1972 on Alshire and London Records, respectively. This edition issued in 1995. 2 complete albums on 1 CD. TRACKS, Astro-Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000 : Flameout, Re-Entry To Mog, Space Odyssey, Astral Freakout, Orbit Fantasy, Barrier X-69, A Disappointing Love With A Desensitized Robot, Where Were You In 1982, Trippin’ On Lunar, and A Bad Trip Back To ’69. Miracles : Remember, Medicine Man, Let Me Hear You, Tree Of Life, Flame Tree, Zebra, Azure Sands, Look Around, Magenta Mountain , and El Condor Pasa. DESCRIPTION, Astro-Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000 : If you think the original sleeve and the music on this CD are, er, “far out”, just wait till you hear the story of how it was made. This is part of a trilogy of strangeness that involves legendary guitarists, fast-talking record execs, the excess of drugs and the ‘60s flower power generation, space missions, Jane Fonda and a woman who once “made out” with a synth. Read on… The 101 Strings were a collection of European orchestras employed in the mid-‘60s in their downtime to record porno scores, church hymns, Beatles’ covers, and all manner of concepts thought up by Al Sherman of Alshire Records in the States. It was big news in the malls and big sales ensued. After Sgt Pepper, Sherman and his team wanted to exploit the possibilities of the acid rock fraternity. Enter a shifty bloke with the master tapes of strange psyche noises and some driving rhythms as prepared by various LA session players. Alshire decided to release it, with a suitably trippy name and The Animated Egg was hatched. The recordings were out takes of as session by The Id from the album The Inner Sounds Of The Id , a rarer than rare item that still has psyche fans salivating. The guitar work was by Jerry Cole – a former surf instrumentalist who’d set the phasers to stun and, with the addition of some strings and a light smattering of sitar courtesy of arranger Monty Kelly the groove was afoot for its new guise. The album met with some success but the story doesn’t end there. Never ones to miss an opportunity, Alshire decided more could be done with the tapes and set about a third incarnation of the recordings, encouraging Kelly to soup up the sitar and add some groovy organ. The track titles were changed and, as the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barbarella , starring Jane Fonda, were the thing of the day, a space theme, a futuristic one at that, was concocted and 101 Strings’ Astro-Sounds From Before The Year 2000 was born. Of the three versions of these recordings, this was the furthest out there. It was off-the-wall. In fact, there was no wall anymore, by the time you get to the last two tracks the plot has long been lost. Without doubt Astro-Sounds is one of the strangest listening experiences you’ll ever have; file this in the Cool and Strange Music section. Miracles : This is the album Yma fans either can't stand or are fanatical about. In either case this is unlike anything she ever recorded; Yma goes rock! For the sessions Les Baxter was brought in to conduct the orchestra and, presumably, does the arranging; he is credited as composer on all tracks but El Condo Pasa . About this recording, from All with a little editing by me: "The first song on this disc should've been a hit; Remember begins with a hard rock explosion and Sumac exploring what the liner notes call her "extraordinary five-octave voice." There are no lyrics here, just Sumac's vocal flights which ride over rock & roll textures. Although the rock here sounds like it is straight out of the Berklee College of Music, jazz influenced organ courtesy of Richard Person, Chuck Cowan's guitar, the bass of Roger Cowan, and Skippy Switzer's drums all shine here. On Let Me Hear You , Sumac reaches down into her gut and comes up with a sound Peter Frampton utilized on his 1976 hit Show Me the Way , the amazing thing is she did it without the effects gizmo." Miracles was not in ... read more