Music professor and guitarist Alexander Elliott Miller released an album inspired by local landmarks.
Using a portable microphone and recorder and his electric guitar, Cal State Long Beach and Chapman University music professor Alexander Elliott Miller found inspiration in long-gone places that have left their mark on local history. The result is “To…. Oblivion: Historic Landmarks Around Los Angeles,” his new instrumental album that captures modern sounds of the city to take people back in time sonically.
“I like the idea that it’s kind of an audio journal, a picture of the city sonically,” the 36-year-old Anaheim resident said.
The six-track instrumental album, which was released Oct. 18, was inspired by six landmarks located in cities such as Long Beach, Anaheim and Los Angeles. The work mixes recorded sounds meant to recreate what the areas sounded like in their heyday with Miller’s electric guitar tracks.
“I’m fascinated by change in Los Angeles and to me all these historic landmarks are all symbols of larger issues that the city faces and I wanted to kind of capture some of this sound world,” Miller said.
The landmarks he chose include long-shuddered places such as The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, Anaheim’s old Center Street in downtown, which has now been revitalized, and the Pacific Electric Railway Belmont Tunnel near downtown L.A..
Also on the album is music inspired by the Dunbar Hotel, an L.A. hot spot for African American jazz back in the 1930s; the Zanja Madre, which was the first aqueduct that brought water to the Pueblo de Los Angeles starting in 1871 through the early 20th century; and the corner of Sunset and Horn, where Tower Records red-and-yellow flagship store opened in 1972 and closed in 2006.
For Miller, these places were areas that could be distinctly defined with sounds and had historic meaning as well.
And to capture the sound and feel of places like the Belmont Tunnel, for example, Miller rode the Metro Red and Gold lines one Saturday to record sounds of trains and people before combining that with his guitar.
For The Pike in Long Beach, which once housed the famous Cyclone Racer roller coaster, Miller visited the amusement park at the Santa Monica pier, Knott’s Berry Farm and the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round to record the sounds he would later mix with music.
On the Dunbar Hotel track Miller imagined the sound of jazz coming from everywhere around, including the hotel and other nearby jazz joints.
So he enlisted the help of a couple of musician friends who just recorded their own things separately that Miller later combined.
“So when you listen to the soundtrack for the Dunbar Hotel you hear me playing guitar, you hear other musicians but we’re not in any way trying to play in sync,” he said.
For more information and to hear the music, visit alexanderemiller.com.
