In the early 1970s Jamaican dubmeisters supreme King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry collaborated on an album called Blackboard Jungle wherein each mixed one channel of stereo down to what amounted to two separate mono mixes. It’s breathtakingly ingenious—not to mention a terribly elaborate and work intensive process—but it doesn’t hold a patch on what “easy listening” legend Juan Garcia Esquivel got up to a decade prior. He’d sometimes use an entire orchestra in each channel, the musicians sitting in adjoining recording studios…

Have a listen to “Mucha Muchacha” from Esquivel’s 1962 album, Latin-Esque—this is some serious stuff, is it not?
 

 
Mexico City-raised Esquivel was the primary creator of the sub-genre of easy listening that was retrospectively called “Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music” (a term coined by DM pal, artist/Subgenius Byron Werner). His innovative, idiosyncratic (and instantly recognizable) music made full use of the vast possibilities of the newfangled stereophonic soundscape—exotic instrumentation, quick-change dynamics, polyphonic percussion, ping-ponging sound effects—and the perfectionist composer, arranger and pianist created the sort of record albums that insured they were used to demonstrate the highest fidelity stereo equipment. Incredibly, he was an entirely self-taught musician.

Continues over…