Musicbox Music

Who couldn't be hypnotized by the sounds of a music box? There's something so wonderfully eerie found in its echos and reverb - ghostlike, childlike. I've been thinking that maybe I would like to collect music boxes - though only if I could assure myself that I'd stick with it and accumulate tons of them, I want to be known as the girl who collects weird old music boxes. Secretly I want to be like the cranky old man from Pollyanna with prisms strewn through his house - I feel like collecting music boxes could help me reach this goal.

With this in mind, I started thinking about musicians that utilize music boxes in various fashions in their music. I know I've heard it done lots, but here are a few I came up with at the moment.

The first time I heard this done was on The Fakes record, on the song Pretty Ballerina Pleasure. Song opens with that same tinkling tune that every jewelry box with a pop up twirling ballerina plays - most girls will recognize this song even if they never owned one themselves. The rest of the song is a sort of riot grrrl cacophony of distorted whispered singing about being a pretty little girl.

The art punk psych folk new weird america band, CocoRosie, released an album in 2003, La Maison de Mon Rêve that is described as deceptively innocent: enchanting and sweet yet eerie and twisted. An acoustic guitar paints melody through a haze of cryptic sounds and perversely angelic voices. A broken radio transmits a music box orchestra. Tiny field mice sing gospel. A music box orchestra! Sounds of broken toys dancing in the fields! An operatic voice singing from behind a mask of tragedy. You see what I mean, how wonderful, how wonderful!

Bjork. Vespertine. From an interview with David Hemingway, printed in Record Collector Magazine. I'd always wanted to work with music boxes but it was waiting for the right occasion. I'd been collecting them and stuff. The main thing was that I wanted to write my own songs in music boxes. In the beginning, the music box company weren't very excited. They'd made wooden boxes for eons and I wanted see-through plexiglass. They couldn't get their head round it - they were like 'Why?' They wanted to make the plonky sound softer with wood but I wanted it as hard as possible, like it was frozen. In the end, they said it was the best thing they'd ever done. Enough said, perhaps?

My last musicbox music recommendation is from a girl from France named Colleen. Or wait, does she perform music as Colleen when her name is something else? I am not sure, but you should definitely listen to this radio show, archived on the WNYC website from October, where she talks about the music she creates with a mix of acoustic instruments - classical guitar, music boxes, cello, bells - and electronic digital delays. She performs four songs live on air.