Search - Ben Vaughn :: Designs in Music

Cooled-up easy listening -- great CD

T. Fisher | 09/22/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is a true masterpiece of easy listening music -- it is easy listening with an extremely cool edge. Ben Vaughn uses all the tricks of 1960s instrumental music -- tons of reverb, wah-wah pedals, crystal-clear horns, dreamy soprano voices, organs, and professional whistlers -- and brings them up to date. Of course there is plenty of synth work as well, but it's good synth. And thanks to Vaughn's extensive work making music for Hollywood, he was able to recruit LA's best studio musicians to play on this record.



The title "Designs in Music" is extremely appropriate. The songs are all built around catchy tunes, there is no problem there. But the real achievement is not that Vaughn was able to come up with ditties, but that he was able to design perfect structures around them. There is a wonderful catalog of things you can do in this genre of music, and Vaughn pulls all of them out at exactly the right times. I had the feeling that it was almost an architectural process -- "designing" music rather than just writing it. And they are very hip designs indeed.



I bought this CD after hearing an NPR story about it -- the interview with Ben Vaughn, dated May 28, 2006, is still up on the NPR homepage and is basically a great 11-minute audio featurette about the record. It turns out that the album was inspired by a "beautiful music" station out of Palm Springs CA, which was the only station he could pick up on the radio in his truck in the desert when driving home from Hollywood. If you have any doubts about whether you want this record, listen to that interview and have them dispelled.

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