Friday, March 25, 2011

ATTILIO MINEO - MAN IN SPACE WITH SOUNDS





















Tracks 1-12  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hjcwcimmjz539lx
Tracks 13-24  http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tzz4hk57wn2q2zq

Track 1 - Welcome To Tomorrow
Track 2 - Gayway To Heaven
Track 3 - Soaring Science
Track 4 - Mile A Minute Monorail
Track 5 - Around The World
Track 6 - Century 21
Track 7 - Man In Art
Track 8 - The Queen City
Track 9 - Man Seeks The Future
Track 10 - Boeing Spacearium
Track 11 - Science Of Tomorrow
Track 12 - Space Age World's Fair
Tracks 13 through 24 - Same as above expect without dialogue.

This is certainly a candidate for the weirdest record in my music collection. Attilio "Art" Mineo was asked to provide music which could be broadcast as people viewed the various exhibits of the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle. The results are spooky and spacey with the primary instruments in use being violins and electronic equipment. In my view the real joy comes from the informative voice overs that precede each piece of music, the descriptions prove to be quite humorous considering how off the mark they are in predicting some of the future technological advancements.

While the music wont be to everyone's taste there is no doubting the cache of a collection such as this. It has relevance in terms of being a historical document and as a study in the incorporation of electronic and conventional instruments during the early 1960's.

11 comments:

Mike said...

Another Funky Frolic post = Brilliant! These things'll come out of two speakers and kick your party's ass.

Paraphrasing 'Hard Boiled.' ;)

Mr. Craig said...

Funny you should mention Hard Boiled, I saw it on my 19th birthday and have searched endlessly for a video or DVD release. Not even a tv screening in 14 long years...Have seen a rip on the net but it's a lot of data to use on something that might fail or not work on my computer. Oh well.

the saucer people said...

Totally agree with you in terms of this being an essential cultural artefact,there has been a crackly rip of this doing the rounds for a while and this sounds much cleaner (though ripping it at 160kbps isn't your ususal style!?)

I must admit I am kinda fascinated by the Seattle World Fair of 1962; conceptually and aesthetically it is just a pleasure to behold as we are still in an optimistic mode when the future was still a promise and not a threat to quote Chuck P....just read the opening speech by JFK and now can you ever imagine a western leader making a speech like this today!?

As for the music, it is well worth listening to it as you browse these postcards from the fair:

http://www.alamedainfo.com/seattle_worlds_fair_1962.htm

Also if you have not seen it there is a great short film on "Century 21" where living in the C21st century is "imagined"...compare and contrast ;)

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=4030725

There is also a whole page on the various music associated with the 1962 fair including some uber-cool flexi-disc postcards that I would sell my lungs for! Did you know there were actually two versions of Attilio's record released, this one and one without dialogue at all!

http://www.62worldsfair.com/15%20SWF%20Record%20Albums.htm

Mr Craig - you do realise I am going to keep poking you with a big long sharp stick until the extra tracks are posted?...lol;)

PS> For "Hard Boiled" there a couple of good dvd rips of it doing the torrent rounds - just go to "Isohunt" and go for the ones with the biggest number of seeders and I can assure you they are proper rips!

Legomegacy said...

would love to hear the other tracks

the saucer people said...

As a postscript to my last comment, I just realised that in addition to the crappy 128kbps rip I had of "Man In Space With Sounds" I actually found a decent rip of it a couple of months ago but clearly forgot to update my memory banks.

So I dig this decent rip out and discover it is exactly the same as this rip (same track length and audio quality) except for one curious thing, the rip I have is at 192kbps and this one is at 160kbps....somewhere along the way 32kbps have vanished!

So apologies, I made a total assumption this was your rip!

Also after mentioning in the last post that there were two versions of this release, a spoken word and instrumental version the penny gas finally dropped that the extra tracks are the instrumental release!...I know..how slow!

So really the other 12 instrumental tracks constitute an entirely separate release (I said I would find new and annoying ways to request the extra tracks are posted!) though I cannot remember off hand if they have different catalogue numbers..I imagine for confusions sake they are the same ;)

Mr. Craig said...

I would hazard a guess that you got the 192k version from Val Verde, I did my copy on the laptop a few weeks ago. You probably haven't seen many 160k rips because even if I have an album I'll probably look for a copy on the net with a slightly higher bitrate than I seem to be able to achieve.

Just a couple of notes on this release - it was put out in 1998 by Swedish label Subliminal Sounds, cat no. - SUBCD 4. The project came about when Jack Diamond made contact with Art to find out if there was ever a stereo version of the record. The music was actually composed in 1951 and recorded in 1959. The original release was indeed two seperate LP's, one with cat no. 55555 and the other (minus the dialogue) cat no. 66666. Don't have any info on the label for those unfortunately.

Looks like my hand has been forced so I shall post the instrumental only tracks in the next day or two. Cheers.

Mike said...

Mr. Craig, I got my DVD copy about a decade ago (if not longer) from HKFlix.com. That site is gone now; I guess that with the advent of Blu-Ray that business slowed down to a trickle.

the saucer people said...

Huge thanks for the extra info Mr Craig, I had no idea that it was recorded in 1951! Makes it all that more stranger!

Really look forward to the instrumental version being posted now that I have forced the hand of Craig (if you are a Psychic TV fan you would find the last line slightly amusing)....many thanks again for your kindness in responding to requests, its like being part of one huge warm obscure music blogging family ;)

the saucer people said...

Hey Craig, thanks so much for upping the instrumental versions of 'Man In Space With Sounds'...I had thought I had thanked you but when I came to get the link address for a friend I scrolled down to see a horrifying lack of appreciation for all your hard work.

It is a real downer that you have issues ripping above 160kbps...I know Mr Retro-teque has/had the same problems...unfortunately I have never ripped vinyl so I have no idea how to advise...is there an option for saving as a "WAV" file? (then you could use freeware like Foobar2000 to convert to 320kbps MP3..I use it all the time for converting Cue/APE and Cue/FLAC files and the quality of conversion is fine)....or am a I barking up the wrong audio tree and it's a hardware issue?

Anyway, thanks again for the two Mineo rips, a valuable addition to my 'space ephemera' folder!

Mr. Craig said...

Many thanks for your feedback SP. The main reason I haven't looked into ripping at 320kbps is that I constantly have problems uploading. Spending half a day trying to up a file isn't my idea of a good time, with the smaller file sizes I tend to have a bit more luck.

Glad you enjoy the Mineo as much as I do. It's one of the top treasures in my collection. Cheers.

Anonymous said...

aaaaaaaaaah !!!!!! "arturo millenio ?" "artuo mileno ?" "world's fair" ! couldn't find that disk again ! grrr… :-)