• the flaming lips [ego tripping at the gates of hell]
• the faint [danse macabre remixes]
• david bowie [earthling]
• the clebanoff strings [exciting sounds]
• saint etienne [finisterre]
• they might be giants [factory showroom]
• chris cornell [euphoria morning]
• cq soundtrack
• nobukazu takemura [finale: for issey miyake men by naoki takizawa]
• southern culture on the skids [dirt track date]
• the chemical brothers [dig your own hole]
• pizzicato five [couples]
• mudhoney [five dollar bob’s mock cooter stew]
• eyes wide shut soundtrack
• the chemical brothers [exit planet dust]
• yo la tengo [fakebook]
• lalo schifrin [enter the dragon]

A very productive couple of days. in fact the past 6 days represents 8.6% of the playtime accomplished since tunequest began. not a bad performance. however, now i’ve got far too many tunes to write about here, so here are some quick thoughts:

herman clebanoff was a fairly obcure "space-age pop" composer active in the mid-20th century.  i picked up him and his strings’ exciting sounds at the west florida regional library’s annual book sale several years ago. besides old library books, those sales generally included magazines, art, some collectables, and of course music, mostly on vinyl. for several years, it became a ritual for me to sift through just about everything and walk out with several boxes of new acquistions.

Exciting sounds is a wonderful recording of light classical music, mixing mid-20th century pop standards with a touch of exotica. I have no idea what year this record was released, but it had to have been after 1960, when clebanoff moved to mercury records (if you happen to know, please inform me). Though the whole record is quite good, sueno flamenco and turkish harem dance really stand out.

• Disbanding soundgarden was the worst thing, musically, chris cornell ever did. his solo album, euphoria morning, recorded and released after soundgarden’s demise, but before he teamed up with the remnants of rage against the machine to form audioslave. the album starts off well-enough with the minor hit "can’t change me" but from there drags into a milieu of just plain crappy post-grunge alterna-pop, the kind of direction cornell has gone since, but worse. and it’s not even that chris can’t write good solo material; his song seasons from the singles soundtrack is a small singer/songwriter masterpiece.

• The soundtrack to CQ is quite catchy, composed mostly by french group mellow. It’s remniscent of air [french band], but with a more campy go-go style.