Roger Roger - Sounds Industrial (L'Illustration Musicale - IM 25) (1976 - 320kbps)

Despite possessing a rather large library music collection, I have neglected to share many albums here for one reason or another. During the next two weeks I plan to share a few of my favorite library music albums, better known to some people as production music. If you are unfamiliar with library music then you should check out this Wikipedia article, which provides a decent overview of the genre. In the coming weeks you can expect to see a mixture of albums that any library music enthusiast will be familiar with, along with a few very rare and obscure albums, which hopefully haven't already been posted elsewhere.

First up we Roger Roger's Sounds Industrial (IM 25), which was released on vinyl in 1976 by the L'Illustration Musicale library label. Although Roger Roger happens to be one of my favorite library music composers, I had intended to share a more accessible album here first. The other album I was uploading canceled due to an error, so I just decided to run with it. Roger Roger was a French composer who was born in 1911 and died in 1995. As strange as it seems, his real name was actually Roger Roger. He also released several albums using the aliases Cecil Leuter, which he primarily used for his electronic output, and Eric Swan. Roger Roger was one of the most prolific of all the library music composers during his career, having composed music for dozens of production libraries, television shows and radio. He is well known among library music enthusiasts, although because he preferred to compose music for the more obscure library labels, he never achieved the recognition that many prolific film score composers do. He released albums on several different labels, although is best remembered for the work he did for the Mood Music series on the Chappell label. He was also one of the earliest composers to use the Moog synthesizer, releasing Pop Electronique in 1969, only five years after Bob Moog released his first synthesizer. While his early electronic output tends to be his most popular work, he dabbled in a diverse range of styles, including jazz, classical, psychedelic, experimental and exotica.

Sounds Industrial is one of Roger Roger's earliest albums of electronic music. One thing I love about many library music LPs is that you get the opportunity to hear classicaly trained musicians have fun and experiment, and I get the feeling that Roger Roger was doing just that with this album. At the core of this album is some excellent minimalistic synthesizer music. While each track is short, often averaging roughly a minute each, Roger Roger is able to create very dynamic pieces of music within a very short period of time. What I love about this album is the way each track progressively builds in complexity and atmosphere, yet manages to retain a certain level of simplicity. Most of tracks begin with a very sparse minimalist sound, usually just a simply synth melody, or perhaps a bleep here and a blip there. Then various instruments, sound effects and textured ambient sounds are incorporated one by one, and each track takes a life of its own as it becomes progressively more complex.

I can see this appealing to a variety of people,especially those of you who enjoy experimental, minimal synth, ambient, space-age pop, early electronic music, or just electronic music in general. Hopefully this will serve as an introduction to both library music, as well as Roger Roger, for a few of you. As I mentioned before, you can expect to see more of his albums here on DM in the near future, including those he released under his aliases.

Year of Release: 1976
Label: L'Illustration Musicale
Genres: Library Music, Early Electronic, Experimental
Bitrate: 320kbps

Track List:
01. Sounds Industrial N°1
02. Sounds Industrial N°2
03. Sounds Industrial N°3
04. Sounds Industrial N°4
05. Sounds Industrial N°5
06. Sounds Industrial N°6
07. Sounds Industrial N°7
08. Sounds Industrial N°8
09. Sounds Industrial N°9
10. Sounds Industrial N°10
11. Sounds Industrial N°11
12. Sounds Industrial N°12
13. Sounds Industrial N°13
14. Sounds Industrial N°14
15. Sounds Industrial N°15
16. Sounds Industrial N°16

Download: Roger Roger - Sounds Industrial (L'Illustration Musicale - IM 25)
Download Size: 59MB