Composed by Charles Albertine, Lee Pockriss and Kermit Levinsky, these eight tracks are sometimes-atonal, often bracing and brimming with the early-1950s sense of breaking new ground in recorded music.
Larry Elgart was, with his brother Les, a big band-leader with aspirations to do something more highbrow. Impressions of Outer Space pre-dates the spate of space-age astro-pop, such as Russ Garcia's Fantastica, Les Baxter's Space Escapade, Ron Goodwin's Music in Orbit and Joe Meek's I Hear a New World. More astringent and arty than those later records, IoOS takes the way-out course in most of its tracks, getting almost into Thelonious Monk territory with its shrill, mangled harmonies and instrumentation.
Charles Albertine is beloved by fans of Space Age Pop for the series of albums he arranged and masterminded for The Three Suns, RCA Victor's purveyors of the businessman's bounce school of chipper, flyweight instrumental music. He composed five of the eight tracks here, and they align with his subsequent Elgart collaboration, Music for Barefoot Ballerinas, which Decca issued as a 12" LP a few years later. This is the most out-there stuff Albertine ever composed, and it might come as a shock to those who love his psycho-perky Three Suns stuff.
It's surprising to find Lee Pockriss as composer of two pieces here. A pop songwriter to the max, he co-penned "Catch a Falling Star," "Johnny Angel" and "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini"--a galaxy apart from his two tracks on this album. They partially atone for the crime against humanity that is "Itsy Bitsy..."
Kermit Levinsky? He was affiliated with the Elgart big band, and wrote many film scores, including Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run. His brother Walt went further in the music firmament.
Enjoy this astral rarity HERE. And look for another post sometime in 2019...
Hey! This IS ultra cool. many thanx... Can't wait 'til 2019.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing all this hard to find music
ReplyDeleteMany thanks
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