Thursday 20 July 2017

PAUL WEST0N - MUS1C F0R DREAMING (1950)

My parents had a 1960s pressing of this album with a different cover, and a number of other romance-mood records. I listened to them with some dedication around the age of eight or nine, and again as a kitschy pleasure about another decade later. This shorter, earlier edition of the album (recordings from 1945, a clear example of proto-easy-listening) still evokes a number of sick cheesecake pleasures. The dream of post-war pleasantness is explicit here, with hindsight, as is its placeless, formless utopian fictions of nostalgia, which nonetheless emote as entirely real. Another album about dreams; I doubt many could attain dreamstate listening to this unbearably soft, overly lovely kind of infernal racket.

Try it...

4 comments:

  1. Ah, could this be where it all began? Looking forward... Thanks.

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    1. It's a fun listen: kind of an exemplar, from what I've heard in the genre.. I am not an expert. I wonder about the specifics of Weston's influences. Do I hear Satie? Anyway, I've been interested in him for awhile, retracting him to my childhood. Regards!

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  2. ...overly lovely kind of infernal racket

    your writing is just so damn good! this had me laughing out loud.

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    1. Thank you for your comment. Appreciated.

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