Royal Oilworks Music

Seriously odd classical… Tongue-in-cheek electro-acoustic, combines baroque harpsichord and cheesy electronic sounds. Funny like Satie is funny – zany and irreverent. Lots of serialism which sometimes sounds too random, but the bizarre collage of styles and time-periods is brilliant. Oh, it’s also like PDQ Bach/Peter Schickele in some ways. Absurd liner notes! I’m not sure why so many of these pieces are recorded with a computer doing them, when it looks like they were originally written for acoustic instruments – the cheesy computer sounds get tiring. Try the starred tracks first – some of the others are downright bad upon first listen. FCC clean. Lots more comments below.

1. Baroque-sounding harpsichord piece.
2. Serialist electro-acoustic, but I think it’s supposed to be funny, which is very refreshing, given how “ivory tower” this type of music often is. Cheesy synths, electronic percussion and trumpets… uptempo and funky.
*3. Baroque harpsichord with pop and world music sounds going on in off-kilter, almost random rhythms. WTF? Very cool.
4. Waa waa synth, fugue-like. Ugh.
5. Piano rag. Pretty dull.
6. Zany electronic world music sounds, damn I’d love to hear this not done on a computer… Almost too serialist/random-sounding for my taste.
7. Cecil Taylor piano over drum machine breakbeats.
*8. Close to Dual (Ed Chang and Doug Theriault – crazy dense guitar and laptop processing), with national anthem-like moments?? And bird song?? Zany.
*9. Slow serialist/romantic (sic) prelude to baroque trills to Reichian/rag arpeggios to a Chopin breakdown to a jazz ending. Phew. This rocks.
10. Boogy woogy synth with jazz percussion and serialist randomness. Lots of noodling, er, electronic wanking? Upbeat.
11. Staccato baroque fugue on electronic choral sounds and pipe organ sound – it’s hard for me to imagine someone playing this on kzsu, but somehow it is a little funny.
12. Rhythmically interesting, but it’s hard to take the early computer sound.
13. Fugue for harpsichord - cool trills but I’d rather hear Bach or Couperin…
14. Some free jazz freak outs, all synthesizer sounds. Great title for this.
*15. Squeaky sounds with sax and choral synthesizer – like if you played the Handel theme from the film A Clockwork Orange, Sonny Rollins, Tchaikovsky, and, well, a psychotic serialist all at once.