Les Baxter

With song titles such as "Hong Kong Cable Car," "Bangkok Cock Fight," and "Shanghai Rickshaw," Les Baxter's The Fruit of Dreams will likely yield the sort of faux-exotica music that was all the rage in the space age Fifties and Sixties before making a hipster-fueled comeback in the Nineties. But don't dismiss it as kitschy tiki-hut music just yet; there's some real compositional mastery in Baxter's songs. The Fruit of Dreams is the combination of two of Baxter's better albums, Ports of Pleasure and The Sacred Idol (both out of print), and features an adventurous brew of disparate sounds, odd instrumentation, and choral arrangements. The music here is more subtle and pastoral than Baxter's later quirky experiments with the theremin, and not as campy as fellow exotic-nauts Esquivel and Yma Sumac. Throughout Dreams, you can hear the influence he had on later popsters such as Brian Wilson and Beck. For true exotica aficionados, Baxter's work represents a high-water mark for the genre.

Related Content

• The Hangover Part II: Didn't we already see this movie?
  May 26, 2011
• Lime to Open at 125th Avenue West Kendall
  October 31, 2011
• The Five Best (and Several of the Worst) Menu Deals During Gables Restaurant Week
  May 26, 2011
• Eight Great New Year's Day Brunches In Miami
  December 29, 2011
• Frost art exhibit explores Big Macs and Mao
  May 26, 2011

More About

• Les Baxter
• Shanghai
• Bangkok
• Classical Music
• Choral Music