Ever hit three jackpots in a row? Pull the one-armed bandit’s arm down once. 777. Again. 777. Again. 777.
OK, here’s the backstory: David Winitsky got my name from Jake Platt and wrote me note, sight unseen, sound unheard: Mounting Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galxay with “Douglas Adams’ original idea” of a “sound extravaganza.” Needed a “killer sound designer, very into the project.”
Sight unseen, sound unheard.
He could never have imagined that he’d called a guy so very into the project that I still dearly held onto my 30-year-old recordings of
And how could I have imagined that David had secured the folio scripts that predated that BBC production, replete with
And David could never have imagined that I owned all that musical arcana. On vinyl, no less. 777.
So, what kind of outré-hip sounds would
The edgy stuff we conservatory geeks listened to when our serial-box profs had their backs turned: Stockhausen, Ligeti (cf, 2001 A Space Odyssey).
Our beloved counter-revolutionary proto-minimalist granddaddy: Terry Riley.
The pop electonica cool cats: Fripp, Eno, Patrick Moraz.
Electronic muzak: Tomita, Yamashta, JM Jarré, Absolute Everywhere.
The kind of music that record stores could never figure out how to classify. “Out” “Other” “Now”
The radio series wound up sounding more coherent than it might’ve if
My approach, unharnessed by David creative foresight, was to bring the two galaxies together: samples from all of Adams’ suggestions and a few others that fit, mashed up with arpeggios, ostinatos, and sonic filigree borrowed shamelessly from the faraway constellations of Bruckner, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Debussy, Eno, and Gregorian chant).
I followed the Maestro Adams’ admonition: you’ll figure what what’s next when you get there. But whatever you do...
Don’t Panic!
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