Moondog

Moondog

Moondog was a fearless innovator whose infatuation with infusing Native American time signatures and melodies with his own predilections for the avant-garde recall some of Henry Cowell’s experimental adaptations of Irish folk melodies. Like Cowell before him, Louis T. Hardin, better known as Moondog, received little formal musical training, yet developed a rigorously formal and startlingly beautiful compositional style that, once heard, is difficult to forget. On his Colombia debut Moondog anchors his spare, deliberate arrangements to simple but evocative percussion patterns that evoke vast expanses of space. On the extremely minimal “Street Scene” he incorporates sounds recorded on the Manhattan streets where he made his home, making for a stark contrast with the markedly pastoral slant of most of his compositions. Over the course of his four decade long career Moondog would build substantially upon the style that he establishes on his debut, but Moondog provides an excellent starting point for those curious about the work of this brilliant eccentric.

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