Most of the time when I listen to music, I'm reading or doing some project, so I prefer instrumental music. Sometimes though, like this morning, I couldn't sleep and I just want to find a piece of music to engage me for a little while.
I like the idea of a piece that tells a story, using the language of music and audio production. Something totally immersive and engaging.
Oh, I know there are tons of podcasts out there, and audio books... but just listening to somebody talk into a microphone, as I've mentioned before, isn't all that engaging. I have difficulty paying attention for very long. ADHD perhaps. Very few of the podcasts I've heard have any of what I'd call "production values."
I have a CD from a British musician named Jakko Jaksyczk called "The Road to Ballina" where he interviews his adoptive mother (who unfortunately has a very heavy French accent) and his father (very heavy Polish accent) about their lives during the War and how he came to be adopted. Then he travels to Arkansas and interviews his natural mother. All through this piece he intersperses musical tidbits, sometimes picking up:the rhythms of speech, sometimes looping the speech to make musical phrases. It's very charming.
The soundtrack album to "Apocalypse Now" takes audio elements from the movie and recasts them as an audio movie. The few music queues are mixed with sound effects and voices into a continuous parallel story, the same movie but told in sound. It is not so charming. It's very immersive but also harrowing.
There's a composer named Don Li who has done an album called "A Portrait of Edith Piaf" where he weaves recordings of her talking into musical phrases with instrumental accompaniment.
German musician Holger Hiller released an album called "Little Present" which tells the story of him visiting Tokyo in 1995 to visit his son. It is populated with recordings of the train stations and Japanese TV, footage of his son speaking, narration by Hiller and songs by Hiller. It's an odd little production, but sorta fits the mold I'm describing.
Peter Woodroffe and Dave Greenslade did a concept album called "The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony" about dragons and fairies and shit. The story and illustrations by Woodroofe are very elaborate, but aren't really very integrated with Greenslade's crappy music.
Windham Hill Records had a subdivision called Rabbit Ears Productions, which had famous actors reading children's stories with musical accompaniment/interludes. Not really what I was thinking of either.
Sergei Prokofiev did "Peter and the Wolf" and "A Carnival Of Animals" where a story interweaves the symphony.
But really, so far as I know, these sorts of productions are as rare as hen's teeth -- and that's quite surprising really.
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