April 27, 2020 ☼ music

Loveroom

“Why don’t you stay? Why don’t you stay in my loveroom…”

The Loveroom is a special room, a room for lovin’ and for chillin’. This song was written by Frank Harris, an American composer who—after graduating from the music school at UCLA in 1981—oriented his output around the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer. The sound of the future. The track is full of the myriad different textures and tones of the Synclavier, a little guitar, very gorgeous drum programming (extra long decay snare!), some blazing saxophone by Daniel Zinn and breathy vocals by Harris and Venezuelan chanteuse Maria Marquez. The sonic melding of Marquez’s lower hemispheric voice and Harris’s future (or future/past) bossa nova results in a completely magical recording. This version of “Loveroom” is taken from the duo’s 1987 12” EP In a Minor Mode, a late and off-the-wall release from San Francisco’s Ralph Records, typically known as the home of The Residents, Tuxedomoon and Yello, experimentalists on a much different tip. The earlier, alternate version of the song, recorded for Venezuelan filmmaker Calogero Salvo’s 1985 film 3x3 is included on Echoes, a collection of recordings by Frank Harris & Maria Marquez released on New Zealand’s Strangelove Records in 2019.

Posted in collaboration with Dancing Nowhere

– Herb Shellenberger