Ben Vaughn "Designs in Music" : Divertido muzak

Textos extraídos de Amazon y allmusic


Rarely does one record so confidently honor a category like Ben Vaughn's Designs in Music. This fun, audio soundtrack for what could be spaghetti westerns, quirky sitcoms, romantic cinema, and jazzy incidental moments creates its own kind of visual stories, moods, meditations, and more than its share of whimsy. You're bound to hear echoes of Henry Mancini, Enrico Morricone, and others whose film scores from the '60s and '70s remain some of the most unsung works of pop culture even today. On "While We're Here," Vaughn and various member of his exquisitely assembled 15-piece ensemble also give a bold shout out to Mark Isham, who scored many of Alan Rudolph's films in the '80s. You can also tell the way he voices various instruments and vocal splashes throughout that he's yet another Brian Wilson aficionado. Which is not to say Designs is a retro album full of homage. Rather, it's Vaughn and company exploring terrain that is familiar and foreign and always original, with inventive flourishes and cool and occasionally abstract song titles. Like the best of the genre, these intriguing music beds always seem to lie right below our consciousness and yet right on our radar screens, too. --Martin Keller

Guitarist and composer Ben Vaughn has obviously listened long and hard to early-'60s exotica, TV themes, spy films, spaghetti Westerns, and cocktail music. His Designs in Music -- a highly arranged, richly textured collection of original instrumentals -- manages to pay tribute to guitarists Hank Marvin, Duane Eddy, and Vinnie Bell, and composers Martin Denny and Ennio Morricone, without being utterly derivative. Hearing the peppy themes and doo-ahh vocals, one might be tempted to write off Vaughn's music as kitsch. But a careful listening reveals a depth in the orchestration and writing that's totally AWOL in modern pop. Vaughn's guitar palette runs the gamut from spanky, tremolo-drenched lines to moody jazz-noir, and his vintage tones are always cleverly framed by various combinations of strings, brass, reeds, old-school analog synth and combo organ, harp, percussion, pedal steel, and wordless singing. Going on a road trip? These quirky sounds will make a perfect soundtrack.

While rock fans know Ben Vaughn from the handful of witty but rockin' albums he cut in the '80s and '90s with his band the Ben Vaughn Combo, since the mid-'90s Vaughn has been making his bread and butter working as a composer for film and television, hitting pay dirt with his music for the shows Third Rock from the Sun, Grounded for Life and That 70s Show. For his first album since 1997, Vaughn has taken his inspiration from his current day job by composing and conducting 12 pieces for movies that exist only in his head. Recorded with a 16-piece studio band (complete with horns, strings, and a whistler), Designs in Music is a collection of instrumentals that harkens back to the era when film scores had personality and added atmosphere to a film rather than simply adding more rumble to the Dolby Surround mix. Vaughn appears to be having some fun with this stuff, and the shadows of such sonic eccentrics as Esquivel and Joe Meek can be heard throughout the album, but Designs in Music doesn't sound at all like a goof; there's far too much skill on display for this to be a joke, and Vaughn and his collaborators certainly do right by their influences; the spy flick ambiance of "The Stalker Pt. II," the western pastiche on "Smoketree Serenade," the European intrigue of "The Big Parade," and the uber-cheery "Avanti" wouldn't sound out of place in any number of late-show epics from the '60s, while the arrangements (by Vaughn and Ryan "Shmedly" Maynes) are superbly inventive (facing the rattley twang of the bass end of a clavinet against a banjo shouldn't work, but somehow they make it happen). Designs in Music is smart and engaging fun that honors pop music history while making just a little of its own.