There's not a lot to go on here is there? That
cover is as blank and unforgiving as a Peter Saville Factory sleeve, and what
is there is a riddle that's wrapped in a puzzle and then buried with an
enigma. 'The Starlight Sound Of Summer' - well what's that then? What does
'Starlight' sound like I wonder? Is it the sound of summer a reference to the
season, or is it something exclusive to the artist behind this, like Phil
Spector's 'Wall of Sound'? Turn it over and on the back it says - 'Dancing and
easy listening at it's best with The Sound Of Summer'; in my world the two are
mutually exclusive and you can no more relax to dance music than you can run
slowly. Very odd. But enough speculation, time to give it a
listen.
What we have is another disparate collection of
random songs ('I Just Called To Say I Love You', jockeys for position with 'If I
Were A Rich Man', 'Misty', 'I'm just Wild About Harry' et al) arranged and
played as instrumentals. The fact that none of them would normally share the
same airspace matters not one bit - any context they once had is rendered
irrelevant; in Ray's hands they're simply there for him to laboriously plonk out
on electric piano very much in the manner of somebody who once read a brief
article about Thelonious Monk and then tried to copy his style without actually
going to the trouble of listening to any of the music.
Where this boasts 'strict tempo dance music in
sequence', I had in mind a combination of the raw sexuality of the Argentinean
tango, the smooth flow of the foxtrot, the cultured elegance of the waltz or the
rhythms and meters of the Brazilian samba cleverly woven into the fabric of some
well known tunes. But more more fool me I guess; even though the songs are
presented in clutches of two or three and grouped together under the umbrella of
a particular dance style, all are laid to waste beneath a woozy backing wash of
blips and bloops straight from the pre-settings of a home organ that reduces all
those world dance genres to just so much indistinguishable gloop, the sort of
muzak that dribbles it's way out of hotel lifts and supermarket tannoys the
whole world over. This 'Starlight Sound' is about as undemanding as music comes
- even Cage's 4'33" demanding more from the listener in that it at least
required you to think about what you weren't listening to. There's
nothing to think about here, except maybe 'when is this tedium going to end'?
Not impressed I'm afraid.
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