LIBRARY SCIENCE: THEMES FOR DRAMA, MYSTERY & WEIRD

Another book post? Yep. Seems like recently I've been able to spend more time reading books than I have been able to spend listening to records. My homie Jake Won just hooked me up with an early b-day gift - a copy of Jonny Trunk's book, The Music Library (Fuel Publishing, 2005), which is a really slick looking hardcover that serves as a primer for the world of sound library LP's. For those not in the know, sound library records were created for use in the film, television and radio industries featuring music performed by various studio musicians for all types of moods. Because they were never issued for retail sale, they are very rare and often go for big bucks on the ebay machine (especially for us in the states since most of the heavy library labels based in Europe). Stories of Euro diggers stumbling upon boxes sitting out for trash have been the stuff of many sweatily read record nerd message board threads. Check out this article from the SF Weekly for a nice background on sound libraries. The book is organized alphabetically by label and each label gets 1-2 pages (some of the heavies like De Wolfe and Chappell have bigger spreads) with full color cover scans. While the book's primary focus is on the cover art, there are some basic notes on each label and it comes with a 17 track CD sampler of some rare library cuts. Check out some of the covers:




Master Won also threw me a copy of Luke Vibert's "Nuggets" CD which is a collection of his favorite library jams. Here's a small sampling of tunes from both these discs:

Richard Demaria - Next Episode

Midas Touch - Intimations

David Holland - Zouche Drums 3

Raymond Guiot & Guy Pederson - Flutes Ad Libitum

Jean-Jaques Debout - Pop Bazaar

Guy Pederson - Kermesse Non Heroique

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Bonus for latecomers (when do you ever see that?), complete rips:

NUGGETS

THE LIBRARY MUSIC