The Danube Incident and Crate Diggers unite!

Ok ... so Clay is about 16 hours behind but nevermind ... I'm still hit up with vinyl fever ... and delirium has set in so deep that I fancy myself a crate digger eschewing the hip electronica and drone sections and heading straight to library and exotic with a soupcon of easy listening thrown in.

Remember a time when the world was loungecore mad? It was all those back-to-mine-chill-out-come-down comps that were everywhere. And DJs outdoing each other in the obscure stakes ... bloody show offs one and all.

But still, the end result was an Esquivel revival ... and that can only be a good thing ... babies!

Anyhoo, in one of those all purpose vintage stores on High Street, Northcote, I stumbled on these 2 half priced wonders which I'm suitably chuffed at acquiring.

I found a whole lot of dross elsewhere but I'm in the mood for revelling.

First up we have Andrew Lloyd Webber's Variations:

Andrew composed a number of variations on Paganinnin's 24th Caprice ostensibly for his cellist playing brother Julian. Its a little twee as are most attempts at melding classical to pop. But there's something about the mix of moog and acoustic that makes it even more endearing. Its so very Webber and by extension so very English. Oh and I love the cover. And Gary Moore played guitar!!

Secondly, we have The Walter Murphy Band with A Fifth of Beethoven:

One of those multi-instrumentalist types, Walter Murpy's discofied version of Beethoven's Fifth was everywhere when it was released in the mid-70s. Its cheesy disco at its best. The rest of the tracks are pretty throwaway including a few more classical pop cross-overs ... but California Strut was a bit of a revelation ... and has a groove in its own dorky way.

What really started this all off was rediscovering Lalo Shifrin's Danube Incident (a theme off a Mission Impossible episode) on a recent dj mixtape. And no prizes for guessing which hit is completely indebted to this sample.