See It in Sound
A long-buried release from Esquivel's recording days in the 1960s,See It in Soundbrings to life an even more eclectic and peculiar chapter in this music experimentalist's canon. LikeSpace-Age Bachelor Pad MusicandOther Worlds, Other Sounds, it's a campy yet serious-minded sonic blitzkrieg, filled with lounge-act cheese, utterly insane arrangements, and the vertigo-inducing possibilities of stereo recording techniques. Bird calls, beeping horns, jungle sounds, and God knows what else ping-pong back and forth across the speakers, while Esquivel sambas, cha-chas, and swings merrily along. Yet while this record is more extreme and brazen in its musical whimsy than Esquivel's other work, at times pushing the outermost boundary of contemporary pop, it still maintains the martini-mixing feel of his otherMartin Denny-esque "easy-listening" releases--just barely. Chanting tribesmen and wild-animal howls reverberate with a somber French horn on "Similau," while strange marching-band tempos and movie-soundtrack clips of trench warfare whiz by on "Inca's Dream." The goofy main melody of "Honky Tonky Cha Cha" is carried by an old barroom piano straight out of a spaghetti Western's dusty old poker hall, while splashing water, marimbas, and a chorus of laughing children bounce around weirdly in the background. There's no denying that it all sounds pretty crazy and, in reality, it is. Still, nobody else has ever, or will ever, go this crazy again and still manage to sound this cool.--Matthew Cooke