A boîte à oiseau chanteur or singing bird box is a music box with mechanical ‘birds’ singing along to the tune of the bells, organs, and so on in high pitch while twitching their heads, turning and moving their wings. This video is a great example.
Category: Visual
The Encylopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments, 1971
The Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments is a huge resource on self-playing antiques like orchestrions, music boxes, barrel organs, fairground organs, and player pianos. The book features a lengthy chapter on each variety with origins, histories on specific developers, galleries, old promos, and details on specific models’ functions.
Kimbra – “Two Way Street”, 2012
Abaco Music Library artwork, 1990s
KPM Library cover art, 1980s
The 1950s saw KPM start to produce music for film, radio and the emerging commercial TV market. Shortly after, the now highly collectible green sleeve ’KPM 1000 series’ records went into production. 1960s to 1980s proved to be KPM’s glory years and the 1000 series records defined the sound of the era, spawning dozens of popular TV themes of the day. – WhoSampled, The Influence of the KPM Music Library
Search their 1980s catalog here
White Poppy – “Daydreaming” (Drifters Gold, 2013)
Tamaryn – “Angels Of Sweat” (Dreaming The Dark, 2019)
Watch here
I am LIVING for Tamaryn’s current aesthetic – glowing, pastel colors, moons (I mean hey, it’s my namesake here) and elegant gothic wardrobe + make-up. It’s like the good parts of the excellent Cranekiss album’s visual style but more colorful and ambitious.
I don’t love the song quite as much to be honest. I think it’s a big improvement from “Fits of Rage”, where she tried a little too hard to be Gritty and Angry in her delivery, but this song too has a few awkward vocal elements, albeit not as severe. I do think the backing music itself has a lot of potential. Hoping it will grow on me. UPDATE: Sure enough it did, and it didn’t take long to do so! Very blissful and catchy.
