Is wanking over production music the new outsider music craze? What sort of person finds the sonic equivalent of stock photography fascinating? Crate-digging funkoholics and hipper-than-thou trendoids, that's who. And Lo Recordings have four collections of vintage (1975 and earlier) miniatures to satisfy their monophonic analog lusts.

Further Nuggets, selected by Luke Vibert, comes hard on the heels of his first trawl through the catalogs of various production music libraries. And not only is he at it, but so is Add N to (X)'s Barry 7, whose two Connections compilations (also on Lo) mine very similar veins. So is there really something more to this sound-library stuff than canned, pastiche, instant-mood snippets? Apparently, the likes of David Holmes, Beck, Andy Votel, the Beta Band, and Andy Weatherall think that this library music stuff is the shit.

Lo Recordings most definitely think so, too. The label has given Vibert a second opportunity to showcase the bongo-bop-iest and Moogy-funkiest of the style. Further Nuggets draws from further afield than his first pass, which concentrated on the work of Roger Roger, Nino Nardini, and Eddie Warner, three inspired swells making a franc or two at the Ganaro studios in Versailles. This record features three more examples of Roger Roger's craft, "Perdition", "Velvet Clouds", and "Sound Industrial 15". The first is an eerie violin, marimba, jazz guitar, and percussion piece that promises more Grand Guignol than it in fact-- thank god-- delivers. "Velvet Clouds" is so chimingly cheery it could be used to induce a truly gobsmacking Fred and Ginger routine in Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. By way of extreme contrast, "Sound Industrial 15" is the aqua spine bubbles of Two Lone Swordsmen mixed with some sparse Sergio Leone spaghetti Western theme.

Apart from Roger Roger's contributions, things get much spottier. Jack Arel and Pierre Dutour's "Top Rally" is a big band doing Blaxploitation funk, while their "Bumblebees Dance" sounds like a G-funk version of Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Gonna Go My Way?". Elsewhere, John Matthews' "Electro Aggression" borrows from Morton Subotnick, and I imagine a micro-mini'd and fuck-me sling-backed dance troupe getting all interpretive to the clavinet disco slop of Richard Demaria's "Studio 96". The percussive flute and wah-wah'd guitar of Roger Davy's "Crazy Flute Happy Guitar" can only mean Huggy Bear's in another wino-startlin', trash-can bashin' alleyway car chase through afro'd Harlem. Roger Webb's "Exotica" gives you three minutes to walk up to the barfly Farrah Fawcett-ish lady in a beige A-line dress, get one more Campari and soda down her neck, indicate the sugarloaf trapped your Sta-Press hip-huggers, and get her upstairs to your hotel room for a near-zipless fuck.

Boosters say that production music is much more than the sonic equivalent of stock photography. They say that it's more than a kitschy guilty pleasure. It's a world free from the cult of personality where nameless, ego-less talents can express themselves. This would be true from the ass-backward perspective of compilations such as Further Nuggets. Hate to be a downer, but being compiled thirty years later by Luke Vibert probably wasn't exactly what these musicians were doing their thing for. Far from being the romantic notion of production music being a safe haven for reclusive Joe Meeks and Phil Spectors, regular production work ensured these musicians regular paychecks for composing and recording adaptable brief mood pieces for sales presentations and basement-budget TV programs.

The fact that Vibert can present some unquestionable gems here is just gravy. The boosters' appeal to the absence of stardom-seeking personality is an optimist's spin on the fact that this style had to be anonymous to fulfill its primary function: unnoticeable background music. Though I'm resistant to embrace production music as the latest, greatest fad, I can't deny that Vibert's collection selects and, importantly, deftly sequences some real treasures. Vibert makes a compellingly funky case for joining the wankers.

-Paul Cooper, October 15th, 2002