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“You very much got the impression he wanted to be left alone to work on crazy shit, I can sympathise with that…”
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“Raymond Scott was like a mad scientist, way ahead of his time”
I’ve learned many things from Kidkanevil, including who the Keroro Platoon are, the true joy of The Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury, the best children’s toys to make samples from should I ever need to, and recently who Raymond Scott is. There was a point earlier this year when every time I asked KidK what he was up to, he replied “doing loads of remixes, but I need to finish this Raymond Scott thing!” – I nodded like I understood and moved swiftly on.
It turns out Raymond Scott was a fascinating guy, a gifted jazz musician and composer born in 1908, who broke ground creating instant hits for TV (previously his band had only been allowed to play the standards), he demanded the first racially integrated big band radio orchestra, and walked away from it all because “Hollywood thinks everything is great”. In truth he was an inventor wanted to spend all of his time experimenting with sound, making some of the first pre-synths, keyboards and sequencers, pioneering sound recording and sampling, building his own speaker systems and electronic equipment, and eventually starting the Manhattan Research Inc. At one point he was even hired by Berry Gordy as Motown’s director of “the electronic music and research department”. I had no idea I grew up listening to the Raymond Scott – his music was widely used to score the Loony Tunes cartoons and on commercials.
Tokyorkshire Research Inc is Kidkanevil’s tribute to Raymond Scott in free beat tape form, released onSeptember 10th, Scott’s birthday.
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