Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks - Orange Crate Art

25th Anniversary Edition — First time on vinyl!

Liner notes by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks

Double LP contains three previously unissued session outtakes 

"This year, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks' 1994 project, Orange Crate Art, turns 25 years old. To celebrate, Omnivore Records has reissued and remastered the album and brought attention and care to a somewhat disremembered historical artifact created by two musical luminaries. Of note, Omnivore's campaign is the first time this album has been released on vinyl. ... Orange Crate Art is more than just a good album. It’s a wide-screen cinematic experience shot in 70mm Panavision. It’s big and bold; ambitious and American." — Music = 9/11; Sound = 9/11 — Evan Toth, AnalogPlanet.com. Read the entire review here.

In 1966, when Brian Wilson prepared the follow up to his masterpiece Pet Sounds, he employed the services of Mississippi born Van Dyke Parks as lyricist for The Beach Boys next album, SMiLE. As history would soon document, SMiLE became the most famous unreleased album in rock history, it's "completion" not seeing daylight until a Grammy-award winning box set in 2012.

SMiLE's original plan was to incorporate many different elements of American music in an avant-garde fashion, its musical format leaps and bounds ahead of anything that existed contemporaneously. As SMiLE quickly grew in legendary terms, Brian and Van Dyke each went their separate musical ways, only to reunite briefly in 1972 for The Beach Boys classic "Sail On Sailor." So it was perhaps with great apprehension and excitement that these two musical giants should finally reunite in 1994 for some unfinished business. This time, however, the mission would be complete. The musical terrain familiar . . . a paeon to California.

Omnivore Recordings is very proud to announce the release of the 25th anniversary special edition of Orange Crate Art by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. By 1994, the roles had been reversed and it was Van Dyke who coaxed Brian into the studio to be the singer of nearly a dozen new songs he had written as a tribute to his home away from home. Parks writes in the liner notes, "Though my roots are somewhere else, far away, my limbs are here in Southern California . . . it's here . . . that I have struggled desperately for a sense of place . . . Orange Crate Art is a continuum of that which stood, freeze-frame, at the release of SMiLE."

Twenty-five years on, this album which sounds like nothing before or since, has been majestically remastered by multi-Grammy award winner Michael Graves. Available on vinyl for the very first time, Orange Crate Art . . . before SMiLE . . . after SMiLE . . . it all makes sense now!

Music

Sound

Ratings from Michael Fremer @ AnalogPlanet.com

 

Side 1

1. Orange Crate Art

2. Sail Away

3. My Hobo Heart

4. Wings of a Dove

Side 2

1. Palm Tree and Moon

2. Summer in Monterey

3. San Francisco

4. Hold Back Time

Side 3

1. My Jeanine

2. Movies Is Magic

3. This Town Goes Down at Sunset

4. Lullaby

Side 4 - Previously Unissued

1. Rhapsody In Blue (Outtake)

2. Our Love Is Here To Stay (Outtake)

3. What A Wonderful World (Outtake)

Be the first to write a review for this item OR just rate it