Also Sprach Zarathustra (and other headbangs)

In my More Great Film Openings post last Saturday I mentioned in passing that ninja of the synthesizer, Isao Tomita - specifically, his arrangement of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra (a straight orchestral version of which was famously used over the opening credits of 2001: A Space Odyssey). I've now dug it up on YouTube, accompanied by some freaky computer-generated fractals.

I'd never heard of Tomita until I bought a Tomita's Greatest Hits album during my student days in Oxford; a random impulse buy, found it in the 'Bargain Bin' at a favourite record store, paid only 50p for it. It immediately became a great favourite amongst a circle of hi-fi-loving friends (he produces a lot of intricately engineered stereo effects, so it's great for testing out the soundstage of your speaker setup). You can't really appreciate his Also Sprach... just listening to it online. In fact, I doubt if you can properly appreciate it other than on vinyl played through a very good sound system. This track has a huge amount of deep bass and sub-bass - really: the frequencies are so low that you can't hear them, you just sense them in the pit of your stomach; and your window panes rattle in their frames.

Another highlight of that compilation was this jokey version of John Williams' Star Wars theme, in which the main melody is whistled (and there appears to be a Jew's Harp accompanying!), and which just gets very, very, very silly towards the end. Unfortunately, this YouTube post somehow seems to omit the final flourish - a beautifully realised effect where a metallic object, perhaps a biscuit tin lid, appears to rocket skyward, then fall to earth and roll from one side of the soundstage to the other and back again before slowly spinning to a halt (my friends and I dubbed this 'The Hubcap Song'!). If anyone can direct me to a complete version of this warped masterpiece, please let me know.

There used to be a rather fine hi-fi shop on George Street in Oxford called Westwood & Mason, run by two zealous young audiophiles (I don't think these shop assistants were Mr Mason or Mr Westwood, though I'm not sure I ever got around to asking) who were very indulgent towards us, and allowed us into their basement demo room once or twice a term even though it was very clear that we were not any time soon going to be in the market for the high-end systems we were testing out (although I think we did all eventually buy a fair amount of less illustrious equipment from them). Most of the time we were very reverential about it, and would just take the kind of records you're expected to use for speaker tests, like Dark Side Of The Moon and Bridge Over Troubled Water (apparently, that really is a whipcrack on The Boxer, and it takes a very good system to bring across the sharpness of it); but on one occasion I played Tomita's Also Sprach... and Star Wars on a Pink Triangle - and it was mind-blowing.

(I also have fond memories of my friend Patrick once bringing along his copy of The Residents' particularly batty concept album Eskimo - there's a great bit where a kayak is paddled from one side of the soundstage to the other. Ah, the fripperies of youth!)