Manhattan Research, Inc.

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Music reviews of Manhattan Research, Inc.

Music Review: The press agrees...
Rating: 5 Stars

SPIN Magazine: "Paranoiac, visionary, misanthrope, and machine fetishist, the late composer Raymond Scott was also an electronic music pioneer and inventor geek who had Madison Avenue paying him to soundtrack its vision of postwar American futurism. MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. compiles 69 love songs to commerce and the space age. The music is both archaic and tres moderne: it reveals the fears and fantasies of a nation in boom-time denial. And Scott mischievously spikes almost every one with a dystopian mickey: could give a kid nightmares for years."

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U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT: ''Raymond Scott has a new 2-CD set titled, 'MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC.' The polymorphic composer, who led the band on the '50s show Your Hit Parade, invented instruments like the Clavivox, an early synthesizer. As corporate drones chorus in 'The Paperwork Explosion': 'Machines should work. People should think.'.''

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THE VILLAGE VOICE: ''Ensures a life-size statue will someday be built in Japan on behalf of Raymond Scott's tireless crusade for electronic music.''

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TIME OUT: ''Raymond Scott's resume makes today's dot-com geniuses look like tea boys: He helped train Bob Moog and invented half the electronic music devices in existence. He made electronic music before we even had TVs. Much of it will sound very déjà vu to modern ears: like Aphex Twin and Plone, 45 years early. Producers Gert-Jan Blom and Jeff Winner have made a great listen. You will fondle the hardbound volume lovingly and flip through its tiny perfect pages full of historical memos and pictures. It's a time capsule; a testament to Scott's frightening work ethic and impossibly limber mind; and a really entertaining listen that puts the kibosh on notions of linear progress in technology and the arts.''

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MOJO: ''The music of synthesizer pioneer Raymond Scott makes most of his successors seem slavishly conventional and insipid. MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is quite possibly the most lovingly-packaged CD ever assembled, replete with archive photos, period adverts and more information than you'll find in entire books on electronic music. A work of art in its own right, this puts to shame the efforts of most major record companies.''

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THE BOSTON PHOENIX: ''An immaculately researched and packaged 2 CD and book set -- a startling piece of retro-futurism. It's the sound of a single inventor trying to discover the future.''

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THE NEW YORK OBSERVER: ''Raymond Scott was an inventor of synthesizers as far back as the 1940s. In an age that treats aesthetic obsession with Prozac, this sort of music is priceless. You can't dance to it, but today's listener will get a better understanding of this country through Scott. Witness the birth of a nation, or, at the very least, modernity.''

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THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE: ''This two-CD set, which is lavishly packaged in a hardbound book, indicates that Raymond Scott's most creative work was as an inventor of electronic music instruments. During the '50s and '60s he developed one-of-a-kind synthesizers and sequencers. Some of his perky, quizzical little pieces now sound quaint, but others were remarkably prescient.''

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THE INDEPENDENT: ''Synthesizers, drum machines, multi-track recorders, and sequencers. All the technology that makes electronic music possible owes a debt to Raymond Scott, one of the 20th century's greatest innovators. Scott's importance lies mainly in his realization of the rhythmic possibilities of electronic music, which laid the foundation for all electro-pop from disco to techno.''

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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: ''Raymond Scott grew impatient with the limitations of live musicians. He became an inventor, and devoted his life to trying to rule musicians out completely. In his vast electronic studio, developed in the Fifties, his machines produced sound sculptures and what sounds like funky sequenced rave music. The sounds are frighteningly similar to those on recent releases by the likes of the Aphex Twin and DJ Shadow. This fabulously produced double CD is a delightful journey into the world of a forgotten genius.''

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THE GAURDIAN: ''Makes you yearn for an age in which electronica couldn't just be bought as ready-wrapped software, but was something to which you had to devote time, space and thousands of feet of wiring. Listening to Scott's music now, you could believe he invented just about everything in electronic that followed. The real 2000 is nothing like the rocket-science utopia that Scott imagined, but his music has somehow become very much the sound of now.''

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THE WIRE: ''The shimmering optimism of Raymond Scott's electronic music reveals an exuberant continence in the creative applications of technology. By using it to bring gloss and sparkle to prevailing notions of progress, he helped drag electronic music out of the laboratory and into the home. Our suburbs and supermarkets would never be the same.''

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SELECT: ''Hail Raymond Scott, unsung hero of techno. On MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. you hear primitive house music, evil easy listening, and whacked-out ambient -- somewhere between avant-garde composition and pop. Beam us up Mr. Scott.''

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KEYBOARD: ''MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. is a fabulous two-CD/144-page hardcover book package. Few in the music industry can boast more extensive credentials than Raymond Scott. He developed the first music sequencing machine, multi-track tape recorders, and the Clavivox, a forunner to the Moog synthesizer.''

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MIXMAG: ''Did this man invent Acid House in 1955? Imagine a long time ago -- back before House, before Studio 54, before the Beatles, before Elvis Presley's first single. It's 1955. Meet Raymond Scott: The Great Granddaddy of electro-dance, who created acid squeals, drum machines, and cyberfreaks. Listening today to the recordings that Scott made during the 50s and 60s is astonishing. The 4/4 rhythms, the simple electronic pulses and, most of all, the hypnotic loops are all intact. Scott would have been amazed to see clubs full of people dancing to the music he imagined.''

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