[CP 000.11 CD] Michael Siegel; The Sounds of the Office, The Sounds of the Junk Yard

This was the 11th title in the ca. 2003 Proto Creel Pone program, collecting both of Michael Siegel's two 1964 (!?) Folkways releases, "The Sounds of the Office" (FX 6142) & "The Sounds of the Junk Yard" (FX 6143).

I'd long been fascinated by the Tony Schwarz-end of the Folkways spectrum (check the first "Sides" disc of Creelpolation 2) and these two "Mise-en-Scene" titles (complete with pitch-perfect liner notes encapsulating the raw documentation-aspects of the two LPs, ages before Gregg "Neil Hamburger" Turkington caught up with the whole "Boring Field Recordings" ethos maybe 2/3 decades later via his "Sounds of the Convenience Store" & "Sounds of Adult Bookshops" series) are almost too perfect in their channeling of the seemingly banal into a riot of tape-gained everyday sounds & extremely harsh scrap-metal shrieks & explosions. I remember hearing The New Blockaders' "Changez Les Blockeurs" for the first time & thinking that, while of course it's the canonic example of "Industrial Music's" embrace of the minutiae of everyday mechanization, that it didn't hold a candle to "Junk Yard" in its overblown, gained blasts (I'd also read somewhere that this was one of Evan Parker's favorite records, and somehow now that make perfect sense).

This vaunted C.P. edition collects both titles in all of their glories (the "Textured" booklet is a nice touch) complete with two separate inserts covering both booklets (the descriptions of the events unfolding in sound read like poetry).