Saturday, September 20, 2008

Sammy Burdson Group - Contemporary Sounds and Movements Vol 1 LP (Sonoton SON 104)

Here is another 'music library' LP. This is the first of at least three early Sonoton label release I plan to post here in the next week or so. The Sonoton label released at least a couple hundred LPs from the 60's to through the 80's. It is the largest indepenedent German music library label and was founded by Gerard Narholz.

As with many music library albums, most followed a common theme for each release with the intent that a film, radio or TV producer could simply pull up a specific LP that matched the mood they were looking for (drama, tension, energetic...). Many of the earlier Sonoton albums had fairly flashy picture sleeves and succinct titles to go along with each themed release like 'Drugs', 'Biology', 'Under Water', 'Fast', 'Slow', 'Climax'...

This album is titled 'Contemporary Sounds and Movements Vol 1', but I'm grasping to think of much that sounds like this from what I imagine to be somewhere in the 70's. The closest comparisons that come to mind are Sky label era Cluster and Woo. A little bit cosmic at times, with a bunch of filtered drums. The cover in no way hints at to what this album actually sounds like. This looks like a record that would typically be confined to the shelves of a thrift store (easy listening, instrumental music).

Aside from Sammy Burdson, who also recorded for other music library labels like Conroy and Intersound, other notables that appeared in the Sonoton series are John Fiddy, Klaus Weiss, Claude Larson, Sam Sklair & Walt Rockman.

While looking around to see if any of these albums have already been posted elsewhere, I found these other sites that have good music library posts from Sonoton and other more 'sought-after' labels like KPM, Themes, CAM, DeWolfe, Telemusic, Coloursound (best known for several ex-Brainticket Joel V. LPs).

Here are a few sites, I am sure there are many more out there:
The Library Hunt
Painted on Silence
36 15 Moog

Look out for some more Sonoton posts soon. If there is a good response to these, I might dig a little deeper and post some other music library titles.

Enjoy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

thanks so much, please post more!
All the best

Orlando

Paul Durango said...

Thanks for this one! really appreciate it!

Don't know why everyone isn't digging 80s german library.. LPs are still quite cheap (5/10 euros..) and the quality is great ! (although most are quite eneven..)

I have some Selected Sound meself.. same period.. will have to rip'em soon!

house303 said...

Just found this place and I like what I found here...two interesting Sammy Burdson albums...

Thank you!