Yesterday afternoon I was in not-so-good mood which was definitely getting reflected in my daily actions. For example during my weekly ritual shopping at our local vinyl store called Joe's Record Paradise I decided to check the section called Oddball, for normal rock-n-jass was definitely perceived as too mundane to heal my sore personality :) Amongst various and not so various crap from Haloween Songs and Freaky Sounds to How To Strip For Your Husband I found the following pearl:
Normally I think of myself as of person whose personal evolution moved beyond the early years of ethnic music, sounds of nature and other similar audio poop. But this sleeve intrigued me. Songs of whales? Is this an idiom? Perhaps it's some form of ummm... oddball instrumental music? I had to check this out, and the price of $3.50 was in agreement with my wallet.
The in-store audition had to be quick as I had 6 other records to try and the line behind my back was growing impatient, although I didn't have to be too nice to them, since each of them held a pack of 10 records or more and I could have easily been in their place. Still even 5 quick seconds of listening to Track 1 immediately caught my attention. Random sampling a few more spots on Side 1 confirmed my first judgement. This was magic. I don't have an easy way to digitize the record for you to enjoy, but the very least I can do is share image of the gorgeous label (UPDATE: the MP3 of Track 1 is now available here)
Back at home, I warmed up a bottle of sake, the Wife fried a quick portion of shiitake mushrooms and off we went, listening to the lovely crazy alian sounds on the big speakers. The big speakers sounded better in terms of bass, however this was the day I regreted I don't have extra 3-4k to by myself a nice HiFi subwoofer. In terms of pure bass the whales definitely are kings of the sea.
Closer examination of the record sleeve revealed a curious historical artifact:
As you can see, somebody in the distant year 1970, has read this article and ordered the record for the unbelievable price of $9.95, which considering the typical price of $1 per record was comparable to $100 in today's money. The orignal owner of this record must have been wealthy, educated, and nuts!
The record is also accompanied with a small booklet, written in English and Japanese, of which I will share the most interesting part, namely a graphical depiction of the "music" the whales make:
Having listened to the record twice and having finished the bottle of sake, I went to YouTube to search for any modern relatives of this record, and, easily enough there they were, in large multitudes, most of them not-so-exciting but some of quite decent quality (ignore the video as it is just a slideshow):
So I went ahead and listened to a bunch of these after which I had even better idea: why not google? Indeed, why not. The mightly Google revealed an exellent resource, The Whalesong Project, which offers an even more exotic treat, the live streaming audio from Kihei Harbor of Maui, Hawai'i. The audio is encoded as mp3 but the link is packaged as Real Audio, so you will need a RAM-capable player (I recommend the free VLC) to, as they say, fully enjoy the trip.
I just left the sound on as I went to bed and -- oh miracle -- had the best sleep in months, complete with Lucid Dreams and have awaken to this world with fully refreshed spirit and more love in my heart towards these small silly two-legged creatures that rule the dry part of the planet.
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