Art Mineo: Man In Space With Sounds

From the reissued works of Juan Garcia Esquivel! to the contemporary recordings of a thousand lounge bands, the last few years haven't exactly seen a shortage of space-age bachelor pad music. It's a fad and a gimmick, to be sure, but the upside is that a tremendous number of excellent lost recordings are being rediscovered, remastered, and reissued for posterity. The greatest benefactor is the wonderful Esquivel!, but it's nice to hear an unearthed Man In Space With Sounds, the inventive orchestral recording Art Mineo released in conjunction with the 1963 Seattle World's Fair. Though it was released to coincide with the event—and played for Fair-goers as they rode a giant spherical elevator called "The Bubbleator"—Mineo recorded these tracks in the early '50s, before stereo recordings were commonplace. Still, the sound here is bright and elastic, and the songs themselves could have been drawn from any number of '60s science-fiction TV series. ("Man In Art" is particularly chilling and dramatic.) The Swedish Subliminal Sounds label, which reissued Man In Space With Sounds with Mineo's blessing, wisely included two complete versions of the half-hour recording on a single disc: One has just the instrumentals themselves, while the other features hilariously stiff narration. With lines like, "The fabulous Gayway, where you guide your own rocket and taxi to tomorrow," it's the sort of stuff that begs to be sampled on the aforementioned lounge-kitsch records. (www.interloop.se/subliminal)