The real mellotron drenched track inthe Stones catalog. Video features Brian playing the tron...
Halfway through
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Lol Coxhill - "A Series Of Superbly Played Mellotron Codas"
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
Here's one. The World Is Not Enough, U.N.K.L.E remix
https://youtu.be/ESjz_iYxaHg?feature=shared
"Fureai" by Masatoshi Nakamura. Mellotron flutes and vibes by Mickie Yoshino of Godiego. #1 on the Oricon charts in late summer/early fall 1974:
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
Here's one of my favorites although the heavy mellotron does it give it a very proggy sound imo:
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Wilco's Summerteeth LP has lots of good Tron. "She's a Jar" showcases it best. Gorgeous harmonica too.
Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles
"Frozen flaking fish raw nerve...In a cup of silver liquid fire" - Jethro Tull
Although Rod Argent is credited for playing organ and piano on this track it looks like this is The London Symphony Orchestra, arranged by the well known Robert Kirby. Actually, this track is featured on the compilation-CD "When The Day Is Done : The Orchestrations Of Robert Kirby", released by Ace Records in 2018.Originally Posted by Stevie B
B.t.w. Christmas has an impressive discography and worked with the likes of Pete Sinfield, Mel Collins, Ian McDonald and Greg Lake.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/374447-Keith-Christmas
Last edited by interbellum; 03-07-2024 at 10:20 AM.
Paul Weller used a Mellotron on his album Wild Wood. It's also on the single with that name, although not played by himself but by Brendan Lynch.
The Keith Christmas album with Mellotron on it is 1970's Fable of the Wings. Keyboardist Ian Whiteman plays it on the track "Hamlin."
Most people know Christmas for being a session guitarist on David Bowie’s Space Oddity (speaking of non-prog tunes with great Mellotron). I know him for stepping in for Glenn Shorrock on Esperanto's Danse Macabre album.
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
^ I know him from a series of Brit-Folk albums I have in my collection. Nothing must have, but I'm not getting rid of them.
I spent a few days at Jay Bennett's studio in 2003 since my band at the time hired him to mix our record. He had a lot of keyboards which I'm pretty sure included the Tron from that album (I read that in his "divorce" from Wilco he got all of the keyboards he used on that record). I also remember he had prerecorded reel tapes of a few of the late 60's/early 70's pre disco Bee Gees records sitting around.
"Cage the Songbird" from Blue Moves also has that.
The Walkabouts used the Mellotron on a couple of albums. I only have (and love) Trail Of Stars from 1999. Listen to this beauty Last Tears:
Info from Planet Mellotron:
The Walkabouts (US)
Nighttown (1997, 61.04) ***
Trail of Stars (1999, 64.41) ***½
Train Leaves at Eight (2000, 68.47) ***½
Ended Up a Stranger (2001, 64.58) ***
Drunken Soundtracks: Lost Songs & Rarities 1995-2001 (2002, 129.41) ***½
Acetylene (2005, 52.38) ***
A name like The Walkabouts make you think the band in question might be Australian: wrong. The Walkabouts are from Seattle and their remit seems to be to sound as European as possible, even covering material by the likes of Jacques Brel and Scott Walker. Never mind the indie ethic, this is the noir ethic, personified by The Walkabouts. Nighttown is their seventh album 'proper', ignoring compilations of EPs, live efforts etc. and lives up to its title with aplomb, channelling the melancholy end of those '50s Sinatra albums, anything by Scott Walker... You get the picture. Their record company apparently described it as 'the sound of a band committing suicide' (it wasn't), although it's certainly one of the most unremittingly downbeat things I've heard in a while. Orchestral arrangements (mostly strings) on most tracks, making it difficult to spot Glenn Slater's samplotron when it appears. From what I can tell, though, we have a distant flute line on Unwind, with equally distant strings on the chorus and what sounds like a polyphonic flute part on Slow Red Dawn, under the orchestral arrangement.
Trail of Stars carries on the good works of its predecessors, to the point where, to the casual listener, it's almost indistinguishable from Nighttown, although I found it slightly more appealing. More Slater samplotron, with strings on Gold and Drown and full-on flutes and strings on the album's samplotronic highpoint, Last Tears. They followed up with a covers collection, Train Leaves at Eight, with a sleeve more noir than noir. Unlike many similar, it actually works, to the point that if you didn't know they were covers, you, er, wouldn't know they were covers. Stylistically, of course, it's the usual, so it comes as even more of a surprise when they suddenly kick out the jams (albeit fairly slowly) on Brel's People Such As These, a.k.a. Ces Gens-La, also covered by French proggers Ange, back in 1973. The samplotron finally appears on That's How I Live (a.k.a. So Lebe Ich), with a string line that sustains way past the eight-second limit. Ended Up a Stranger is, of course, in a similar vein to the rest of the band's work, though, at least to me, is slightly less appealing. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to it after Train Leaves at Eight? Anyway, a decent enough record, just a bit the same old same old. Slater plays samplotron on several tracks, as far as I can work out, with flutes on Life: The Movie, flutes and possible strings on Fallen Down Moon and strings on Mary Edwards and Winslow Place.
The following year's double-disc set, Drunken Soundtracks: Lost Songs & Rarities 1995-2001, does exactly what it says on the tin, collecting outtakes, live tracks and no doubt all manner of other things that didn't make it onto their earlier albums. Not that you'd know, as it sounds every bit as good as any of their 'regular' releases, which makes a nice change for an outtakes album. Mind you, it's ridiculously long, so I wouldn't recommend playing it in one sitting, as I did... A few tracks of Slatertron, with flutes on Sorry Angel, full-on strings on The Getaway, tentative strings on Cowbells Shakin', faint ones on Glory Road and quite upfront ones on Incognito, although I've no idea from which era any of them hail. After a several-year break from releasing new material, Acetylene appeared in 2005 and it's immediately apparent that the band have rocked things up in the interim, to the point where they're almost a different band. It's a perfectly good album, just... different, with a distinct Neil Young fixation becoming apparent, noticeably on lengthy closer Last Ones. Very little samplotron, too, with nowt but occasional strings on Northsea Train, alongside what sounds like real ones.
I'm surprised OMD circa Architecture and Morality/Dazzle Ships hasn't come up yet:
Also have to bring up Strange Advance, the CanCon answer to British synthpop acts like OMD and Ultravox:
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
Some will say this is prog just because of the band but to me it's more like mellow rock.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Greg Weeks from the band Espers uses the Mellotron now and then on his solo-album, like on this short track Starless:
And in the last sequence of Tin Angel Of Death there are some nice Mello-flutes:
Sir Psycho Sexy by the Red Hot Chilipeppers.
There's an extended coda where the tron kicks in.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
The Fibonaccis' "Purple Haze" cover. Rather Devo-ish.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks