{"id":7774,"date":"2013-10-01T16:43:37","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T16:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=7774"},"modified":"2013-10-01T16:43:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T16:43:37","slug":"van-dyke-parks-songs-cycled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2013\/10\/01\/van-dyke-parks-songs-cycled\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Dyke Parks &#8211; Songs Cycled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/2013\/10\/01\/van-dyke-parks-songs-cycled\/homepage_large-1d233f48\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7775\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7775\" alt=\"homepage_large.1d233f48\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/homepage_large.1d233f48-300x300.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There is probably no more a confounding yet fascinating artist in contemporary music than Van Dyke Parks.<!--more--> His CV runs the gamut from writing weirdly inscrutable musical scores to accompany rarely seen films to working with Brian Wilson on the original, ill-fated, \u201860s-era <em>Smile<\/em> album to acting in films to heading the audio\/visual department of Warner Bros records in the 1970s. <em>Songs Cycled<\/em> collects 7\u201d singles recorded and released over the course of 2011 and 2012 and while each song is unique in it\u2019s own way the connection remains the composers\u2019 unique delivery and instrumentation. When you first experience Parks\u2019 music, it takes a little getting used to. There are string and horn sections shifting back and forth seemingly working against each other, with Parks\u2019 cheeping his purposely-bewildering lyrics (\u201ctwo flaming birds on fire, they kiss their lives goodbye, above the concrete street, we meet in dying, without a trace of our embrace, you can\u2019t place my face, though you are trying\u2026\u201d from \u201cWall Street,&#8221; for but one example) over the delightful maelstrom of musical hijinkery. Imagine being fast asleep, quietly in your beach hammock one moment and when you suddenly awaken you are in the middle of rush hour traffic with no idea how you got there or how to get out of the way of the danger of what is happening around you. That is something like this album sounds. There are elements of classical music, twenties flapper jazz and just plain weirdness all balled up into an \u201cI don\u2019t understand what I am hearing but I can\u2019t turn it off\u201d sort of vibe. Undeniably eclectic and worth investigating for a complete change of pace.(Bella Union Records,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bellaunion.com\/\">bellaunion.com<\/a>)\u00a0<b id=\"docs-internal-guid--f32c253-74e3-bbfb-ec41-e32a757d40e1\">Jeff Monk<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is probably no more a confounding yet fascinating artist in contemporary music than Van Dyke Parks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1056,1059],"class_list":["post-7774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-utn","tag-van-dyke-parks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}