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Friday, April 30, 2010

43. "High Fly Ball" by The Hellers


My possession of this record dates to a time when I was rapidly acquiring all the early Moog records I could find, some of which are just jaw-droppingly strange. This one was particularly interesting due to the involvement of Enoch Light, the innaresting character who ran the Command record label (famed for its art design as much as anything, and your record collection does contain some records whose covers are direct recreations of Command LP jackets) and Robert Moog himself playing his namesake keyboards. Unfortunately this combo is pretty much canceled out by the concept, which is, for some reason, to frame Moog's wild playing with unrelated sub-variety-show cornball novelty sketches. Why this would be packaged to look like a sunshine pop record by a "band" of some kind is a whole 'nother mystery. It's still loopy fun, but it doesn't scale the giddy heights of the most truly out-there Light productions.

Braine is the band again, this time pretty much for real, and they sound great, I must say. All of the kids played their respective instruments and, other than loop wrangling and editing, the only noise I contributed was the warbly keyboard which serves as the only remaining relic of the Moog origins of the original piece. In fact we replaced Moog's composition with one that Miranda cooked up, her first, and due to be completed with lyrics some time soon. It's really good on its own, not least because of the groovy guitar part Eden added to it.

Personnel:
Miranda Broome: Bass, musical composition, engineering, sportscaster, astronaut #1
Eden Hain: Guitar, engineering, astronaut #3, alien #2, artwork (Alice)
Ridley Broome: Percussion, astronaut #2, alien #1, artwork (garden)
Rex Broome: Engineering, editing, keyboard

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